All hardware discussions aside (and you do make some good points), the central advance of the iPhone was in the design of the software.
Everything is an app. Everything. The alarm clock is not a special case, Wifi is not a special case, e-mail is not a special case. All functionality has a 'home'. All functionality is 'owned' somewhere. All settings are handled in one location.
There are no scrollbars. No menus. No modes. No windowing. No pointer. No double-tap. The only fixed interface is Volume Up, Volume Down, Home, and Lock. Everything else is mutable, task-specific, and optimized for the space available.
This is the supernova idea that changed more than just the smartphone industry. Vast chunks of complexity and spaghetti UI were drained out of the smartphone experience. Everything else shitty about iOS 1 including the hacky update system and the crappy popups was cleaned up and refined in time, none representing a failing of the product's core design.
So in no way, shape, or form could the iPhone be described as 'horribly complicated'. Literally no access to the filesystem, no ability to add or remove software, no classical ports, no expandability, no alternate firmwares or carrier modifications, simple setup of "cloud" services, effortless PC sync... it was a masterwork of simplicity for the great bulk of users.
All hardware discussions aside (and you do make some good points), the central advance of the iPhone was in the design of the software.
Everything is an app. Everything. The alarm clock is not a special case, Wifi is not a special case, e-mail is not a special case. All functionality has a 'home'. All functionality is 'owned' somewhere. All settings are handled in one location.
There are no scrollbars. No menus. No modes. No windowing. No pointer. No double-tap. The only fixed interface is Volume Up, Volume Down, Home, and Lock. Everything else is mutable, task-specific, and optimized for the space available.
This is the supernova idea that changed more than just the smartphone industry. Vast chunks of complexity and spaghetti UI were drained out of the smartphone experience. Everything else shitty about iOS 1 including the hacky update system and the crappy popups was cleaned up and refined in time, none representing a failing of the product's core design.
So in no way, shape, or form could the iPhone be described as 'horribly complicated'. Literally no access to the filesystem, no ability to add or remove software, no classical ports, no expandability, no alternate firmwares or carrier modifications, simple setup of "cloud" services, effortless PC sync... it was a masterwork of simplicity for the great bulk of users.