Why would they want a phone with email, a camera, music, and geospatial positioning? Jobs had to make metaphorical transitions with visual cues: hence, the email icon is an unopened envelope, the phone icon is an old-school handset, the browser is a compass, and the notes app is a paper notebook. Most obvious of all, he called his invention a phone, the iPhone, even though it was far more than that. This was a deliberate technique for making the jarringly new feel more familiar. Jobs was the master.
Feudal lords would have doubtless scoffed at the notion that the “the small, dull, vulgar group of merchants and traders and money lenders” would somehow usurp them in power, and while it took centuries, capitalism became pre-eminent. History doesn’t repeat but it rhymes.