The Speculative Prehistory of the iPhone

What prelaunch coverage of the original iPhone can tell us about today's coverage of Apple's "iSlate."

By  |  Monday, December 28, 2009 at 1:34 am

Remember the very first iPhone–the one that sold for $249, had an iconic click wheel, a cool slide-out keypad, and a unique two-battery design–and which ran on Apple’s very own nationwide wireless network? No, not the iPhone that Steve Jobs unveiled at Macworld Expo San Francisco on January 9th, 2007. It didn’t have any of those features. I’m talking about the one that was an ever-changing figment of the collective imagination of bloggers, reporters, analysts, and others who wrote endlessly about the iPhone in the months before anyone outside of Apple knew much of anything–including whether or not the phone existed at all.

I’ve been thinking about that era of blissful ignorance lately. Coverage of Apple’s supposedly-upcoming tablet device (allegedly to be known–maybe–as iSlate) is building to a similar crescendo. Just as with the iPhone, the tablet is already the subject of gazillions of words’ worth of rumors, reporting, guesswork, wishing, and hoping.

Can we learn anything about Apple tablet pre-coverage from the pre-coverage of the first iPhone? I think so. So I revisited much of the early iPhone scuttlebutt for this article. Herewith, choice bits from a bunch of old stories, with summaries of what they got right and wrong…and then some overall thoughts.

The art sprinkled through this story consists of concept iPhones rendered by fans and other interested bystanders prior to the real iPhone’s debut. I’m entertained by them all–but please note that none look even a little bit like the phone that Steve Jobs brandished at Macworld Expo.

Let’s start with a surprisingly early, remarkably prescient iPhone story, shall we?

John Markoff in The New York Times, August 18th, 2002 (almost four years and five months before the iPhone was announced, and less than ten months after the iPod’s debut):

And now come signs that Mr. Jobs means to take Apple back to the land of the handhelds, but this time with a device that would combine elements of a cellphone and a Palm -like personal digital assistant.

Mr. Jobs and Apple decline to confirm those plans. But industry analysts see evidence that Apple is contemplating what inside the company is being called an “iPhone.”

Certainly, Apple’s push into the market for a hand-held communicator would be an abrupt departure for Mr. Jobs, who continues publicly to disavow talk of such a move. But analysts and people close to the company say that the plan is under way and that the evidence is manifest in the features and elements of the new version of the Macintosh operating system

Now, with the release of the newest version of the Macintosh operating system, Mr. Jobs appears intent on taking Apple itself into the hand-held market. The move would play into Apple’s so-called digital hub strategy, in which the Macintosh desktop computer is the center of a web of peripheral devices.

Mr. Jobs continues to be coy. He insists that he still dislikes the idea of the conventional personal digital assistant, saying that the devices are too hard to use and offer little real utility. But a telephone with personal digital assistant features is another matter.

“We decided that between now and next year, the P.D.A. is going to be subsumed by the telephone,” he said last week in an interview. “We think the P.D.A. is going away.”

And even while protesting that the company had no plans to introduce such a device, he grudgingly acknowledged that combining some of Apple’s industrial design and user-interface innovations would be a good idea in a device that performed both phone and computing functions.

Scorecard: This is eerily on-target for a story published so many years before the iPhone appeared. It gets the name right, correctly talks about the phone being based on OS X, treats it as a pocketable computer rather than an iPod that makes calls, and even has Steve Jobs saying it sounds logical. Markoff was so accurate so early in part because he’s a brilliant reporter, not a rumormonger or an idle speculator. Weirdly, though, he also benefited from thinking about the iPhone so far in advance: In 2002, the iPod was not yet a phenomenon, and it was therefore less tempting to immediately assume that an iPhone would be an iPod variant.

Paul Sloan in Business 2.0, April 2005 issue:

Apple fans–and a fair number of nonfans–lust for some sort of Apple phone. The infuriating design and general clunkiness of most mobile phones today cry out for the Apple touch. Jobs has teamed up with Motorola to make a phone that will let users play a handful of songs downloaded from iTunes. But this could be just a prelude to Apple’s entrance into the phone market. With Motorola, Apple has already helped build a prototype of a combination phone/iPod that resembles the iPod in look and feel, according to someone familiar with it.

An Apple phone’s functions could be accessed hassle-free with the iPod’s scroll wheel, and the numbers could work with a slide-out keyboard or a simple touchpad system on the screen. It seems certain that Apple could vastly improve on current phones’ finger-snarling methods of retrieving contacts, calendars, and music.

As appealing as the idea is, there’s a big barrier to Apple’s making a cell phone or phone/iPod combination without a partner. Jobs would need to collaborate with the wireless carriers. Carriers often place demands on phone makers, even insisting on certain functions, and Jobs, ever the control freak, would never put up with that. Yet as beefier phones hit the market–Samsung is set this year to roll out the first cell phone with an internal hard drive, making it far better than current phones for storing music–Apple could feel pressure to strike back.

Scorecard: Correctly argues that Apple could create a superior phone experience; mentions the red-herring scroll wheel and slide-out keyboard ideas, but also says Apple might use “a simple touchpad system on the screen.” Rightly says that Jobs wouldn’t accept the normal manufacturer-carrier relationship but isn’t bold enough to guess he could cut a deal with a major carrier to give Apple an unprecedented degree of control. Overall, not bad!

Harry McCracken (hey, that’s me!) at PC World, March 22nd, 2006:

Australian site Smarthouse is reporting that insiders at [a] Taiwanese manufacturing powerhouse are saying that Apple is definitely working on its own phone. I’ll believe it when Steve Jobs pulls it from his jeans pocket at a keynote and pronounces it incredible, but it does seem like a logical move: I’m not sure if there’s a single phone in the world that’s at good at doing what it does as the iPod is at doing what it does. A terrific music phone could be the kind of game-changing product that’s Apple’s core competency.

Playing devil’s advocate, though, designing wireless phones is no cakewalk–there’s a reason why there aren’t all that many companies in the world that do it. Even with help, it would be a huge step for Apple.

And the swiss-army knife philosophy of today’s phones seems anything but Jobsian. Would the iPhone play music, capture still photos and video, do e-mail and browsing, and be a mobile gaming platform (oh, and let you make phone calls)? Or could Apple get away with introducing an elegant device that did voice, music, and possibly video extremely well–and didn’t even try to do anything else?

Scorecard: I’m smart enough in this PC World post to declare I’m playing devil’s advocate and to toss out questions rather than make definitive statements–a squishy approach that’s hard to fact-check. I do, however, say I think it’s unlike Steve Jobs to make a phone that could play music, capture images, retrieve e-mail, surf the Web, play games, and make phone calls. Wrong!

Mike Hughlett in the Chicago Tribune, May 8th, 2006:

Mark Stahlman, a stock analyst at Caris, said a phone venture would be a “distraction” for Apple. “It’s so different from what they’ve done to date.”

He noted, too, that the wireless industry is known as a particularly competitive business.

The same couldn’t be said for the MP3 business before the iPod took off, he said. Ditto for the computer business when Apple released its first model in the late 1970s.

Once the industry became fiercely competitive, Apple’s market share dropped and today is in the low single digits.

“Apple has done extremely well when it has had no competition,” Stahlman said.

Scorecard: Judge for yourself, but FYI, analyst Stahlman also thought it was unlikely Apple would offer movies for the video-enabled iPod and said that Apple’s Boot Camp would probably lead to a decrease in Mac sales.

Michelle Meyers at Cnet, June 6th, 2006:

Although they agree that the idea of the AppleBerry–a combination iPod/BlackBerry–is enough to send gadget addicts directly into rehab–bloggers just aren’t biting on the iPhone rumor mill’s latest flavor-of-the-month. The concept of the hybrid fruit began to propagate around the Web after analyst Peter Misek of Canaccord Capital suggested Apple Computer and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion might be working on a product together based on the advice of their common partner, Intel. The pairing combines Apple’s design expertise with RIM’s relationships with carriers and handset makers, Misek said.

Scorecard: AppleBerry? AppleBerry?

Jeremy Horwitz at iLounge, September 7th, 2006:

Of course, the new patents sound suspiciously like what YourMacLife suggested was about to be released as the iPod phone. The concept can be summed up simply as a touchscreen-based phone with the ability to switch interfaces – one could be a phone screen, another could be an iPod screen, and yet more could be for any sort of other function imaginable – video playback, game playing, GPS, and so on. All on a single-screened phone. Will any or all of these features be included in an iPod phone? Does Apple envision this as being the next-generation iPod, or a separate device? And will third-party developers be able to create applications for the platform?

Scorecard: It took two generations for the iPhone to get GPS and third-party apps, but otherwise: bingo!

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33 Comments For This Post

  1. Dave Barnes Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 1:53 am

    Harry,

    Congrats on the SlashDot appearance.

  2. mark Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 11:04 am

    Thanks for this prehistory. I think you’re too harsh on your own predictions. Also looking back, it’s important to note that Apple claimed the switch to Intel was due to the important trend of low-power consumption mobile computing, and Intel also commented that it was eager to be a part of Apple’s gadgets in the lab (some of which it had seen). (As it turns out, Intel hasn’t been able to advance its tech enough to get Apple to use them in these handheld devices.) In sum, it’s clear that Apple had strategically focused on mobility way back in 2005 (and maybe earlier).

    Most of the current tablet rumors strike me as having real nuggets of truth, though it’s likely Apple is working on multiple products (7″, 10″) and the rumors are confusing which things are for which products. I think the 7″ is a larger iPod touch/iPhone (no Mac GUI so no Mac apps, PA Semi ARM chip) due in 1Q2010, and the 10″ is more of a MacBook Air sibling (Intel Core chip) but with a full touch GUI added to the Mac GUI due in 3Q2010.

  3. Armand Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 11:26 am

    I read speculation, mostly following the iPhone reveal, that Apple may have “leaked” misinformation to mislead but satisfy the blogosphere’s hunger for iPhone news until Apple was ready to launch. Everything written about the “iSlate” should certainly be taken with a grain of salt until, to quote Harry, Steve Jobs pulls it from his jeans pocket at a keynote and pronounces it incredible. I wonder if Levi Strauss could make him a pair of jeans with a 7″ pocket. 😀

  4. Berend Schotanus Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 12:11 pm

    Great post!

    It is amazing how much all iPhone predictions looked like traditional cell phones while today all cell phones look like iPhones.

  5. Hamranhansenhansen Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 12:18 pm

    Fun article.

    > allegedly to be known–maybe–as iSlate

    My money is on the return of the “iBook”, now running iPhone OS.

  6. Hade Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 12:30 pm

    I think the most important thing we should be taking away from this is that whatever people expected the iPhone to be, it was almost always too much like what already existed at the time. The actual iPhone stunned people when it came out, not because it was a clever re-hash of an existing concept, but because in many ways, it was completely different from anything we’d ever seen before. Nobody expected to see a phone with no buttons. Nobody expected to see a real, desktop-caliber web browser in a pocket-sized device. Nobody really *expected* to see what Apple eventually gave us.

    Until I see a mock-up of the so-called iSlate that I consider revolutionary in at least one respect, I won’t be giving any of these tablet rumors much credence.

  7. Jeff Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    An extremely important article, which gets me to thinking that most rumors are no where remotely based on facts, but on “wishes”. People were building on other rumors instead of starting from scratch and looking to see what was theoretically possible at the time.

    For example, here are my “reasonable” predictions. They aren’t based on “insiders” or anything like that. They’re based on logic and nothing else (something that many rumors seem to ignore).

    1) Screen – between 7-10 inches in size. Anything smaller makes it harder to read a webpage. Anything larger and it can’t be comfortably held in one hand. Multi-touch (since it’s in all of their latest products), and likely supporting more than 2 fingers, since the iPhone 3GS supports 3 fingers, and the latest Apple trackpads support 4 fingers. More importantly, the Magic Mouse supports 2+ fingers, as well as ignoring parts of your hand. Plus, this correlates well with the story of a key former Apple employee stating that “Apple Tablet tech” is visible in other devices. As for resolution, I think 1280×720 is the ideal resolution for such a device. All of Apple’s “HD” content is 720p, as well as their iTunes LP and AppleTV content. Other resolutions would not give a crisp 1:1 pixel mapping. And NO OLED. Considering that recently the largest OLED screen was $2500 for 11″ from Sony, I think you can do the math to see what such a rumor makes absolutely no sense.

    2) Weight – screen size dictates the weight of the device. Definitely no more than 3lbs, as that becomes hard to hold with one hand. Likely 1-2lbs.

    3) Material – Plastic or aluminum? It is reasonable to suspect that the tablet will have the entire front be glass (no covered edge). Aluminum is far more durable than plastic, especially if it might be dropped (though this flies in the face of moving from aluminum to plastic for the iPhone 3G).

    4) Connectivity – WiFi is a given, but should it include 3G? What brand of 3G? Verizon? AT&T? Ideally, it’s best to manufacture one device, but wireless carriers aren’t really ready to support “data only” devices because of their insane charge schemes. And because AT&T is already hurting from the iPhone, and any tablet would be FAR worse, I don’t see 3G being put in to the first run of devices. It may be saved for a 2nd gen device, plus it’ll keep costs down.

    5) Hardware – Another point of contention. As far as I know, Apple does not have an x86 license, and Atom processors use way too much power for a “low power” device. Plus, they bought PA Semi, which is well known for it’s engineering division. Likely, the chip will be a custom ARM chip designed in-house as to keep prying eyes from replicating their work very easily. The GPU may be a variant of the PowerVR SGX series used in the iPhone 3GS. Any RAM or storage space numbers I write here would be made up, so I’m not going to bother.

    6) Software – No guessing here. The secret sauce is what makes Apple Apple, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing comments, I’d be a CEO of a company!

    7) Cost – the big one. We’ve seen $600-$1000 in rumors. The best thing going for Apple in it’s sales is not overlapping price points whenever possible for base configurations. This is what makes it dead simple to purchase a product from a store without wandering into different price categories. Any tablet price near a MacBook will make one wonder why you should get a tablet instead of a MacBook, something Apple tries it’s hardest to avoid. On the other hand, what kind of tablet can be made by Apple for $500 while retaining the same quality we’ve come to expect? My guess? $599-699. Sure, it costs more than a netbook, just like the iPhone did when it first came out. But it’s the utility of the product that matters far more. And when you realize that people spent $300 just to read books on a Kindle, pricing for multi-function devices isn’t as simple as “it costs a ton, I’ll never buy it”.

    I wonder how much of what I wrote will be right. We’ll see. 🙂

  8. Ben Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 12:59 pm

    Great article. The one thing that’s missing (and probably forever will be) are the iPhone prototypes. Much of the misinformation during this time, may be due to the incredibly long development cycle of the iPhone, and prototype models that might have been completely scrapped.

  9. christopher Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 3:43 pm

    wow… some of those early version were really bad.

  10. James Bailey Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 5:18 pm

    Interesting article and well researched. Thanks.

    I personally doubt that there will be multiple tablet models at launch or any time near the launch. That just isn’t how Apple goes about introducing new platforms. They don’t want to muddy the water with too much confusion. Instead, they take the road that is most likely to appeal to the buying public (as opposed to the blogo-sphere.)

    I think it is somewhat likely that Apple introduces a single tablet model in early 2010. I think it is also likely that they introduce a second model of the iPhone sometime in 2010 as well. It is about time for Apple to target the lower end of the smartphone market just as they did with the iPod with the release of the iPod mini. The iPod was released October 2001. The iPod mini was introduced January of 2004. Perhaps the iPhone mini will be a CDMA/EVDO phone.

  11. Paul Johnson Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 7:35 pm

    I think your prehistory concentrates a bit too much on trade journalist/blogger comments about the possible design of the iPhone and not enough with other conceptualizations that appeared outside of the traditional spheres of journalistic comment. In particular, the iTalk concept video by Christopher De Santis that appeared on YouTube in May 2006 stimulated the imaginations of many people about how beautiful and useful a touchscreen-based Apple cellphone could be. For those who are interested, the video is still available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4296efmOWLs. Other than the double flip phone design, which is very attractive in that it preserves the Mac aluminum look but is not practical in use with its sharp edges and foldover layout, the mockup comes very close to the actual iPhone.

    The problem with the proposed Apple tablet is that we lack similar visualizations of how it would operate. The Microsoft Courier concept video is a pitiful remake of the old 1998 Apple Knowledge Navigator that seems primarily designed to promote vaporware and spread FUD. The closest concept videos I have seen that stimulate the imagination are the recent digital magazine mockups, like the Sports Illustrated and Time Inc videos on YouTube, although that would only represent a small part of the functionality of an Apple tablet.

  12. carkitter Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 11:21 pm

    The problem with most of the speculation is that it is starting from the wrong place – specification. We really should think about what sort of device Apple needs right now to make another pile of money, what market it can revolutionize. We should be looking for the business case for the device rather than creating imaginary gaps in the product range. I don’t see the raison d’etre at this stage.

  13. Valentijn Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 2:40 am

    Think different.

  14. Joe Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 6:41 am

    I actually know iPhone OS designer and to be honest they are scared to talk, not just because of their job security but overall. But one thing is for sure, it is coming as GSM and will be sold on Apple website for all carriers.

  15. |☌◙ Avenger ◙☌| Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 7:22 am

    I wish I have iphone 🙁

  16. KenC Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 8:01 am

    I vaguely recall Katie Huberty of Morgan Stanley got the specs of the iPhone correct, a couple days before MWSF. Strange since she’s been so wrong about everything else.

  17. jeffb Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 8:41 am

    Basically, what I’ve concluded is that the people at Apple are a lot smarter than people who write blogs about Apple. Apple believes in the R&D department. They look for what’s next, what’s deep in the bowels of the research institutions, ideas discussed only among academics and scientists, ideas and technologies that your average journalist and blogger simply isn’t educated enough to understand (know any bloggers on Techmeme who read IEEE journal?), then figure out how to put those technologies in consumer products today, not 20 years from now. That’s why you gotta love Apple, if you hate Apple (odd paradox I know, but there are plenty of us who don’t drink the cool aid but respect the hell of the company’s accomplishments). -s

  18. antmeeks Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 12:26 pm

    Great article.

    I think the new Mac “tablet” product will be less about the product itself and more about the interface / I/O / OS advances. It seems logical to assume that the Touch OS will eventually subsume the current Mac OS, and this iteration will represent more progress towards that end… IE: proper file system management & access, multiple 3rd party software running concurrently, etc. I expect that the OS itself will be renamed to something more general, and perhaps even iTunes could be renamed as well (overdue). It’s possible that a complimentary way of interacting with this OS will be via voice commands. I would also expect that a tablet would be capable of pairing with a bluetooth keyboard and perhaps touchpad with a complete gesture library for more traditional computing. But I definitely believe the real story is going to be the advances in the OS.

  19. mrboma Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 2:00 pm

    “Apple might come up with an utterly new user interface for mobile devices.”

    Seriously? Rows of icons in a touch interface is not a new mobile interface at all. Look at the Newton, the Palm Pilot, and even (dare I say) Windows CE. This is the standard user interface for hand held touch screen mobile computing devices going back to 1990. Rare in a phone for sure, but not revolutionary in a mobile computing device by any stretch of the imagination.

    The real thing that threw people was the size of the iPhone and the computing power inside. Phones and iPods had been trending ever smaller, so few people predicted a large screen device that could accommodate a traditional touch screen interface. And fewer still predicted the iPhone would truly be a mobile computing platform that would need such an interface.

  20. Sir Pent Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 5:47 pm

    So the question is, what will Apple do next? And will it include music from the band LIZARDS FROM AFAR? They give their music away for free on their website:
    http://reverbnation.com/lizardsfromafar

  21. Rash Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 8:39 pm

    Great article, Really appreciate the download … The speculations and rumors about the upcoming Apple tablets and again sounding similar to what happened before the iPhone was launched

  22. Ross Bodman Says:
    December 30th, 2009 at 2:19 am

    i originally wanted to get the iphone but spent hours searching the net on http://www.allaboutthemoney.net

    i took part in surveys, read reviews and the only thing that out me off was the fact the so many batteries have exploded while owners are using them. not really something i would like to happen next to my face

  23. theseditionist Says:
    December 31st, 2009 at 2:58 am

    You either missed a piece or only alluded to it. I recall a piece based on a patent filing that referred to a touchscreen with virtual… actually, don’t recall whether it was a clickwheel, telephone dial or what. However, what was interesting is that it was dead-on accurate. Except it was a perfect description of the Touch and not so accurate a piece predicting the phone. At the time it of course got the fanboys frothing but when the Touch actually debuted, it was greeted with not very much excitement, the phone having debuted between rumor and announcement.

  24. Andy Click Says:
    December 31st, 2009 at 3:47 am

    Not to mention that the iPhone didn’t support MMS when it was launched…

  25. Mark Says:
    January 4th, 2010 at 1:33 pm

    I noticed the manufacturers house leaked the iPhone’s creation before Apple did. Very intrguing ideed to see them do that. :-#

  26. Ryan Adler Says:
    January 11th, 2010 at 12:44 am

    New Apple products are traditionally presented as solving an existing problem. With the iPhone, Steve came out and mentioned that he wanted to solve the problems of existing mobile phones just not being very good.

    I think we need to answer the question, “What problem would Apple be trying to solve with the iSlate?” Once we know the answer to that, we would probably be going in the right direction to get an idea of what the product will be…

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  18. Entelligence: iSlate or just uWish? | Technology South Africa Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 4:19 pm

    […] and macro levels — with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. Harry McCracken has a great post on Technologizer reviewing the tremendous buzz around the iPhone right before it launched — it was about three […]

  19. Entelligence: iSlate or just uWish? | Family Learning Center Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 4:35 pm

    […] McCracken has a great post on Technologizer reviewing the tremendous buzz around the iPhone right before it launched — it was about three […]

  20. links for 2009-12-28 | Kabam! Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 5:03 pm

    […] The Speculative Prehistory of the iPhone | Technologizer […]

  21. Entelligence: iSlate or just uWish? « Gadgets Club Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 5:16 pm

    […] McCracken has a great post on Technologizer reviewing the tremendous buzz around the iPhone right before it launched — it was about three […]

  22. Entelligence: iSlate or just uWish? | Channel321 Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 5:18 pm

    […] McCracken has a great post on Technologizer reviewing the tremendous buzz around the iPhone right before it launched — it was about three […]

  23. Miniquestion.com » Blog Archive » Entelligence: iSlate or just uWish? Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 5:20 pm

    […] McCracken has a great post on Technologizer reviewing the tremendous buzz around the iPhone right before it launched — it was about three […]

  24. Entelligence: iSlate or just uWish? | Products & Tech News Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 6:34 pm

    […] McCracken has a great post on Technologizer reviewing the tremendous buzz around the iPhone right before it launched — it was about three […]

  25. MTPH Software: Blog : Entelligence: iSlate or just uWish? : Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 6:43 pm

    […] McCracken has a great post on Technologizer reviewing the tremendous buzz around the iPhone right before it launched — it was about three […]

  26. The iPhone Would’ve Sucked If The Rumours Were True | Gizmodo Australia Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 7:03 pm

    […] – just like everybody knows the tablet is coming. Funny thing is, (nearly) everybody got everything else about it wrong. If we’d all been right, the iPhone would’ve […]

  27. Entelligence: iSlate or just uWish? Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 7:32 pm

    […] McCracken has a great post on Technologizer reviewing the tremendous buzz around the iPhone right before it launched — it was about three […]

  28. BlogLime » Blog Archive » Entelligence: iSlate or just uWish? Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 7:40 pm

    […] McCracken has a great post on Technologizer reviewing the tremendous buzz around the iPhone right before it launched — it was about three […]

  29. A Look at the iPhones that Weren’t and the iSlate that Might Be – BehindTheGeek Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 9:27 pm

    […] McCracken’s Technologizer looks back to pre-2007 and the ridiculous amount of hype and — comical in hindsight — […]

  30. A Look at the iPhones that Weren’t and the iSlate that Might Be « iPhoneBizBlog Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 9:55 pm

    […] McCracken’s Technologizer looks back to pre-2007 and the ridiculous amount of hype and — comical in hindsight — […]

  31. Entelligence: iSlate or just uWish? | Consumer Electronics Newz Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 10:38 pm

    […] McCracken has a great post on Technologizer reviewing the tremendous buzz around the iPhone right before it launched — it was about three […]

  32. com3.es | Entelligence: iSlate or just uWish? Says:
    December 28th, 2009 at 11:02 pm

    […] McCracken has a great post on Technologizer reviewing the tremendous buzz around the iPhone right before it launched — it was about three […]

  33. The Speculative Prehistory of the iPhone | Harry McCracken | Voices | AllThingsD Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 12:05 am

    […] Read the rest of this post on the original site Tagged: Apple, Internet, Silicon Valley, Voices, digital, economy, hardware, innovation, media, mobile, Apple, Harry McCracken, iPhone, iSlate, tablet, Technologizer | permalink Sphere.Inline.search("", "http://voices.allthingsd.com/20091229/the-speculative-prehistory-of-the-iphone/"); « Previous Post Next Post » ord=Math.random()*10000000000000000; document.write(''); […]

  34. The iPhone Would’ve Sucked If the Rumors Were True [IPhone] | Anish E J's Blog Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 12:26 am

    […] coming—just like everybody knows the tablet coming. Funny thing is, (nearly) everybody got everything else about it wrong. If we’d all been right, the iPhone would’ve […]

  35. Apple Tablet « Zandstra IT Blog Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 12:43 am

    […] Een interessant stukje over de ontwikkeling van de iPhone en de paralellen die we kunnen trekken met de […]

  36. PDA Hog » Blog Archive » A Look at the iPhones that Weren’t and the iSlate that Might Be Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 1:16 am

    […] McCracken’s Technologizer looks back to pre-2007 and the ridiculous amount of hype and — comical in hindsight — […]

  37. A Look at the iPhones that Weren’t and the iSlate that Might Be | TalkiPhoneNow.Com Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 2:06 am

    […] McCracken’s Technologizer looks back to pre-2007 and the ridiculous amount of hype and — comical in hindsight — […]

  38. iPhone rumors revisited Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 5:16 am

    […] one of his exhaustive topical examinations, this time turning his bespectacled gaze towards the iPhone. Like the iSlate or the iTablet or the iNinjaStar, analysts, journos, and bloggers frothed at the […]

  39. iPhone rumors revisited | Products & Tech News Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 5:53 am

    […] one of his exhaustive topical examinations, this time turning his bespectacled gaze towards the iPhone. Like the iSlate or the iTablet or the iNinjaStar, analysts, journos, and bloggers frothed at the […]

  40. A Look at the iPhones that Weren’t and the iSlate that Might Be | Hitech Zone Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 6:30 am

    […] McCracken’s Technologizer looks back to pre-2007 and the ridiculous amount of hype and — comical in hindsight — […]

  41. O que a cobertura do iPhone original diz sobre a do tablet Apple » AppleMania.info Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 9:32 am

    […] mais e veja as imagens das previsĂ”es sobre o iPhone original no artigo completo de McCrancker. Tags:iPhone, tablet     TĂłpicos relacionadosRumor: iPhone 3G iminente, […]

  42. Entelligence: iSlate or just uWish? « DIGITALTABLETS.ORG Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 9:45 am

    […] McCracken has a great post on Technologizer reviewing the tremendous buzz around the iPhone right before it launched — it was about three […]

  43. A Look at the iPhones that Weren’t and the iSlate that Might Be | Cell Phone Infoz Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 9:47 am

    […] McCracken’s Technologizer looks back to pre-2007 and the ridiculous amount of hype and — comical in hindsight — […]

  44. Tal vez no es buena idea hacerle caso a los rumores | ALT1040 Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 10:29 am

    […] Technolizer Leer mĂĄs: Apple, BlackBerry, CNET, iPhone, Michelle Meyers, RIM Enviar a Twitter Compartir en […]

  45. Quais serĂŁo mais quentes: os rumores sobre a iSlate ou os rumores sobre o iPhone original? | MacMagazine Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 11:03 am

    […] o que temos ouvido a respeito da mĂ­tica tablet com uma maçã no verso, o pessoal do Technologizer compilou rumores e mockups do iPhone. Quem acertou e quem errou nĂŁo vem ao caso, mas o tanto que erraram chega a ser […]

  46. O iPhone seria um lixo se os boatos sobre ele fossem verdadeiros | ZooM TecnolĂłgico - SĂł mais um blog de tecnologia Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 12:41 pm

    […] blog Technologizer fez um resumo da cobertura prĂ©-iPhone do iPhone, e estas sĂŁo algumas das especulaçÔes tragicĂŽmicas mais erradas sobre o […]

  47. Top Posts — WordPress.com Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 4:01 pm

    […] The Speculative Prehistory of the iPhone Remember the very first iPhone–the one that sold for $249, had an iconic click wheel, a cool slide-out keypad, […] […]

  48. Rumores… al final, que equivocados estĂĄbamos « Iphone 3GS, Iphone 3G, Iphone Classic, Ipod Touch, Juegos Iphone en MoViC.cl - Todo para tu Iphone - Utilidades - Apps - Noticias - Descargas - Juegos Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 4:51 pm

    […] Technologizer ha publicado un curioso artĂ­culo sobre la “Prehistoria especulativa del iPhone” en el que recopilan algunos de los rumores mĂĄs sonados sobre el telĂ©fono de Apple. Es curioso ver a como la gente de The New York Times, Business 2.0, PC World, Chicago Tribune o iLounge compartĂ­an algo en comĂșn: todos daban palos de ciego tratando de unir una declaraciĂłn de aquĂ­ y un rumor de allĂĄ con las esperanzas particulares de cada cual para imaginar un producto que al final no tuvo nada que ver. […]

  49. Get your News: Get live news from all around the world » Entelligence: iSlate or just uWish? Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 6:46 pm

    […] McCracken has a great post on Technologizer reviewing the tremendous buzz around the iPhone right before it launched — it was about three […]

  50. looking back on iphone speculation Says:
    December 29th, 2009 at 10:09 pm

    […] The Speculative Prehistory of the iPhone […]

  51. iSlate – Revolutioniert Apple auch die Verlagsbranche? / tba. Says:
    December 30th, 2009 at 9:02 am

    […] könnte man “on the go” benutzen. Interessant in dem Zusammenhang ĂŒbrigens folgender Artikel der die GerĂŒchte vor dem iPhone noch einmal […]

  52. History says that… « IFapp’s Weblog Says:
    December 30th, 2009 at 8:00 pm

    […] The Speculative Prehistory of the iPhone by Technologizer. […]

  53. A Look at the iPhones that Weren’t and the iSlate that Might Be | iPhone Info Says:
    December 31st, 2009 at 8:02 pm

    […] McCracken’s Technologizer looks back to pre-2007 and the ridiculous amount of hype and — comical in hindsight — […]

  54. A Look at the iPhones that Weren’t and the iSlate that Might Be | iPhone Info Says:
    December 31st, 2009 at 8:02 pm

    […] McCracken’s Technologizer looks back to pre-2007 and the ridiculous amount of hype and — comical in hindsight — […]

  55. Friday Night Links (1/1/2010)… | The Digitante Says:
    January 1st, 2010 at 8:41 pm

    […] Speculative Prehistory of the iPhone (http://thedig.in/8w) – Ever wonder what everyone was saying about the iPhone before they knew there was an iPhone? Some got it dead on by suggesting touchscreen, gaming, and GPS. Others looked like big goofballs by suggesting that Apple and BlackBerry were teaming up for a device called the AppleBerry. Stop it. In a couple of years I plan on running a similar post to this with a link to the Speculative Prehistory of the iSlate. Or whatever the heck it ends up being called. […]

  56. A Look at the iPhones that Weren’t and the iSlate that Might Be | iTravelAlert Says:
    January 5th, 2010 at 6:28 am

    […] McCracken’s Technologizer looks back to pre-2007 and the ridiculous amount of hype and — comical in hindsight — […]

  57. Mike Jr | My thoughts on life, business & technology. » Redefine It Says:
    January 5th, 2010 at 7:36 pm

    […] A week or two ago, I was reading an article on technologizer.com titled “The Speculative Prehistory of the iPhone.”  (click here for the article) […]

  58. The Apple Tablet: What Will Be, According to You Says:
    January 24th, 2010 at 9:27 am

    […] The iPhones that weren't […]

  59. Snap Judgments! The Early iPhone Skepticism Says:
    February 1st, 2010 at 4:04 am

    […] The iPhones that weren't […]

  60. urbandesire» Blogarchiv » links for 2010-03-21 Says:
    March 21st, 2010 at 11:03 pm

    […] The Speculative Prehistory of the iPhone Eine Zusammenfassung des paradigmatischen Rumors um das Erscheinen des Iphones. Im Prinzip nur sinnlos, da ich vermute, dass all dies irgendwie nur fĂŒr Apple gilt und keine RĂŒckschlĂŒsse auf das Erscheinen von Produktneuheiten anderer Firmen lĂ€sst. (tags: apple iphone ipad social medien) […]