Well, before Apple, most phones were appliances with fixed software; there was no openness to speak of. That said, I wish they hadn't continued this trend and instead took inspiration from Windows Mobile.
But then came Java and Wap. You could, in theory, download a jar from a site and try to run it. God knows if it would run. But it wasn't a locked-down app store that bypassing would land you in hot water.
Before iphone mobile phones were running Java applets, which were sometimes even compatible across different phone manufacturers and users even could exchange them over infrared. In contrast first iPhone initially had no support for third party software, only web apps.
> Before iphone mobile phones were running Java applets, which were sometimes even compatible across different phone manufacturers and users even could exchange them over infrared.
"Sometimes" doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Nokia had an app store, and before you could see the available apps you have to first choose your phone: because even with-in Nokia's own product range there was so much variation in screens, keyboards, and general capabilities that they had to pre-apply a filter to show you what would actually work.
Excuse me while I get permission from sixteen levels of managers inside Cingular, U.S. Cellular, Cincinnati Bell, PrimeCo, and the fifty different regional carriers calling themselves "Cellular One" to offer my app on their networks.
I'm not claiming that iPhones are open to the extent that HN griefers want it to be, but you must have been freshly hatched in the years before the iPhone to think the ecosystem was open.
I say this as someone who developed some of the first mobile phone weather apps. (Before "app" was even a word.)
I may be guilty of the same thing you're mentioning (I'm in the USA), but my Nokia 6210 came with a carrier lock and I wasn't even able to visit websites via the WAP browser unless my carrier approved of them because WAP acted like a sort of mandatory vendor operated proxy that allowed them to see and filter everything the phone did. They would, for example, filter out websites about ringtones to try and force you to buy theirs for $0.99/piece.
My experience with a Nokia 6210 was very much the opposite of what you describe.
It was exactly like the GP described in the UK too. All-powerful carriers at a time when Apple was almost bankrupt, before Google was a verb and before Microsoft made phones that would crash just sitting waiting for a call.
> Apple basically spearheaded the war on general computation. Before them, phones used to be more or less open, Apple cracked down on that very quickly.
