Not being an insider, it might be true that no one at Android inc was talking about touch screens before 2007. But probably not. Ultimately, we can't observe what we really want to talk about here -- what would have happened without iOS.
The same compassion can go both ways; here is a link to one of many "iOS after Android" articles: http://techthirst.com/?p=414
>since iOS was not built from top-to-bottom for multi-tasking functionality...
before realizing that the author is just trolling.
iOS supported multi-tasking from day 1 -- it was a stripped-down Mac OS X, after all. They intentionally restricted multi-tasking to avoid performance and battery-life issues, a trade-off which is still paying dividends in their UX.
Apple forces developers to ask themselves, "do I really need multi-tasking?" Often the answer is "no," and the user benefits from that conversation.
Do not forget, that Apple has attitude "users do not know what they want, they will take what we offer". You don't know, whether users would be better off with multitasking or not, because you can't compare these two scenarios.
Sure, you don't need multitasking for checking in with Foursquare. You pretty much need for Location or Tasker. IOS users are not aware, that such applications exists and they are not missing them. If they would be used to them, they would miss it. Same with Swype and other apps available on Android.
There's also this question on Quora[2]. IMO, it was much closer to the BlackBerry.
[1] http://random.andrewwarner.com/what-googles-android-looked-l...
[2] http://www.quora.com/Android-OS/What-did-Android-look-like-b...
If I'm buying a sexy-looking stainless steel oven made by Samsung... I couldn't care less that General Electric was the genius that made the first one.
So... what are we arguing about?
Oh yeah, and it had apps too. That's 5 years before the iPhone. Apple didn't invent the concept they just made it work.
No one argues that. The point made is whether Android is a ripoff (or heavily influenced) by iOS. The gap is far wider between the iPhone/P800 than it is between iOS and Android. If the P800 was that influential, early Android prototypes would've resembled the P800 instead of a Blackberry.
You are ignoring the obvious when, in most cases, that is the truth. It doesn't mean that Google was necessarily wrong for what they did because they clearly were not if you're measuring by market share. It also doesn't mean that Android doesn't have its own identity.
While true, I continue to find it infuriating the extent to which people credit Apple with inventing things it didn't. The iPhone was not the first touch-only buttonless interface out there (depending on how liberal you want to be, you can credit the art directors of Star Trek TNG in 1987 with that). Nor was it the first app store.
It did these things better, and is certainly worth immitating. But to "date" the start of Android to 2007 like that is writing out a huge chunk of history.
Edit: To clarify, because people clearly don't understand why I see hypocrisy here: The moral context to this quote is that Apple did something first and Google copied it, and that this kind of copying is bad. But obviously Apple copied just as much from other sources when they "invented" the iPhone (including things like a full-size capacitative touch screen and app store). You can't simulataneously argue that it's OK for Apple to copy and not Google; I posited that this was ignorance on the part of the author and not stupidity, and noted that I found it infuriating.