> Pretend everything else about the iPhone happened; The charisma and leadership of Steve Jobs, the brilliant marketing, the countless number of talented software engineers, but instead the device basically looks like a blackberry.
> Physical keyboard, plastic case, More or less a knock off aesthetically.
> We're deep in counterfactual territory but I think it can be argued that this imagined iphone with a very conventional aesthetic would have done effectively just as well.
Yeah, but AFAICS that doesn't really contradict the hypothesis. Sure, I might agree with your counterfactual and also conclude that it wasn't really the design -- and, side note, I think what was originally meant here was the narrower sense of the ever-dumbed-down GUI, not physical characteristics like keyboard or not -- that led to the iPhone's breakout success... But just because you and I think so, CEOs didn't (necessarily) agree.
If they thought it was the cheery skeumorphic (and later stylised, then rounded-corner, then sharp-edge-rectangular, then rounded-corner again... yadda yadda) graphical design that led to the market success, then they started listening only to graphical designers, and that is what has elevated graphical designers to "gods" over actual developers.
And that's not just a counter-hypothesis to yours, but my theory; it's how I think it actually happened.
Heck even supposedly technically minded people will say things like "Apple invented the mouse" or they had "the first mp3 player" or "the first smartphone".
There's a circus about them that permits them to stomp out history before their first performance and mark it as irrelevant.
Musk is also a master of this craft. Founder of Tesla? You'd be surprised. Founder of PayPal? Go look that up.
These people could have been excellent actors if their businesses had failed
And how do you think they would do that?
Apple sometimes uses a bit of hyperbole to describe itself (https://512pixels.net/2014/01/apple-boilerplate/), but I don’t think Apple ever claimed "Apple invented the mouse" or they had "the first mp3 player" or "the first smartphone".
I also have never met anybody who made such claims, only people saying there are people who make such claims.
It also would be weird for them to do so. Their marketing differentiates their products from the competition, and has been doing that for years.
The competition sells MP3 players, the iPod was a _music_player_ or just the iPod (look at https://youtube.com/watch?v=kN0SVBCJqLs, and count how often Steve says music before he says mp3. [1]); the iPhone an iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communications device (https://youtube.com/watch?v=x7qPAY9JqE4), the iPad just the iPad.
[1] There’s a claim in hat video that Apple invented FireWire. I think that is mostly correct. They were the driving force there.
Particularly so since in the Keynotes where SJ introduced e.g. the iPod he shows the state of the competition and has a good critique before introducing his 'lame' replacement.
Like this.
It lets you have video and web browsing, and what actually lets apps be useful.
Before the iPhone, the UX was basically fixed and couldn't be iterated on, and the screen space was ~240p or 144 tops
Pretend everything else about the iPhone happened; The charisma and leadership of Steve Jobs, the brilliant marketing, the countless number of talented software engineers, but instead the device basically looks like a blackberry.
Physical keyboard, plastic case, More or less a knock off aesthetically.
We're deep in counterfactual territory but I think it can be argued that this imagined iphone with a very conventional aesthetic would have done effectively just as well. It still connects to iTunes and hooks up to your Mac, having all the same technical features and functionality.
The point is people see something successful, then they assign one of the attributes as the driver of the success and there seems to be very little reflection of the two core questions: (1) is it true? (2) is it generalizable to other companies?
And let's say it is. Are you really going to make something that's more iPhoney than an iPhone? More macosy then macos?
So even conceding those two points, which I think are utterly contestable, It still doesn't make any sense. Maybe that's why it's never worked. Maybe. Who knows?