The Intriguing (Secret) History of the iPhone
Wired Magazine
has posted a very interesting “Untold Story” of how the iPhone was developed, and its major impact on the wireless industry.
It’s worth reading the entire article — it’s the best tech-related journalism I’ve read in all of 2008. Some of the interesting tidbits:
- Apple spent $150M to develop the iPhone.
- “By January 2007, when Jobs announced the iPhone at Macworld, only 30 or so of the most senior people on the project had seen it.”
- In 2005, Steve Jobs was publicly denying interest in developing an Apple-branded phone, even while working his way into the mobile phone industry.
- Steve Jobs was furious about the early, buggy prototypes that didn’t deliver on the vision of what the iPhone eventually became.
- Many on the iPhone development team found the process “the most stressful of their careers. Screaming matches broke out routinely in the hallways. Engineers, frazzled from all-night coding sessions, quit, only to rejoin days later after catching up on their sleep. A product manager slammed the door to her office so hard that the handle bent and locked her in; it took colleagues more than an hour and some well-placed whacks with an aluminum bat to free her.”
- Cell phone manufacturers as a whole have new bargaining power over the carriers they’ve done business with for decades largely because of the advent of the iPhone.
- Cell phone carriers are now looking at new products and services that take advantage of the iPhone’s capabilities. According to Paul Roth, AT&T’s president of marketing, “We’re thinking about the market differently.”
Really, you should read the entire article over at Wired.com!