The Ottawa Citizen’s James Bagnell, who knows Nortel as well as anyone, has a really interesting angle on the iPhone: could Nortel have invented it.
The reality is Nortel was working on a phone in the early-1990s called the Orbiter that featured a graphics display. The developers of the Orbiter’s user interface was Don Lindsay, who joined Apple in 1994. His team created the OS X operating system. Later, the team he built crated the UI for the iPhone.
As the writer suggests it is far-fetched. Interesting nonetheless.
Interesting though Nortel did come up with the concept of “Visual voicemail” that Apple was selling in their callpilot product. I wonder if any ex-Nortel people that worked on that product now work at Apple
Sovietologist
Gimme a break! There are lots of things that Nortel has had a hand in inventing or great ideas that they have worked on but have repeatedly missed the opportunity to commercialize (eg click to call, voip clients, etc). But the company is too much of a dinosaur and too far removed from end users to even come close to creating something like Jobs & co are capable of…
newsmaker
hmmm,
well it wud make no difference if nortel wud have invented it. First of all, it was much before the need when the development was planned. Secondly and the most important one, Nortel guys are in no match with Apple Inc in terms of creating a hype about the product.
After all, one needs to have good marketing strategies apart from good products.
Could Nortel Have Invented the iPhone?
The Ottawa Citizen’s James Bagnell, who knows Nortel as well as anyone, has a really interesting angle on the iPhone: could Nortel have invented it.
The reality is Nortel was working on a phone in the early-1990s called the Orbiter that featured a graphics display. The developers of the Orbiter’s user interface was Don Lindsay, who joined Apple in 1994. His team created the OS X operating system. Later, the team he built crated the UI for the iPhone.