Stationary deskphones which have an office-work computer in them, whose purpose is to act as communications and officework application-specific computers, while actual tower-case computers and laptops are used purely for number crunching, multimedia, software development, and gaming?
When I was in a Cisco class, when I saw that the name of the OS was called IOS I immediately thought of Apple's iOS, so I was curious how Cisco was able to call it that. Well, now I know. How ironic.
I suspect the reason that Cisco can call their OS "IOS" is because Apple don't think there is any point in contesting it, the two aren't likely to be confused for each other... Not to mention that tiny snag that the Cisco Internetworking Operating System is quite a bit older than Apple IOS, so if the courts found that the two were close enough that there might be a conflict in having them both known as IOS, it would probably be Apple that would have to give in. In fact, to us today the first Apple iPhone is still younger than Cisco IOS was back in 2007 when that phone launched.
I had some friends get in a Pyramid Scheme with these types of phones promoting them as the future right around 2000. You can guess how well that worked out. lol
I wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude for the amazing content that you have been producing over the past two years. Your videos are incredibly informative and educational, allowing people like myself to gain a better understanding of the nuances of the general computer world. I especially appreciate the way you cover the strange and sometimes downright bizarre scams that occur in the tech industry. It's great to see that you take the time to educate your viewers and the general audience about the dangers of these scams, and how to avoid falling victim to them. Your dedication to providing accurate and insightful information to your viewers is truly admirable, and I can't thank you enough for the time and effort you put into each and every one of your videos. I wish you all the best, and hope that you continue to produce such amazing content in the future. Thank you again for everything you do.
There's a company in Japan called AIPHONE which makes pretty decent door phones and intercoms, but because AIPHONE and iPhone are spelled very similarly in Japanese Apple still has to license the name from them up to this day
I knew that Apple didn’t actually have the iOS and iPhone name, but I’ve never seen the device to actually start the “iPhone” name. Unfortunate that the internet side of things doesn’t work like back in the day, finding the server side software that ran it is probably next to impossible. Great video!
getting to do simple email it show sample lay out sample, so that would provide, enough, info to start going something working, would still need a lot tweaking , but that a start, and WWW side of things well if they where be loss creative, that's going to be around the samp protocols, so that should just fall in to place, with more tweaking how a bout a more radical, approach, crack open the case, and trace, data line from the phone jack, the main board, and see where it star to change from the analogue, to the digital, pach in a lot more modern setup there? with an ethernet/Wi-Fi jack on it? a comparable part/ box may in the part bin already
Reminds me of the Minitel terminals from France and the Prestel terminals from the UK - both predated consumer internet access. They were at their height of popularity in the mid/late 80s.
Minitel even lived well into the internet age, only being retired in 2012😲That's an amazing lifespan for a system that was originally intended as an electronic phone directory to replace paper phone books😄
Theres shades of that dreadful Amstrad emailer thing as well. It used Amstrads own (very expensive) isp and everything you did on it cost money. It would run up huge bills by autodialing multiple times a day to retrieve email. Suffice to say it failed pretty quickly and nowadays you cant even get the landline bit to work as it needs to talk to a long dead Amstrad server to activate every time the power is cut to it. I remember using a tv with a built in prestel terminal here in the UK. It used the viewdata protocol and resembled 2 way teletext iirc. it was horrendously expensive to use regularly.
I wonder if someone would be able to reverse engineer the client to create a simulated server. Then we could see what the experience would've been like! Although the difficulties would include that a) the servers have been down for awhile b) It's a niche product c) It would require a lot of work.
Where i live, POTS lines are still used (although not for much longer, everyone is being gradually moved over to what they call “digital voice”) And i still find it funny that our internet connection literally travels along a telephone line (it used to be all the way from the exchange, but we have since upgraded to an FTTC connection (and as part of the upgrade, we were moved to digital voice), so the connection now only uses the telephone line between the house and the street cabinet, and yes, even before we upgraded, we could use the landline and the internet at the same time (we had to have filters connected to every telephone socket though, otherwise the landline phones could have interfered with the connection)) And some ISPs here are putting stickers over the telephone port on the router indicating that the port should only be used by digital voice customers
@@stepheneyles2198 in Malaysia PSTN is scheduled to switch off as the same time as the UK, so by then every household is expected to upgrade to FTTC for high rises or FTTH for landed houses
It shows that a lot of work has gone into this video!! Thanks man, was a really cool video about something I never even thought I'd care enough about to watch (and enjoy) for 20 minutes.
I actually remember seeing these in an office building. In the early 2000's, I worked for the phone company, and I had the opportunity to install a DSL line in a small office. The receptionist asked me to install/hook up/plug in their phone "system". When she pointed to a few milk crates in the corner, with a rat's nest of wires and a few phones, I laughed inside, because I knew that this company was doomed from the beginning. They were too cheap to spring for an actual phone system. So I got the dial tone to the desks and plugged in their phones. Apparently this was her first day, because she asked me to not only set up the phones, but also teach her how to use all of the features on this. I had no idea, until I watched this video, that they were using the 2nd gen, InfoGear set up. I rummaged through the milk crates and could not find any user manual, so I looked at the screen for a few minutes, pushed the buttons to see what they did and faked the funk while I told the young lady how to use her new toy and "Enjoy."
I worked for Big Planet doing tech support for these iPhones back around 2000. The stories I can tell about the customers, the company, and the salesmen of these phones is just crazy. It was an OK college student job, but pretty stressful at times. As a job perk we got a lot of free cosmetic products every month, so I guess there was that.
The UI looks very... 90s Linux-y. The fonts, cursor shapes etc. look very much like old versions of KDE or GNOME. This might be a coincidence (just taking free assets from a free OS) but... I'd still say there's a good chance that there's something if not Linux-y, then at least Unix-y inside. The timing feels a bit off, it's a couple of years before Linux took over the world (of small systems), but stuff like uCLinux was also starting around that time, so it isn't inconceivable. Taking a look inside the firmware would definitely be interesting, if possible. Maybe even hacking this thing back online isn't entirely out of question.
20:12 - That very Cisco IP phone on the left was marketed under the iPhone brand name before the deal was worked out with Apple. It wasn't an "internet appliance", just an IP phone with some advanced (for the time) dialing features. In fact, I still had mine at work until about a year ago. Hadn't really used it much for years, so it was relatively easy to give up.
I love the whole phone phreaker vibe of this video. (By the way, we at Cisco bought the trademark for the iPhone name not because we had a marketable product but because we knew Apple would want the name.)
That's cool. One thing you hardly see anymore are innovations in landline telephones. I know landlines aren't ubiquitous anymore, but I still have one. I can't get rid of it because I have the same phone number my grandparents got in the 1960s, and my family is the ONLY family to have that number, so.... I kinda have to keep it LOL. Besides. I'm 42, and hearing the phones ring throughout the house when a call comes in, be it the real bells or the digital beeps on my cordless, fills me with a warm sense of nostalgia.
Interested to see this one, I still use one of these on my desk at home (Cidco iPhone), just wish I could still use the internet stuff on it, but its still a great phone :)
@@ComputerClan Yup sure do, the first gen white one (well now a lil yellow thanks to the sun). There are no ISP's here in New Zealand providing the special service required anymore, so it just gets used as a simple desk phone, there must have been a different version here though, mine doesn't have a answering machine, just a link to voice mail. Thanks for the video, that was really interesting! :)
Impressive you got 31.2 connection through VoIP on your Mac! I have an external USRobotics V.everything (I think) that I use on my retro rigs when I want to do dialup. I've managed to get a stable 9600 bps connection through Vonage, but I had to get one of the older Vonage gateways that they used in the 2000s... the nicer ones that had the backlit LCD display and menu buttons. The newer ones I've used appear to be junk.
He appears to be using voice service offered through his cable company as he's showing a DOCSIS modem with a voice port, I know Spectrum and Comcast specifically have theirs set up to facilitate dialup connections for business customers using old credit card terminals and fax machines
Gotta say, it's really great to see the lengths you went to to try and actually connect these to the internet. A lot of old tech reviewers would just say something like "it's old and doesn't work anymore" and leave it at that.
Also in Mexico we had a conflict because a telecommunication company has the name iFone making impossible to register iPhone in the same category. Apple even tried to sued but was rejected since their register is on electronics not telecommunications.
One of the POTS lines at my house is rewired to go into my Xfinity router so I can have a phone going over VoIP in different rooms. I remember at my old house we had internet over a POTS line and it was SLOW, like 3 mbps slow. It was basically “wireless dial-up internet” because it was slow and it went through a phone line. At this house, I thankfully have 1 gigabit speeds.
I actually worked tech support for Big Planet back when these launched, and later on in site operations where we had to keep the ServerGear systems running, among other things. Nu Skin (a pyramid sch....er multi-level marketing company) actually created Big Planet as a way to try and jump on the dial-up ISP train, though the fact that they did it in the late 90s meant they were a bit late to the game. We also sold the Aplio/Phone, which was basically a dial-up VoiP appliance that only connected to other Aplio devices, and didn't share your connection. Supporting both of these was a nightmare. Getting a Windows 3.1 machine on the internet was easier. They actually gave us the older Cidco-branded iPhones (we called it the Mercury iPhone at that point) as Christmas gifts the year the iPhone 2050 (infoGear) came out, mostly because no one wanted the older, slower, single line model. Fun fact, customers HATED the speakerphone on the 2050, because they tried to implement a full-duplex speakerphone, but the half-duplex on the older hardware was a lot more reliable. There was talk about a color version of the 2050 (everyone called it the Rainbow iPhone, which I thought was stupid), and infoGear even demoed an early prototype, but well....Cisco killed that off when they bought the company.
Damn this thing was really freaking cool. Just the phone book and call log would have been so awesome in the 90s!!!! And the screen looks surprisingly good
Something similar happened in Brazil. Gradiente is a company that filed to trademark the name "iPhone" in Brazil in the early 2000s. The Brazilian agency used to take around ten years to publish a trademark request. So, around 2007, a problem suddenly emerged in our country. It was beneficial because now, a trademark request takes around 2 years to be published.
In Australia, the InfoGear iPhone was sold under the Ericsson brand. It too didn’t last long. Having only seen one unit that was working at the time, at the home of an Ericsson executive!
(NOTE: This comment was posted prior to the premiere.) Trailers in RUclips Premieres...that's a new thing on RUclips now... Interesting to see this happen!
I still have a Cidco iPhone, recently came across it going through boxes. It was quite the futuristic device back then. I still want my wall-mounted video phone like in the 80s/90s movies 😛
I have one of the white ones sitting in a closet. I also have pretty much all of the resources to try connecting it to something, including access to multiple unused analog phone lines at work. Dang it. I didn't need another side quest 😂
One of those was my introduction to email and web browsing. A friend several years later tracked down an Ericsson version that was better, it had more connections to peripherals.
Hope you enjoyed this video that I helped research! Here are five other interesting facts about the InfoGear iPhone: 1. The CIDCO iPhone was first unveiled to the public at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show (CES) back in 1997. You can see it in action here: ruclips.net/video/jV2O9_xNsX8/видео.html 2. The CIDCO/InfoGear iPhone could only support basic HTML, so Java and/or Flash was incompatible. 3. The collapse of Cisco's stock following the InfoGear acquisition could very well be related to the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s, which resulted in tons of internet companies either going bankrupt or hanging on by a thread. (There was one particular online gaming service that was victim of this, and I plan on covering it in-depth on my RUclips channel in the future... *wink*) 4. CIDCO (Caller ID Company) was eventually purchased and folded into EarthLink on December 3rd, 2001. 5. Before the Cisco takeover, InfoGear had plans to add features to future generations of iPhones, including a color touchscreen, VoIP support, and even video conferencing.
The fourth generation had a metal band outlining the handset which caused the device to drop signal whenever you touched it. The CEO said you were just holding your phone wrong, but the company still sent rubber bumpers to everyone anyway. The sixth gen would bend when you put it in your pocket. (You needed very large pockets.) Every generation of this would update its firmware after a while to significantly slow the device down so that you would go out and buy the latest version even though that model did not differ much from the previous generation.
I have a 6+ and it still runs reasonably fast. It got a security update last month. If your phone is running slow it is because the battery is no longer able to output sufficient voltage to run the CPU at full speed. Replacing it will improve performance a lot. Some websites won't work, like the one I wrote recently using the vue3 framework, and the latest versions of some Apps won't install, but it is still a reasonably usable phone.
@@katrinabryce I am assuming you are talking about the Apple iPhone. I upgraded a friend's Apple iPhone 3 many years ago. It ran so slowly afterwards that it was unusable. He had to go out and buy a new iPhone 4. Crap. Apple eventually gave in and admitted they slowed down phones because they wanted to preserve battery life (according to them). However, Apple never told anyone that until they got caught. And that happened a few generations after my friend's iPhone 3 got crippled by a firmware update. But that was just one of the problems I mentioned.
I had one of those house phones, it didn't have a keyboard or touchscreen or any ring options but it had 'Callmall' which was weather and horoscopes and some financial services on the phone. They cost hundreds of dollars and there was a higher monthly fee for them to work so no wonder they didn't catch on. These phones look like they were manufactured by the same company.
Somewhere there's a middle-of-nowhere insurance company with one of these still on a front desk, with a lady named "Dot" or "Vicky" who won't let them get rid of it.
Fun fact, there's dedicated hardware -- it's called a TELEPHONE LINE SIMULATOR so you kind of can't screw it up -- so that you don't have to do the whole thing with Pis or that insane sponsor-tie-in that was really just going around your own A-fifty-five to get to your elbow ;) Sure, they're a bit costly on the ol' eBay, but since you're only gonna get Pis from scalpers in the same place, with the same sort of inflated sense of both ego and pricing, well... six of one, half a dozen of the other. Funny how that works. Also, I have to say, I'm reminded by that crazy Linode-operated scheme of the XKCD that's like, "If they tell you it's fixed, never ask how they did it."
When I used the Qwest/USWest Home Receptionist it had to dial into a special service code to activate itself. This might also be part of the problem. In order for it to even connect to the server and call web data in any way it has to get a fun mishmash of archaic data pulses over phone from the 90s. SOME servers to program these phones still do exist and finish the activation handshake thanks to the community... I found one phone company that even still ran one a few years back. Yay for 90s telephone "feature phones" because that really is what these were the precursor to.
Additional reference note; I still have one... somewehre... might be interesting to pull it out of the dumpsterfire that is my storage and test it... IF I can find the functioning activations erver.
I have a voice plan through my modem. My shitty old fax machine works perfectly through it, even though my ISP has told me repeatedly that it won't work. Yet it sends snd receives just fine. I use it for testing the fax machines of local businesses.
Horrifyingly, I was in charge of a department developing software for PABXs and Terminals (phones) during this era..... there were more attempts at video phones than you could possibly imagine in the industry around the 1990s - but the technology and performance simply weren't there to support them. AND, although VoIP is ubiquitous these days its birth was both painful and ugly for those of us responsible for third and fourth tier support of these new products..... we got sued by so many customers whose networks simply didn't support QoS :) Ahhh, happy days.
LMAO, I had the same issue trying to get an old dial-up device working. It took me about an hour with a USB modem, my Windows PC, some virtual serial port software and a bit of coding to get it working. I think you need to upgrade your tech team Ken, I mean I worked it out and I work in a restaurant for god's sake.
@computerclan I think the best feature of this phone is that it didn’t have instagram and Facebook (oh boy do I miss the 90s). Anyway, definitely ketch the Krazy and pass it on. You are awesome
if somones fax machine isnt working with a modern voice landline, its most likely one of 2 things. their fax machine is ground start (and the voice provider needs to program it a little differently for what breaks the dialtone) or their fax machine is waiting for some specific/special "custom ringing" tone. both of these issues can be solved by getting your voice provider to just, put those on the line. you just need to know what your fax machine requires.
The ridiculous thing is every company that put a lower case “i” before a product name was imitating the iMac, iPod, etc. Remember when Compac had the iPaq? Rhymes with iMac? Seriously? Lol
Was it really that difficult to connect using dial-in modems? For some reason, time helps us forget the difficulties we used to have! I remember being sooo excited when I could download stuff from afar, all those years ago!!
No it wasn't... Just need to plug your computer modem on the phone line wall socket and do some easy configurations in W95 to tell your system the connection details (that was on a paper given by your service provider). At least this is how it was when I went online the first time in 96, 56K was sure slow compare to today but it was faster than the 9.6K external system we used at my college at the same time.
If you want to make a modem, data, call or a fax call through your own voip system you have to make sure the protocol is set to a protocol that has no compression. If you were trying to use your Internet service providers, voip service you need to notify them that you want to have a fax machine on the line and that you need them to change the protocol to a no compression protocol
I faintly recall hearing about something similar to this product on a TV special for the CES, in the early 2000s, on TechTV back in the day shame it didn't do very well
Back in around 1995-96 there was a windows software program called from Vocaltec called Internet Phone commonly referred to as Iphone which was an early VOIP.
Occams razor - the answer with the fewest assumptions is usually the correct one. Occam was very clear this was not the "simplest answer" necessarily. Just the one the required you to make the fewest unfounded assumptions. It's a subtle difference but it is a difference
There was another company with the rights for the name iPhone in Brazil! They even launched a phone named iPhone in Brazil years after the Apple iPhone!
Yeah… sorry it took so long. I was working on a scam-buster which needed more time, so I switched to this one and then THIS ended up being WAY more complicated than I planned, haha. The scam-buster should be out on April 6 if all goes as planned!
Imagine an alternate universe full of CIDCO and InfoGear iPhones.
We live in a society full of iPhones
@@TheRedYTPer Except they are made by Apple and they are slates.
A Universe Of Dat Is Here But In 4D We In 3D
Stationary deskphones which have an office-work computer in them, whose purpose is to act as communications and officework application-specific computers, while actual tower-case computers and laptops are used purely for number crunching, multimedia, software development, and gaming?
Soon ar and vr be our only thing we can use
When I was in a Cisco class, when I saw that the name of the OS was called IOS I immediately thought of Apple's iOS, so I was curious how Cisco was able to call it that. Well, now I know. How ironic.
iirc the Wii's software is also called IOS
(im not sure if it was the wii, wii u, or 3ds, but one of the nintendo consoles from that era)
@@laoo Wii
I suspect the reason that Cisco can call their OS "IOS" is because Apple don't think there is any point in contesting it, the two aren't likely to be confused for each other...
Not to mention that tiny snag that the Cisco Internetworking Operating System is quite a bit older than Apple IOS, so if the courts found that the two were close enough that there might be a conflict in having them both known as IOS, it would probably be Apple that would have to give in.
In fact, to us today the first Apple iPhone is still younger than Cisco IOS was back in 2007 when that phone launched.
@@Ts6451 cisco own's the "IOS" name
@@laoo its the wii, wii's IOS meant for "Internal Operating System"
We used Linksys SPA phones at work and I remember wanting a WIP330 so bad. Then I got one and it was the most useless brick I ever owned. 😂
I had some friends get in a Pyramid Scheme with these types of phones promoting them as the future right around 2000. You can guess how well that worked out. lol
funny how the iPhone did end up becoming the future, just not those iPhones lol.
I thought this stunk of an MLM! Nu Skin is a pyramid scheme too.
Curious… do you recall if they were recruited by Big Planet? I only ask because Big Planet uses MLM, and so does their parent company. 🤔
@@ComputerClan Inquiring viewers would like to know.
Trillion dollar company?
8:14 in Hungary, we actually call the Wi-Fi as "Wiffy". (That's just a fun fact 😄)
Also in some videos read back by TTS the TTS voice reads it back as "wiffy" too. (I watch my fair share of those, even if some of them are years old).
@@PinkAgaricus and Indonesians call it Wiffy as well 😂
bro called Sonic Mario💀💀💀💀
bojler eladó
I wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude for the amazing content that you have been producing over the past two years. Your videos are incredibly informative and educational, allowing people like myself to gain a better understanding of the nuances of the general computer world.
I especially appreciate the way you cover the strange and sometimes downright bizarre scams that occur in the tech industry. It's great to see that you take the time to educate your viewers and the general audience about the dangers of these scams, and how to avoid falling victim to them.
Your dedication to providing accurate and insightful information to your viewers is truly admirable, and I can't thank you enough for the time and effort you put into each and every one of your videos.
I wish you all the best, and hope that you continue to produce such amazing content in the future. Thank you again for everything you do.
Thank you 😇 I really appreciate it.
WTF now RUclips videos have trailers? 🤯
Pretty cool, eh?
@@ComputerClan better than just a thumbnail, for sure.
Only premiere videos do.
It's been there for a while though
@theawesomesonic Yeah I have been using them for over a year when they came out In beta
The senior wig and glasses are still a classic, love it.
Thanks : D Maybe one day we'll see Martha…
@@ComputerClan Why'd you say that name?!
@@VidweII Because "Boomer Ken" always says "MARTHA!!!!!!!!!!!!".
@@ThatOneWindowsFan Is this when Batman, Superman and Ken all fight for their respective Marthas?
@@VidweII yeah
Damn, i knew Apple had issues trying to coin the iPhone, but I didn't expect the reason as to why to be so interesting!
There's a company in Japan called AIPHONE which makes pretty decent door phones and intercoms, but because AIPHONE and iPhone are spelled very similarly in Japanese Apple still has to license the name from them up to this day
I always knew the iPhone wouldn't take off.
I knew that Apple didn’t actually have the iOS and iPhone name, but I’ve never seen the device to actually start the “iPhone” name. Unfortunate that the internet side of things doesn’t work like back in the day, finding the server side software that ran it is probably next to impossible. Great video!
getting to do simple email it show sample lay out sample, so that would provide, enough, info to start going something working, would still need a lot tweaking , but that a start, and WWW side of things well if they where be loss creative, that's going to be around the samp protocols, so that should just fall in to place, with more tweaking how a bout a more radical, approach, crack open the case, and trace, data line from the phone jack, the main board, and see where it star to change from the analogue, to the digital, pach in a lot more modern setup there? with an ethernet/Wi-Fi jack on it? a comparable part/ box may in the part bin already
Reminds me of the Minitel terminals from France and the Prestel terminals from the UK - both predated consumer internet access. They were at their height of popularity in the mid/late 80s.
Minitel even lived well into the internet age, only being retired in 2012😲That's an amazing lifespan for a system that was originally intended as an electronic phone directory to replace paper phone books😄
Theres shades of that dreadful Amstrad emailer thing as well. It used Amstrads own (very expensive) isp and everything you did on it cost money. It would run up huge bills by autodialing multiple times a day to retrieve email. Suffice to say it failed pretty quickly and nowadays you cant even get the landline bit to work as it needs to talk to a long dead Amstrad server to activate every time the power is cut to it.
I remember using a tv with a built in prestel terminal here in the UK. It used the viewdata protocol and resembled 2 way teletext iirc. it was horrendously expensive to use regularly.
I wonder if someone would be able to reverse engineer the client to create a simulated server. Then we could see what the experience would've been like! Although the difficulties would include that a) the servers have been down for awhile b) It's a niche product c) It would require a lot of work.
potentialy you could mod the phone's OS to point to a different RDP adress ? is it linux based? Unix BASED?
@@techiewiskers I don't think it will be actually RDP, just something that performs a similar function.
Where i live, POTS lines are still used (although not for much longer, everyone is being gradually moved over to what they call “digital voice”)
And i still find it funny that our internet connection literally travels along a telephone line (it used to be all the way from the exchange, but we have since upgraded to an FTTC connection (and as part of the upgrade, we were moved to digital voice), so the connection now only uses the telephone line between the house and the street cabinet, and yes, even before we upgraded, we could use the landline and the internet at the same time (we had to have filters connected to every telephone socket though, otherwise the landline phones could have interfered with the connection))
And some ISPs here are putting stickers over the telephone port on the router indicating that the port should only be used by digital voice customers
Sounds like you're in the UK!! PSTN (POTS) switch-off is 2025 AFAIK...
POTS are the lines, the Internet connection made on the lines are called a DSL connection
@@stepheneyles2198 in Malaysia PSTN is scheduled to switch off as the same time as the UK, so by then every household is expected to upgrade to FTTC for high rises or FTTH for landed houses
It shows that a lot of work has gone into this video!!
Thanks man, was a really cool video about something I never even thought I'd care enough about to watch (and enjoy) for 20 minutes.
I actually remember seeing these in an office building. In the early 2000's, I worked for the phone company, and I had the opportunity to install a DSL line in a small office. The receptionist asked me to install/hook up/plug in their phone "system". When she pointed to a few milk crates in the corner, with a rat's nest of wires and a few phones, I laughed inside, because I knew that this company was doomed from the beginning. They were too cheap to spring for an actual phone system.
So I got the dial tone to the desks and plugged in their phones. Apparently this was her first day, because she asked me to not only set up the phones, but also teach her how to use all of the features on this. I had no idea, until I watched this video, that they were using the 2nd gen, InfoGear set up. I rummaged through the milk crates and could not find any user manual, so I looked at the screen for a few minutes, pushed the buttons to see what they did and faked the funk while I told the young lady how to use her new toy and "Enjoy."
I worked for Big Planet doing tech support for these iPhones back around 2000. The stories I can tell about the customers, the company, and the salesmen of these phones is just crazy. It was an OK college student job, but pretty stressful at times. As a job perk we got a lot of free cosmetic products every month, so I guess there was that.
Internet appliances are back in style: only now they're called "smart" devices, including literal home appliances like washers and refrigerators😄
Very interesting! I knew about the Cisco/Apple history, but not the other companies that predated Cisco's VoIP phones
Hey look! It's the real iPhone, not that counterfeit one that Apple makes!
The UI looks very... 90s Linux-y. The fonts, cursor shapes etc. look very much like old versions of KDE or GNOME. This might be a coincidence (just taking free assets from a free OS) but... I'd still say there's a good chance that there's something if not Linux-y, then at least Unix-y inside. The timing feels a bit off, it's a couple of years before Linux took over the world (of small systems), but stuff like uCLinux was also starting around that time, so it isn't inconceivable. Taking a look inside the firmware would definitely be interesting, if possible. Maybe even hacking this thing back online isn't entirely out of question.
Probably it was using some embedded OS like QNX.
20:12 - That very Cisco IP phone on the left was marketed under the iPhone brand name before the deal was worked out with Apple. It wasn't an "internet appliance", just an IP phone with some advanced (for the time) dialing features. In fact, I still had mine at work until about a year ago. Hadn't really used it much for years, so it was relatively easy to give up.
I love the whole phone phreaker vibe of this video.
(By the way, we at Cisco bought the trademark for the iPhone name not because we had a marketable product but because we knew Apple would want the name.)
That's cool. One thing you hardly see anymore are innovations in landline telephones. I know landlines aren't ubiquitous anymore, but I still have one. I can't get rid of it because I have the same phone number my grandparents got in the 1960s, and my family is the ONLY family to have that number, so.... I kinda have to keep it LOL. Besides. I'm 42, and hearing the phones ring throughout the house when a call comes in, be it the real bells or the digital beeps on my cordless, fills me with a warm sense of nostalgia.
Nowadays (at least in the US) you can usually port phone numbers to other service providers if you ever want to.
Interested to see this one, I still use one of these on my desk at home (Cidco iPhone), just wish I could still use the internet stuff on it, but its still a great phone :)
Do you really? : o
@@ComputerClan Yup sure do, the first gen white one (well now a lil yellow thanks to the sun). There are no ISP's here in New Zealand providing the special service required anymore, so it just gets used as a simple desk phone, there must have been a different version here though, mine doesn't have a answering machine, just a link to voice mail. Thanks for the video, that was really interesting! :)
Impressive you got 31.2 connection through VoIP on your Mac! I have an external USRobotics V.everything (I think) that I use on my retro rigs when I want to do dialup. I've managed to get a stable 9600 bps connection through Vonage, but I had to get one of the older Vonage gateways that they used in the 2000s... the nicer ones that had the backlit LCD display and menu buttons. The newer ones I've used appear to be junk.
He appears to be using voice service offered through his cable company as he's showing a DOCSIS modem with a voice port, I know Spectrum and Comcast specifically have theirs set up to facilitate dialup connections for business customers using old credit card terminals and fax machines
"That looks like Cisco's IP Phone"
Glad that did got covered during video.
: )
My work switched my old desk phone to a Cisco 8841 around 2 years ago. I definitely see the lineage here.
Gotta say, it's really great to see the lengths you went to to try and actually connect these to the internet. A lot of old tech reviewers would just say something like "it's old and doesn't work anymore" and leave it at that.
Thanks! Yeah, I didn't wanna half-ass this. 😅
Just wanted to share, that I love your enthusiasm. Brings me back to my younger self tinkering with computers. 😅
I had one at work and nobody believes me that this was a thing- ty for this.
LOL the best part of this video is the Extended Car Warranty Call at the end! LOVED IT!
Also in Mexico we had a conflict because a telecommunication company has the name iFone making impossible to register iPhone in the same category. Apple even tried to sued but was rejected since their register is on electronics not telecommunications.
Reminds me of the Amstrad emailer thing we had in the UK
One of the POTS lines at my house is rewired to go into my Xfinity router so I can have a phone going over VoIP in different rooms.
I remember at my old house we had internet over a POTS line and it was SLOW, like 3 mbps slow. It was basically “wireless dial-up internet” because it was slow and it went through a phone line.
At this house, I thankfully have 1 gigabit speeds.
I actually worked tech support for Big Planet back when these launched, and later on in site operations where we had to keep the ServerGear systems running, among other things. Nu Skin (a pyramid sch....er multi-level marketing company) actually created Big Planet as a way to try and jump on the dial-up ISP train, though the fact that they did it in the late 90s meant they were a bit late to the game. We also sold the Aplio/Phone, which was basically a dial-up VoiP appliance that only connected to other Aplio devices, and didn't share your connection. Supporting both of these was a nightmare. Getting a Windows 3.1 machine on the internet was easier.
They actually gave us the older Cidco-branded iPhones (we called it the Mercury iPhone at that point) as Christmas gifts the year the iPhone 2050 (infoGear) came out, mostly because no one wanted the older, slower, single line model. Fun fact, customers HATED the speakerphone on the 2050, because they tried to implement a full-duplex speakerphone, but the half-duplex on the older hardware was a lot more reliable. There was talk about a color version of the 2050 (everyone called it the Rainbow iPhone, which I thought was stupid), and infoGear even demoed an early prototype, but well....Cisco killed that off when they bought the company.
Damn this thing was really freaking cool. Just the phone book and call log would have been so awesome in the 90s!!!! And the screen looks surprisingly good
Something similar happened in Brazil. Gradiente is a company that filed to trademark the name "iPhone" in Brazil in the early 2000s. The Brazilian agency used to take around ten years to publish a trademark request. So, around 2007, a problem suddenly emerged in our country. It was beneficial because now, a trademark request takes around 2 years to be published.
OK, this was an amazing episode, i absolutely enjoyed it. Thank you so very much.
Great video. The 90s had a few of these products that were trying to sell the Internet to people who were afraid of computers.
wish i was there
(that ending scene was absolutely perfect)
Thanks : D
In Australia, the InfoGear iPhone was sold under the Ericsson brand. It too didn’t last long. Having only seen one unit that was working at the time, at the home of an Ericsson executive!
the lanmine bit legit made me laugh
This is one of your best videos so far, love the humor!
The “Hey it’s krazy ken leave a message after the beepity boop” got me 💀💀
Good : D
(NOTE: This comment was posted prior to the premiere.)
Trailers in RUclips Premieres...that's a new thing on RUclips now...
Interesting to see this happen!
Wait it for premieres user im not Ohhhh the try new features
Lol i was shocked when I saw a video like😦😯😮
@8:42 - As a former Mindspring tech support rep, this line gets me in the feels.
I like the Mike Ro(we)Soft reference
I still have a Cidco iPhone, recently came across it going through boxes. It was quite the futuristic device back then. I still want my wall-mounted video phone like in the 80s/90s movies 😛
I have one of the white ones sitting in a closet. I also have pretty much all of the resources to try connecting it to something, including access to multiple unused analog phone lines at work. Dang it. I didn't need another side quest 😂
Amazing! : D
One of those was my introduction to email and web browsing. A friend several years later tracked down an Ericsson version that was better, it had more connections to peripherals.
I lost it at "Shut up, Mario!" :D
Have you tried a modem init string? Is there a place to input an init string in the iPhone device? Maybe not... ?? Interesting video!
Hope you enjoyed this video that I helped research! Here are five other interesting facts about the InfoGear iPhone:
1. The CIDCO iPhone was first unveiled to the public at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show (CES) back in 1997. You can see it in action here: ruclips.net/video/jV2O9_xNsX8/видео.html
2. The CIDCO/InfoGear iPhone could only support basic HTML, so Java and/or Flash was incompatible.
3. The collapse of Cisco's stock following the InfoGear acquisition could very well be related to the dot-com bubble burst in the early 2000s, which resulted in tons of internet companies either going bankrupt or hanging on by a thread. (There was one particular online gaming service that was victim of this, and I plan on covering it in-depth on my RUclips channel in the future... *wink*)
4. CIDCO (Caller ID Company) was eventually purchased and folded into EarthLink on December 3rd, 2001.
5. Before the Cisco takeover, InfoGear had plans to add features to future generations of iPhones, including a color touchscreen, VoIP support, and even video conferencing.
Yeah, video conferencing seems kind of a given. Nightmare on a dial-up ISP though.
The fourth generation had a metal band outlining the handset which caused the device to drop signal whenever you touched it. The CEO said you were just holding your phone wrong, but the company still sent rubber bumpers to everyone anyway. The sixth gen would bend when you put it in your pocket. (You needed very large pockets.) Every generation of this would update its firmware after a while to significantly slow the device down so that you would go out and buy the latest version even though that model did not differ much from the previous generation.
I have a 6+ and it still runs reasonably fast. It got a security update last month. If your phone is running slow it is because the battery is no longer able to output sufficient voltage to run the CPU at full speed. Replacing it will improve performance a lot.
Some websites won't work, like the one I wrote recently using the vue3 framework, and the latest versions of some Apps won't install, but it is still a reasonably usable phone.
@@katrinabryce I am assuming you are talking about the Apple iPhone. I upgraded a friend's Apple iPhone 3 many years ago. It ran so slowly afterwards that it was unusable. He had to go out and buy a new iPhone 4. Crap.
Apple eventually gave in and admitted they slowed down phones because they wanted to preserve battery life (according to them). However, Apple never told anyone that until they got caught. And that happened a few generations after my friend's iPhone 3 got crippled by a firmware update.
But that was just one of the problems I mentioned.
I had one of those house phones, it didn't have a keyboard or touchscreen or any ring options but it had 'Callmall' which was weather and horoscopes and some financial services on the phone. They cost hundreds of dollars and there was a higher monthly fee for them to work so no wonder they didn't catch on. These phones look like they were manufactured by the same company.
6:26 “ASAP as possible” 🤓
Somewhere there's a middle-of-nowhere insurance company with one of these still on a front desk, with a lady named "Dot" or "Vicky" who won't let them get rid of it.
I can see the similarity between these Cisco phones and the one I use in the office.
Fun fact, there's dedicated hardware -- it's called a TELEPHONE LINE SIMULATOR so you kind of can't screw it up -- so that you don't have to do the whole thing with Pis or that insane sponsor-tie-in that was really just going around your own A-fifty-five to get to your elbow ;) Sure, they're a bit costly on the ol' eBay, but since you're only gonna get Pis from scalpers in the same place, with the same sort of inflated sense of both ego and pricing, well... six of one, half a dozen of the other. Funny how that works.
Also, I have to say, I'm reminded by that crazy Linode-operated scheme of the XKCD that's like, "If they tell you it's fixed, never ask how they did it."
When I used the Qwest/USWest Home Receptionist it had to dial into a special service code to activate itself. This might also be part of the problem. In order for it to even connect to the server and call web data in any way it has to get a fun mishmash of archaic data pulses over phone from the 90s. SOME servers to program these phones still do exist and finish the activation handshake thanks to the community... I found one phone company that even still ran one a few years back. Yay for 90s telephone "feature phones" because that really is what these were the precursor to.
Additional reference note; I still have one... somewehre... might be interesting to pull it out of the dumpsterfire that is my storage and test it... IF I can find the functioning activations erver.
ahhm the memories, remember using this. its like a big pda
I met Reuven in real life once had a really interesting conversation about the iPhone and technology in general
Hey Ken! What email services were available in those "iPhones" -- AOL, Yahoo, or Hotmail?
I'm guessing POP3? Maybe IMAP if you are lucky. Yahoo and Hotmail had POP3 access back in the day, AOL didn't.
Computer Clan welcome back
I have a voice plan through my modem. My shitty old fax machine works perfectly through it, even though my ISP has told me repeatedly that it won't work. Yet it sends snd receives just fine. I use it for testing the fax machines of local businesses.
Thanks for adding actual captions for the Deaf. - an amazing history
You're welcome. I like to go the extra mile. I wish more channels would do this.
The fact they spelled it iPhone, with a small i and capital P, is great.
Horrifyingly, I was in charge of a department developing software for PABXs and Terminals (phones) during this era..... there were more attempts at video phones than you could possibly imagine in the industry around the 1990s - but the technology and performance simply weren't there to support them. AND, although VoIP is ubiquitous these days its birth was both painful and ugly for those of us responsible for third and fourth tier support of these new products..... we got sued by so many customers whose networks simply didn't support QoS :)
Ahhh, happy days.
LMAO, I had the same issue trying to get an old dial-up device working. It took me about an hour with a USB modem, my Windows PC, some virtual serial port software and a bit of coding to get it working. I think you need to upgrade your tech team Ken, I mean I worked it out and I work in a restaurant for god's sake.
Always love these videos. We are doomed to repeat history if we don't learn from it.
We're doomed to return to mullets and 80's facial hair?
@@user-xu2pi6vx7o Mullets are making a comeback here in Australia, lots of our footballers with them recently.
I am old enough to have used the second gen version. I also learned how to install them and network them.
That reminds me of the Gradiente IPhone from Brazil. They are still fighting for their brand name up to this day
Finally, a weapon to surpass Info Gear
Great video Ken. You really outdid yourself with all the work you put into this video, I loved it!
Thank you : D
@computerclan I think the best feature of this phone is that it didn’t have instagram and Facebook (oh boy do I miss the 90s). Anyway, definitely ketch the Krazy and pass it on. You are awesome
if somones fax machine isnt working with a modern voice landline, its most likely one of 2 things.
their fax machine is ground start (and the voice provider needs to program it a little differently for what breaks the dialtone)
or their fax machine is waiting for some specific/special "custom ringing" tone.
both of these issues can be solved by getting your voice provider to just, put those on the line. you just need to know what your fax machine requires.
That keyboard reveal, first time a girl takes her top off in front of you: same energy
The ridiculous thing is every company that put a lower case “i” before a product name was imitating the iMac, iPod, etc. Remember when Compac had the iPaq? Rhymes with iMac? Seriously? Lol
Even the modern Apple iPhone emails say "sent from my iPhone" when sending email... as a default footer message.
Was it really that difficult to connect using dial-in modems? For some reason, time helps us forget the difficulties we used to have! I remember being sooo excited when I could download stuff from afar, all those years ago!!
It wouldn't have been that difficult when ISPs still used the POTS infrastructure that dialup was built around
No it wasn't... Just need to plug your computer modem on the phone line wall socket and do some easy configurations in W95 to tell your system the connection details (that was on a paper given by your service provider). At least this is how it was when I went online the first time in 96, 56K was sure slow compare to today but it was faster than the 9.6K external system we used at my college at the same time.
POV: The very first iPhone needs a Pentium/Pentium MMX/Pentium Pro to connect to websites
Lol
I had a similar phone and got it to work by using a magic jack plugged into modem. Thats it! Try it. Maybe it will work for you too
If you want to make a modem, data, call or a fax call through your own voip system you have to make sure the protocol is set to a protocol that has no compression. If you were trying to use your Internet service providers, voip service you need to notify them that you want to have a fax machine on the line and that you need them to change the protocol to a no compression protocol
my favorite version is the first iphone by the design that you showed there in the video.
21:21 That ending🤣🤣🤣
I faintly recall hearing about something similar to this product on a TV special for the CES, in the early 2000s, on TechTV back in the day
shame it didn't do very well
Imagine if Cisco is to launch an iPhone right now and now every old man is buying thinking its the "iPhone".
Back in around 1995-96 there was a windows software program called from Vocaltec called Internet Phone commonly referred to as Iphone which was an early VOIP.
Hmmm… the three developers of the “iPhone” were Israeli, as was VocalTec… maybe there was a connection 🤔
17:04
OOF SIZE:
L A R G E
Occams razor - the answer with the fewest assumptions is usually the correct one. Occam was very clear this was not the "simplest answer" necessarily. Just the one the required you to make the fewest unfounded assumptions. It's a subtle difference but it is a difference
Believe me, I know. But I'm not going into a Latin/English history lesson. 😅
*Project Mercury* was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963.
6:36 Techmoan cameo...
Admit it! You did this whole video JUST so you could make an extended warranty joke! ;-) (I enjoyed the video though regardless.)
Thank you : )
15:21 The same vibe as "I use Arch, btw"
Nu Skin is an MLM, predatory business model. Had no idea they had their foot into tech like this, very interesting.
I’ve used voip for a dial up connection and it worked.
can you use a dns spoofer and setup a server on linode or a local machine?
There was another company with the rights for the name iPhone in Brazil! They even launched a phone named iPhone in Brazil years after the Apple iPhone!
Glad to see you're back
Yeah… sorry it took so long. I was working on a scam-buster which needed more time, so I switched to this one and then THIS ended up being WAY more complicated than I planned, haha. The scam-buster should be out on April 6 if all goes as planned!