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benj111today at 7:48 AM1 replyview on HN

What 'real' web are you going to get on a 1.5in phone screen?

What real web are you going to get when there's no 3g, much less a reliable signal on a lot of places.

Wap worked well for actually relaying information.


Replies

JimDabelltoday at 8:04 AM

The original iPhone had a 3.5” screen, Wi-Fi, and EDGE. The iPhone 3G came a year later, with, shockingly, 3G. So yeah, that web browser that actually worked did actually work. Sure, it was slow compared with today’s speeds, but giving people what they want slowly matters far more than giving people what they don’t want marginally faster. Remember most people were on dial-up at home back in those days so the web was hardly fast on desktop either.

WAP might’ve been able to convey information, but so could Lynx in an 80×24 terminal – people want more than that. WAP sites were never popular (aside from some Japanese platform, IIRC) and I don’t think the average web developer had even heard of WAP or WML at the height of their popularity.

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