Archive for January 21st, 2008

The Untold Story Of iPhone

Published by Babar Bhatti on January 21, 2008 under Networks, Wireless, iPhone, mobile phones

WIRED magazine has a great story about how Apple created iPhone despite initial setbacks and shook the wireless industry. It is a fun read and I found the background to have many lessons - as one example, the first phone which Apple came up with (ROKR) was a dismal failure and the first prototypes were also disappointing. The main take away here is that there was a strong desire to innovate and change the basic game. Hats off to the team which pulled it off.

For those working on the iPhone, the next three months would be 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.

But by the end of the push, just weeks before Macworld, Jobs had a prototype to show to the suits at AT&T. In mid-December 2006, he met wireless boss Stan Sigman at a suite in the Four Seasons hotel in Las Vegas. He showed off the iPhone’s brilliant screen, its powerful Web browser, its engaging user interface. Sigman, a taciturn Texan steeped in the conservative engineering traditions that permeate America’s big phone companies, was uncharacteristically effusive, calling the iPhone “the best device I have ever seen.”