He was a great designer with low business acumen (without Jobs).
His realm at Apple began crumbling when he executed a flawed strategy for the Apple watch launch as a fashion item, instead of a technology product geared toward health (Fitbit was 1st). It costed Apple 25M, and seemed like buying advertising from influencers (similar to 23andme launch).
Not really. There was a way of slab typed smart phones with capacitance touch screen windows mobile devices and they were more capable than the iPhone with on board GPS, etc. but they didn’t have an integrated App Store, which was the key to customer retention. The first iPhones didn’t have GPS and so the map app wasn’t quiet as capable as the other high end smart phones in the market as it couldn’t do directions properly. It had the best web browser, though.
Every other model of high end smart phones quickly adopted the App Store model since it was such an obviously thing to install application directly to the device, but up until it was a major missing feature. All phones at the time required a computer tethered to do the purchase and installation.
With the App Store the age of phones needing full general purpose computers was coming to an end. It was a whole cultural shift in software
Later they started the iCloud sync so backups could be done ‘in the field’ as well.
It was inevitable in the sense the hardware was already available on the wholesale market. People tend to lionize these companies like they forged the phone out of the living earth themselves. Really they just contract with factories that assemble products out of components available on the wholesale market.
Sexy OS? You can argue that came mostly from within since that is how that software was developed, in house. But the hardware stack they ordered and had assembled for you? I’m not so sure.
