It’s no secret that Steve Jobs had a huge impact on the world of technology, but perhaps his legacy will be felt most significantly in mobile. It’s true that Steve Jobs gave Apple’s computers the revamp they needed to lure consumers back, but Apple with Jobs at the helm essentially created the current demand for mobile devices. No matter the smartphone, it works the way it does now because back in 2007 Steve Jobs stood on a stage before a throng of reporters and said, "Who wants a stylus? ... Yuck!"
Apple was not the first company to look at capacitive touch technology, but it was the first to make it really work on a phone. One of the previous market leaders (if it could be called that) was Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform. This was a system built around the stylus and cheaper resistive screens, and Redmond was dead-set on keeping it that way.
The inability of Microsoft to look past that input method hurt the platform. Windows Mobile was filled with shrunken-down desktop usage paradigms like the start menu, task managers, and ‘X’ buttons tucked way up in the corner of the screen. You needed a stylus to use Windows Mobile. Capacitive touch was seen as too imprecise, but Steve was right; it’s better when the UI allows it.
Steve Jobs realized that existing mobile devices weren’t compelling; they were overly complicated with little focus on usability. The iPhone was designed from the ground up to utilize touch, and that meant rethinking user interface. It took real design sense to remove what many people at the time would have considered necessary features, and still have a good product.
Jobs probably approached the creation of the iPhone the way he did everything -- as an editor. The things that made sense were emphasized; like multitouch zooming. The things that didn’t work, for instance file system management, were mercilessly cut out. The user interface we were left with in 2007 was completely finger-friendly, and a departure from the information-dense UIs of the past.
Thanks to the simplicity of the iPhone, it worked for so many people and it was fun to use. Smartphones used to be devices that people grumbled about and pecked at with styluses and trackballs, but regular people suddenly wanted iPhones. Other companies took note of the experience Apple built with the iPhone interface, and the entire industry pivoted in a year.
The original demos of Google’s Android operating system show off a platform radically different(Opens in a new window) than the one we saw in late 2008 on the G1. In the early days, Google was clearly going after RIM’s BlackBerry devices. In the wake of the iPhone, Android became a more touch-based OS. It wasn’t until Android cleaned up the UI and got on faster hardware that it was able to attract the same kind of attention that the iPhone did. Even RIM is trying to make touch work for them after years of denying the popularity of the iPhone.
The pre-iPhone smartphones from HTC, RIM, and others were trying so hard to be little computers that they missed the mark entirely. Steve Jobs realized that trying to make a resource-constrained mobile device act like a computer was a losing proposition. Instead, he and Apple developed new ways to interact with a phone that inspired virtually all the devices we use now. Whatever phone you have in your hand, it probably wouldn’t exist without the iPhone and Steve Jobs.
