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If you follow the reasoning that the iPod led to the iPhone which made mobile internet use dominant and common, you can also follow that line to social media and attention economies which many would argue have caused the world to be worse.

But this is kind of like the 'great man' theory of history where you can also argue that the markets would have converged on this outcome regardless of what the specific device was that we attribute to it.

by seba_dos113 hours ago|

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I was more thinking about normalization of walled gardens in personal computing devices and resulting duopolisation of the market. Widely used mobile Internet, social networks, touchscreen smartphones were coming with or without Apple, and it's not like the carrier-dominated market was all flowers and butterflies otherwise, but ultimately it was Apple who used its market and cultural position to push non-interoperable stuff like iMessage, fight "jailbreaking" and "sideloading", gatekeep software availability etc. which defined the course of action in the industry for the next decades. These things aren't what made iPhones successful and it didn't have to be done this way.

by raw_anon_111112 hours ago|

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There was no “wall garden” with the iPod. In SJ’s “Thoughts on Music” that he posted on Apple’s front page in 2007, he said that less than 5% of users music came from iTunes.

This was the same post he said he wouldn’t license Apple’s DRM. But if the music industry would license their music DRM free, the interoperability goals would be achieved an Apple would sell DRM free music.

One of the major record labels and some independent labels took him up on it immediately. It took two years for the rest to come onboard.

iMessage always supported SMS and now RCS. What more did you expect Apple to do?

by raw_anon_111113 hours ago|

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I think we would have been stuck with BlackBerry/Windows CE/SideKick type devices.

Even the then CEO of Google used BlackBerry devices years after Android came out as opposed to SJ who used the iPhone before it was released and after it was announced, saw that the screen was easily scratched and publicly did a press release that they were going to change it to use Gorilla Glass from plastic.