From a typically inchoate ramble from Uncle Dave referring to a post by Marco Arment talking about the critical reception of the original iPhone:
He’s right that the lack of a removable battery and slots did not hinder the adoption of the iPhone. But I don’t recall people saying it would be a failure because of its lack of expandability in hardware. However I do remember criticism for its lack of expandability in software.
I’ll just take the low-hanging-fruit here and quote from Paul Thurrot’s review of the original iPhone:
The iPhone comes with either 4 or 8 GB of internal RAM, which is unbelievable in a day and age in which most smart phones ship with about 64 MB of memory. That said, the iPhone’s RAM is not expandable in any way because you can’t plug in an external memory card. And that’s a shame: My Motorola Q is readily expandable, and flash memory is inexpensive. That’s the way it should be.
People absolutely did, and still do, cite lack of hardware expandability as a failure of the iPhone. It must be nice for Old Man Winer, living in that fantasy world of his.
