As important as what Apple did was what it did not do. The company didn’t announce all of its future plans in advance, didn’t attempt to instantly achieve feature parity with existing smartphone platforms at launch, and didn’t allow third parties to set expectations or minimum standards for its own platform’s software titles. Instead, the company frequently surprised users with positive news of new features, deflected comparisons by focusing on the platform’s strengths, and carefully guarded how its App Store library developed. That involved taking heat from critics who fumed about yet unknown details, staying silent as pundits assailed the iPhone in specific niches (first in software, then in push messaging, then in hardware peripheral support), and acting out a role as the bad cop in policing app titles while bloggers turned themselves inside out about app rejections and store rules.