Yes, I should have known better in my teenage years about it. And also yes there was no reason for me to expect that everything I wrote would be easily available to some AI panopticon 30-40 years later

I developed a hypothesis when the phablets first started showing up and still feel it holds. There are two main clusters of users:

1) People who use their phone "on the go", specifically walking around and that sort of thing. Like I'm walking down the sidewalk and pull it out to check a message or see directions.

2) People who use their phone while stationary. Sitting on the couch, on the subway, on an airplane, that sort of thing.

People in group 1 generally lean towards smaller phones as the single handed usage comes in handy. You're not trying to surf the web doing this, so you don't need full usage, but you need to be able to hold it in your hand.

The people who are more stationary users don't have this restriction and they're more likely to want the full functionality when they're using it.

While somewhat avoidable in retrospect, I don't believe my story is uncommon.

What unique insight or skill did they bring to the process? That's the interesting part. Otherwise it's just a small part of a huge sea of people's individual attempts to solve the same problems that everyone else is solving by themselves.