Who created the iPhone? Before the iPhone, every phone on the market was terrible.

After months of rumors, the first iPhone went on sale in the United States on June 29, 2007. At the end of this month, exactly 10 years will have passed since that day. In honor of this, we are waiting for some miracle - iPhone 8, for example.

The iPhone project was called a pressure cooker with an impossible mission

Over ten years, the iPhone has turned society’s attitude upside down not only towards mobile phones, but towards all consumer electronics en masse.

But before the release of the first smartphone, strange things happened inside Apple in the mid-2000s - for example, people disappeared. More and more empty chairs appeared in the company's offices, on which people had once sat. key specialists. And this was surprising.

Many such employees were invited to work on a secret project. At the same time, they were not told anything specific and were not even given time to think.

Some (for example, Andre Boulle, who then worked at Apple for only a couple of months) agreed with almost no persuasion. But many refused the unknown direction, remaining in their positions.

The lives of the most determined in the coming years turned 180 degrees. Now, in an atmosphere of absolute secrecy, they worked day and night on something new, putting aside thoughts about family and other delights of their personal life.

“We created a pressure cooker with an impossible mission” and “iPhone is the main reason for my divorce” - these are the theses that lead Apple engineer Andy Grignon describes the project

Nevertheless, in the end, the team to work on the first iPhone included Apple's most stellar talents: design veterans, leading programmers, managers and engineers - this once again confirms that the company has always gathered around itself not just cool, but passionate specialists.

Instead of a camera and a car, Apple chose a smartphone

Apple star engineer Richard Williamson notes that today the iPhone form factor looks very simple. But its creation turned out to be much more difficult than one might think.

Officially, work on the first smartphone began at the end of 2004. But the ideas and technologies that formed its basis have been developing over the past thirty years.

Like so many other high-profile, super-successful products, the iPhone originally had several concepts that fought with each other.

At the final stage there were as many as five iPhone options

All of them were the fruits of both small ideas and serious partnerships. And everyone, in the role of competitor, fought tirelessly for a place in the sun.

Apple's Senior Vice President of Global Marketing, Phill Schiller, noted back in 2012 that a large number of variables influenced the final iPhone. And not the least role in its development was played by Mac computers, for which Apple was famous for decades, as well as iPod players, which exploded the market at that time.

It was after the incredible success of the players that Apple started thinking about a new product that could revolutionize the industry. Thoughts appeared about creating a camera, a car and other crazy things. And today it is obvious that the choice in favor of a smartphone was not made in vain.

Steve Jobs founded the iPhone on the success of the iPod

After returning to Apple in 1997, Steve Jobs immediately received recognition from both the company's employees and everyone around him. He quickly closed the production of unpromising products and received a stable profit.

However, Apple began to be perceived as a significant player in the consumer electronics market only after the advent of the iPod, which later formed the basis of the iPhone.

“Without the iPod, there would be no iPhone” - Tony Fadell, who was directly involved in the creation of both the first and second

The main threat to the iPod in the early 2000s was being locked into iTunes, which only existed on the Mac.

And it was Fadell who convinced Steve Jobs to give up such exclusivity. Without this solution, the width of the parade ground for the launch of the iPhone simply would not have been enough.

However, after launching in 2001 and becoming a hit in 2003, the iPod was already under threat in 2004. serious threat. This year's trend was the widespread use of the MP3 format in mobile phones.

There was no doubt then that Apple needed an MP3 phone that would work with iTunes along with the iPod.

Working with Motorola was Apple's worst experience ever.

In 2004, Motorola released one of the most successful phones, the design of which many are still completely delighted with - of course, we are talking about the Razr flip phone.

At that time, Steve Jobs was in close contact with Motorola CEO Ed Zander, which is why the idea of ​​cooperation was born. At the same time, Apple executives thought about acquiring this company, but then the deal was considered too expensive.

There are rumors about an iTunes phone - a phone that would work with the popular music store

Such cooperation was the most in a simple way for the manufacturer to stay afloat - Motorola will make the phone, and Apple will focus on developing software and the iPod. As a result, when users get used to iTunes, they will inevitably switch to the company's players.

But other than iTunes and a built-in music player that resembled an iPod interface, ROKR, which was released in 2005, had no advantages. The phone had an overly confusing synchronization process with the music service. And it was impossible to load more than a hundred songs into its expandable memory.

Also, the Motorola phone was just ugly. And at the end of 2005, the then authoritative magazine Wired came out with a cover ridiculing ROKR, which was positioned as a revolution in the music world.

A little later, Steve Jobs closed the project and discarded the idea of ​​​​creating a phone together with any other company.

Before the iPhone, every phone on the market was terrible.

Not long ago, in an interview with Bloomberg, Tim Cook noted that Apple does not strive to be the main innovator in the market of modern consumer electronics. Therefore, the “belated” release of the HomePod smart speaker, noticeably later than Google Home and Amazon Echo, does not indicate the company’s backwardness and is not such at all.

The company does not make products first, but strives to produce the best solutions on the market. The iPod came about because listening to music on CD players was terribly inconvenient. And the iPhone because before it, all the phones on the market were simply terrible - scary and inconvenient.

“Apple is best at noticing what people hate” - Greg Christie, who worked on interface design at the company

However, Steve Jobs did not start developing the phone right away. At first he insisted on developing the iPod line. But through regular persuasion and dozens of convincing facts, Mike Bell, a company veteran who at that time had been working at Apple for more than 15 years, persuaded him to do this.

He noted that if Apple doesn't rethink the phone, someone else will. Moreover, at that time Jonathan Ive had several cool iPod concepts that no one had yet seen, it would be possible to take one of them, adapt the hardware and software, and blow up the market.

Three or four days after this conversation, the iPhone project started.

Before the iPhone, Apple was already working on a touch prototype for the iPad.

Even before the start of work on the iPhone, which was given the go-ahead by Steve Jobs, Apple was working on the touch screen under the leadership of Bas Ording and Imran Chaudhry. At one point, Steve Jobs called them and said:

“We will make a telephone!”

As a result, the main idea came down to depriving a small mobile device of any buttons on the body and equipping it with a relatively large touch display with multi-touch technology.

Apple even had a suitable prototype for this - Q79. This is an early experiment that can ultimately be considered the prototype of the modern iPad. The main obstacle on the way to the user turned out to be high price technology that had to inevitably be reduced.

After the initial concept for the iPhone was defined, the number of questions about it only increased. For example, if a grid with columns and rows of apps on the home screen looks obvious today, then no one has actually done anything like that.

And by February 2005, some elements of the operating system for the iPhone were already ready. However, it was a jumble of random pieces of design and code - like phrases taken out of context without all the text.

Then Steve gave the team leaders exactly two weeks - the last chance to bring it all to fruition. And they called this time the “death march.” And it all worked out - an OS prototype that became the foundation for it modern versions, was a success.

When Fadell heard about the development of the telephone, which was proceeding by leaps and bounds, he took a prototype of a similar device based on the iPod and went to Steve Jobs.

On paper, Tony's logic looked flawless. He took Apple's most successful project, the iPod, transferred its click-wheel interface to a touch screen, and built a phone into the whole thing. According to him, such an approach would preserve brand recognition - this is the main thing.

“In the end we came to two options - make an iPod analog out of the phone or reduce the Mac interface to the size of a relatively small screen,” recalls Richard Williamson

Scott Forstall was responsible for the latter direction. And to get something cool, Steve decided to pit him and Fadell against each other. He approved two teams and organized a real competition, the winner of which is now well known.

But back then the iPod concept seemed viable. The corresponding team even made about a hundred prototypes of phones based on a similar operating system.

But the iPhone with the iPod interface failed. In the end, everyone came to the conclusion that no one wants a phone with a rotating wheel, like a disk-type device. This worked great for players, but a modern smartphone requires a different approach.

The first iPhone was changed dozens of times. And all the following ones too

As a result, the secret of the very first iPhone turned out to be perfectionism - working on several versions of one device to select the optimal option and launch it to the masses.

A similar situation occurs before the release of each next Apple smartphone. Several teams are testing n number of devices with different features and capabilities. And in the end, we are shown only the most successful solution.

Therefore, today's fuss about the appearance and technical features of the iPhone 8 is natural.

Every controversial iPhone 8 leak is one of the concepts for the upcoming flagship

As a result, we will see a solution that turned out better in terms of usage and technical specifications. This applies to the screen area of ​​the iPhone 8, the location of the fingerprint scanner and the front camera with accompanying sensors, as well as the presence of wireless charging.

Therefore, you should not rely 100% on any rumors, no matter how plausible they may be. Even Apple doesn’t know what the new flagship iPhone will be like.

However, with every news about the smartphone, more and more interesting options for the anniversary device emerge. But this is a topic for a separate study.

Attention, news here:

Today, the iPhone is one of the most common smartphones in the world. According to some information sources, it is known that during the 5 years of the iPhone’s existence on the market, more than 250 million copies were sold (from 2007 to 2012). And the rights to this device belong to the most valuable public company in the world - Apple.

The development of this smartphone was led by Steven Jobs (who also headed Apple Corporation at that time), who said in his interviews that the idea of ​​​​creating the iPhone accompanied the idea of ​​​​the appearance of a tablet. But since the latter was less important, the telephone project became paramount. Apple engineers have been working on it for several years. The first result of their work was a phone called Motorola ROKR, which officially entered the market in early autumn, or rather in September 2005. But, since it had an unsuccessful design, as well as weak functionality (the device had an interface based on an iPod, and had a high degree of similarity to a player like iTunes), it did not become widespread, and critics called it “the failure of the year.” After this failure, a few months later (February 2006), Steven Jobs enlisted the support of the cellular operator Cingular. At the same time, he informed them that a new device of his own, much better than the Motorola ROKR, was expected to be released soon. This device was the first iPhone, which was developed by Apple specialists under the leadership of Steven Jobs in strict secrecy, and the project itself was called “Purple 2” within the corporation (before the release of Motorola ROKR there was also a “Purple 1” project, which is only known that it was not completed). The product was finished at the end of 2006. And in early 2007 (January 9), Steven Jobs officially announced the new iPhone at the MacWorld Expo held in San Francisco. This new device combines the functions and capabilities of a telephone, a player and a mini computer. It worked on the iOS operating system. The device went on sale on June 29, 2007 (the price of the iPhone at that time was $499), and quickly took a significant share of the US smartphone market. And in 2008, the product began to be supplied to Russia.

I would like to note that after the release of the iPhone in 2007, rival company Cisco Systems filed a lawsuit against Apple. The basis of the claim was unlawful use trademark. The conflict was resolved on February 21, 2007 in the form of an agreement, from which it became known that both companies could use the brand.

After the facts presented in this article, we can conclude that the iPhone was invented by Steven Jobs (1955 - 2011), who, in addition to this invention, was directly involved in the development of the first personal computer, iTunes, iPod, iPad and etc. Therefore, owners of excellent and high-quality Apple products are obliged to thank for them the “father of the digital revolution,” who died of pancreatic cancer in 2011. Thank you, Stephen!

At the D conference in 2010, Steve Jobs was asked why Apple's tablet appeared later than the phone. And he answered the following:

"I"ll tell you. Actually. It started on a tablet first. I had this idea about having a glass display, a multitouch display you could type on. I asked our people about it. And six months later they came back with this amazing display. And I gave it to one of our really brilliant UI guys. He then got inertial scrolling working and some other things, and I thought, "my god, we can build a phone with this" and we put the tablet aside, and we went to work on the phone."

“We actually started developing a tablet. I had an idea about a glass screen and multi-touch capabilities for typing on it. I asked our employees about this. Six months later they returned with an amazing display. And I gave it to one of our gifted front-end developers. He created kinetic scrolling and some other things, and I thought, 'Oh my God, we can build a phone on this,' so we put the tablet aside and started developing a phone."

These words sound simple, but the creation of Apple's first phone took several years, and Jobs personally had to find many convincing reasons for the iPhone to succeed as a product and phenomenon on the market. The name was taken back in 1999, when the company registered the iphone.org domain, the name was quite in the spirit of Apple. It was assumed that the Purple 1 project would receive it in its commercial form, about which Steve Jobs said the following in 2002: “kick-start the market for next-generation mobile phones in the same way that the company’s computer popularized personal computing.” (kick into the next-generation mobile phone market in the same way the company entered the personal PC market).

But everything turned out to be more complicated, and in 2002 this project was closed. At the beginning of 2004, there was no phone project at Apple, but there was a tablet computer project. It goes on as usual, and the story with Motorola and the iTunes phone, which started in the summer, is developing in parallel. When Steve Jobs said on stage at MacWorld in January 2007 that the development of the phone took the company 2.5 years, he was being a little disingenuous. About a year spent on developing a touch screen and some UI elements for a tablet computer is taken into account. These works began in 2004. But the phone project itself, codenamed Purple 2, was born in 2005, and Motorola had a hand in it. No, we are not talking about any technologies, developments or anything like that. The contribution of the company, or rather its top managers, is in how they created the joint product and in the fact that it did not suit Apple. Delays in presentation, refusal to present the best models, for example, RAZR - all these problems accumulated.

In February 2005, Steve Jobs arranged a secret meeting with Cingular top managers behind Motorola's back. He needs to enlist the support of the operator, since his plans are to create not just a phone, but to change the business model of this market. Without an operator and his support this is simply impossible. Stan Sigman is present at the meeting; he is involved in a project with Motorola from Cingular.

Steve Jobs' charisma is against the usual rules of the operator's game. Who won? At the meeting, Jobs proposes a partnership without Motorola's participation, he assures Cingular that Apple is capable of creating a phone that will be years ahead of all existing solutions. This phone is not even on paper, you cannot touch it, you cannot discuss its characteristics. You can trust Jobs' instincts or reject them. A crazy meeting where a pig is sold in a poke. Jobs's next offer is from the same category; he offers exclusive conditions for this deal. No one in the US will get this product except Cingular. But in return, he wants Apple to become a carrier of sorts. By purchasing traffic minutes, the company will sell them along with the phone to its customers. Madness that none of the operators will do, which no one will even talk about. And here, perhaps, we should pay tribute to the charisma of Steve Jobs, who does not convince Cingular top managers at this meeting, but they do not say the final “No.” On the operator's side, Stan Sigman is starting to work with Apple, and negotiations will last about a year.

But it was February 2005 that can be considered the start of the Purple 2 project. After this meeting, Steve Jobs decided to start creating his own phone. This is a huge risk, because without the operator’s support the project is doomed. Initially, the entire project was built around a touch screen and multi-touch support, this is what was developed for the tablet. Then there are quite heated debates about which operating system to choose for the phone. The prevailing point of view is that the computing power of processors for portable devices will grow, which means that sooner or later they will be able to run OSs with capabilities equal to those found in desktop systems. Therefore, it was decided to adapt MacOS X for a portable phone.

For Apple it is a race against time, there is no contract for the phone, but it needs to be presented as soon as possible. After all, the development of touchscreen phones is underway, other companies do not feel competition, present their models, study new technologies, and are slowly approaching what Apple has already come up with. Therefore, Apple is dividing the project into two large parts. One team is responsible for the hardware, in fact, for the phone, while the second is working on the operating system and its adaptation for it.

During the preparation of this text, I had to repeatedly come across the point of view, which is expressed in various forums, that the two development teams were due to secrecy. Jobs separated the developers for security reasons, but that's not the only reason. An attempt to speed up development leads to the idea of ​​making all processes parallel, and this is logical. Back then, Apple didn't have the time to organize the process in the right way; they didn't even have engineers with experience working with phones. The company hired such employees even after the launch of the product in 2007-2008, since it did not have expertise in this area, and from a technical point of view, the radio part of the phone was weak. The idea moved the project forward.

Until November 2005, the idea of ​​the project is formed, people are selected, it is in the initial phase. By September, about 200 engineers and other Apple employees were participating. The project was given the green light, but it only reached full speed at the end of 2005.

Protracted negotiations with Cingular

After the first meeting in New York, Cingular's communication with Apple goes through Stan Sigman. He believes that Apple can create a product that will amaze the public, he is on Jobs's side. But Cingular’s ​​top managers are not ready to sign a contract without seeing the product, especially under such conditions when the partner claims a part of the operator’s income. For almost a year, companies have been looking for a compromise. At the same time, Jobs openly says that he is ready to work with any operator who can hear him and recognize the future in his proposal. He meets with Verizon executives and tells them exactly the same thing he told them at the meeting with Cingular. Verizon treats this as a dream and does not see any advantages for itself. For Sigman, this has its advantages; he tries to reach a compromise and eventually finds it.

In 2006, the Cingular network is expanding, non-voice services are being added, data transmission is growing, and the operator is interested in devices that actively consume traffic and provoke people to do so. Apple believes that their device will become one of the most popular among those who use the mobile Internet and watch email. Sigman looks for a compromise and eventually finds it.

In July 2006, the companies come to an agreement that the operator receives exclusive rights to the phone for 5 years, while investing certain budgets in its advertising and marketing. The operator also receives small amounts from the sale of the iTunes store for its subscribers, while Apple receives $10 from each subscriber using its phone. This amount is a fee for traffic, both companies believe that users will spend a lot of time on mail, the Internet, and this money will pay off. Cingular is also developing, together with Apple, but at its own expense, the Visual Voicemail function.

For Sigman, this project becomes the main one; how his career will develop depends on its success. By the time the agreement was concluded, which is unprecedented for the operator market and has no analogues, he had not even seen a working prototype of the device. The largest US operator is buying a product it has never seen. What could be crazier?

Already in January 2007, when the iPhone was being presented at MacWorld, Sigman admitted from the stage that he had not seen this product at the time the deal was concluded. And he separately adds that cooperation with Apple is not an MVNO option, but rather a cooperation in which Cingular subscribers (at that time already AT&T) remain subscribers of the operator.

iPhone prototypes, or there is no turning back

Even before the contract with Cingular, work on creating the product is in full swing. The first half of 2006 can safely be called a time of searching for solutions, creating many prototypes, and studying the interaction of components. By the spring of 2006, the appearance of the device was ready, but its filling was subject to constant changes. A couple of months after signing a contract with Cingular, Apple is discussing the progress made on the project.

This is autumn 2006. The Purple 2 development team gathers in a meeting room and shows off a prototype phone. The device is simply not ready, its standard programs are unstable, during a conversation it breaks the connection, the battery does not fully charge, and the list of problems can be continued indefinitely. The prototype is raw, and Steve Jobs sums up this meeting with a succinct phrase: “We don’t have a product yet.” There’s just under a year left before entering the market, the company doesn’t have enough time. And it’s about that the model is not ready in all areas, from software stability to hardware components. For MacWorld, it is necessary to get rid of all childhood diseases, the device must be alive. The development team is moving to martial law and practically living in laboratories, creating this phone.

An indirect problem affecting development time is Apple's lack of such experience. The company does not have the equipment to test phones, antenna emissions, and the like. All this equipment is purchased as needed and requires people who know how to handle it. This also affects the speed of work on the project. For a newcomer to the phone market, Apple is doing the almost impossible. The speed of product development is increasing, and the price the company pays is high.

The priority of the phone over other projects is obvious. In particular, programmers working on the version of Mac OS Leopard, which is due out in the spring, are switching to the Purple 2 project. This will delay the release of the OS by almost six months; it will appear in October. Speaking to Apple investors next year, Steve Jobs admits that it was his decision. The audience will receive this answer with applause.

But let's go back to the beginning of 2006. Two teams are working on their parts of the project. Engineers have a phone design and working samples, but there is no software that looks like the real thing. Test utilities are installed on the phone. If you look inside for the name of the product, a curious eye will be able to find not one, but four names at once.

Programmers do not have a telephone; all work is done with small wooden boxes in which boards are installed. There are no identification marks on the chips. Inside the company, the device is known to at most three dozen people. Complete secrecy is maintained. But since the second half of 2006, it has already been known that Apple is working on a phone. Questions follow one after another, but the company denies involvement in such a project. Speculation around Apple's phone is constant, and the same questions are being asked about Cingular. In November 2006, Cingular launched a music service: for $15 you can download as much music as you want to your mobile phone. But most of the questions addressed to Robert Hyatt, Cingular's chief executive of entertainment and music services, concern the future of Apple's product.

• Is it true that launching a music service like this means you're not working with Apple on a phone?
• Is Apple going to introduce a new iPhone?
• Is your company involved in any deal with Apple?
• Is Apple working on a phone?

The event is used by journalists to ask questions about Apple's phone, the event itself fades into the background. Hayat's answer to the last question is laconic, he laughs, saying: "I really do not know. Fortunately, I don't know. After all, if I knew, I would have to tell you that I don’t know.” I don"t know, actually. Fortunately, I don"t know. Because if I knew ... I"d have to tell you, "I don"t know" .

Cingular employees involved in communications with Apple keep their mouths shut, complete secrecy. Meetings at the Cingular office were held in compliance with all precautions; for example, Apple employees, upon entering, indicated Infineon as their place of work, but not their home company. Taken together, all this made it possible to maintain the maximum level of security; before the announcement, the model did not appear on the Internet, no one knew anything about it, the stronger the effect of a bomb exploding.

Let me remind you that the cost of developing the phone, according to an Apple source cited by Wired magazine, was $150 million. And almost two and a half years, if you take into account the development of a multi-touch display.

Plastic screen or glass

The first demonstration of the created phone took place in mid-December 2006, a few weeks before MacWorld. In one of the hotel rooms Four Seasons in Las Vegas, Steve Jobs showed Sigman the iPhone. This version of the phone was quite stable in operation, and Jobs himself had been using this device for some time. In particular, at Jobs’ request, they decided to change the screen covering from plastic to glass. In everyday work, the plastic was susceptible to scratches, and Jobs did not like this. Surprisingly, before MacWorld, the company was not sure that they would be able to produce this type of coating and how resistant it would be to falls. There were simply no tests, and the company would not have had time to conduct them. Everything was created in desperate haste.

The screen covering story also became famous thanks to an eBay auction. In March 2009, two lots appeared at this auction, prototypes of the Apple iPhone. Here is a description of those phones:

• Plastic screen protector
• Serial number YM649xxxxxx indicating a Chinese factory, production date week 49 2006;
• iPhone OS 03.06.01_G (iPhone launched with OS 1.0 03.11.02_G)

• Glass covers the screen
• Serial number YM650xxxxxx indicating a Chinese factory, production date 50 week 2006;

On both prototypes there is no iPhone inscription or indication of the amount of memory. The first device has a test shell, which is still used today to test the operation of phones at the factory.

Only due to the lack of confidence in the reliability of glass, it was not announced at MacWorld just before sales began; on June 18, 2007, the company issued a press release in which it talked about replacing plastic with glass. The same press release provides new data on battery life, the difference with the software that was in January is huge. This once again proves that Apple created the product in a hurry, without enough time.

However, after the start of sales, many problems emerged that clearly indicated that from a technical point of view the product was far from ideal. But users bought the Apple name and a stunning interface that simply had no analogues at that time.

The official announcement of the Apple iPhone took place on January 9, 2007 at MacWorld. Steve Jobs said the following words:

“Today we are introducing three revolutionary new products. The first is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. And the third is a device for communicating on the Internet. iPod, phone, mobile communicator... and these are not three separate devices".

"Well today, we"re introducing THREE revolutionary new products. The first one is a widescreen ipod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary new mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough internet communications device. An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator.... these are NOT three separate devices!"

At this point we can consider the prehistory of the iPhone (Purple 2) closed; what followed were months of preparing the device for entering the market, preparing points of sale - this part of the story is well known and does not require a separate story (or is it still needed?). The appearance of the iPhone occurred despite the market situation, when one person in the person of Steve Jobs was able to insist on his own and make a product that the operator Cingular (later AT&T) bought without even seeing it. Just like the first iPhone buyers, they bought the phone without any idea of ​​what they would be faced with. They acquired the promise of Steve Jobs and Apple, as was the case with many other products - iPod, MacBook Air, iPad. The first iPhone set the bar in the field of interfaces for mobile devices, although from a technical point of view it was extremely weak. But that is another story.

Eldar Murtazin ()