Task and Purpose:
The Army isn’t on the hunt for any old rifle for it’s Next Generation Squad Weapon program — it’s looking to spark a “revolution in small arms” on par with what the iPhone did to consumer electronics.
“Imagine that Steve Jobs and his engineers were trying to convert the iPod Touch to the first 3G iPhone,” said Army Col. Elliott Caggins, project manager for soldier weapons. “There were a thousand technologies they could have put in the first iPhone but they were looking to mature the platform before they could actually go onto the system.”
I get what they were going for but that’s a really weird way to describe it.
Not only is it weird, it’s also wrong. The iPhone came out of the iPad development process, not from the iPod process. And the first iPhone was hardly mature, missing 3G and copy/paste. People need to stick to similes in areas where they know stuff.
You are correct, but also note that he wasn’t even saying iPod to iPhone. He was saying iPod touch, which didn’t exist prior to the iPhone.
Also, one note, there was a group inside of Apple trying to make the iPhone through improvements and additions to the iPod OS. The other team won the day and I think we are all better for it.
Agreed, except that we might have got rotary dialling. That would have been cool.
They totally have it wrong. The iPhone is the Michel Jordan of personal devices. Of course, Michael Jordan is the Macintosh of basketball players. And the Mac is the Willie Mays of desktop computers…
Stay in your lane, Colonel.
Just as you are the H. L. Mencken of Loop commenters.