There was quite a bit of GUI competition that predated Mac 1. And some of them were pretty kick butt (DESQView being one of my all time favorites). Add to that the fact that the Mac OS really blew until OSX, and there’s plenty of competition doing stuff well before Apple got around to doing it well.
I’m arguing that Symbian phones were useful. That was your argument that nobody did anything useful in these markets before Apple. Oh and Symbian had a touchscreen in 2000 so the idea that Apple was first to put a touchscreen on a smartphone is wrong.
Browsing the internet on a phone is smart enough. This smart/ feature thing is a distinction without a difference. At best it’s low end high end. If it’s a phone doing a heck of a lot more than making phone calls it’s a smartphone. Maybe not a high end smartphone, but it’s still smart.
There’s plenty of non-blackberries with keyboards.
No that’s not creating a market, that’s GROWTH in a market. The market already existed. There were smartphones before the iPhone, there were touchscreen smartphones before the iPhone, the market existed BEFORE the iPhone. It was smaller, but that’s as much about all the other companies as it is about Apple.
Why don't you get some knowledge before you spout off? DESQview was released in JULY of 1985, one and a half YEARS after Apple released the Macintosh GUI... nor was it a full GUI.
Apple put a MULTI touch screen on a phone... not a touch screen... and phones prior to the Apple used STYLUS to interface... that could get lost. You make it dang obvious you really don't know what you are talking about...