Forecasting: One button. No more, no less.

✎ Published: 2010-07-16 10:30:30

In 2006, Paul Graham predicted that if Apple developed an iPod into a cell phone, Microsoft would face significant challenges. Simultaneously, Fake Steve Jobs envisioned an iPhone focused solely on simplicity, advocating for a design with minimal buttons. At that time, the iPhone was still an unknown concept, sparking fascinating speculation about its future design.

Forecasting: One button. No more, no less.

One of my friends recently linked to this impressive quote from Paul Graham of Y-Combinator fame, writing in 2006:

If Apple were to grow the iPod into a cell phone with a web browser, Microsoft would be in big trouble.
(footnote 14 of Chapter 5 (p. 228), Hackers and Painters)
It reminded me a, at least as I see it, equally impressive forecast by Fake Steve Jobs (née Dan Lyons). Back in 2006, in one of his parodical pieces, he contemplated what Steve Jobs might want that mythical iPhone to be like, and wrote:
So as soon as I got back to the Jobs Pod I sent out an email to the iPhone team: We’re back to square one. Starting over. Tabula rasa. Throwing out everything we’ve done so far and making a new phone that just makes phone calls. Small, white, gorgeous, as few buttons as possible. Our designers tell me we need at least 12 buttons so we can have all the numbers plus * and # symbols. I’m telling them to go back and do it over. I want one button. No more, no less.
Keep in mind, this was in 2006. Back then there was no iPhone, and nobody knew if Apple intended to ever build one. Even more, when people thought what this mythical unicorn could be like, they came up with this, this, this, or that.