Perşembe, Ocak 10, 2008

The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry

A magnificent story about how Apple built iPhone. A must to read.

A few headlines:

  • Code name of the project was P2 (Purple 2)
  • They built a phone and abandoned it (in fall 2006, just 3 months before Steve will launch the real iPhone)
  • To ensure the iPhone's tiny antenna could do its job effectively, Apple spent millions buying and assembling special robot-equipped testing rooms. To make sure the iPhone didn't generate too much radiation, Apple built models of human heads — complete with goo to simulate brain density — and measured the effects. To predict the iPhone's performance on a network, Apple engineers bought nearly a dozen server-sized radio-frequency simulators for millions of dollars apiece. Even Apple's experience designing screens for iPods didn't help the company design the iPhone screen, as Jobs discovered while toting a prototype in his pocket: To minimize scratching, the touchscreen needed to be made of glass, not hard plastic like on the iPod. One insider estimates that Apple spent roughly $150 million building the iPhone.
  • Apple gains net 80 $ from a 399$ iPhone plus 240$ from every 2 year contract with AT&T
  • iPhone has tripled the carrier's volume of data traffic in cities like New York and San Francisco
  • Jobs unveiled the MOTOROLA ROKR in September 2005. It was a disaster. Wired summarized the disappointment on its November 2005 cover: "YOU CALL THIS THE PHONE OF THE FUTURE?"
  • The negotiations with AT&T would take more than a year. At one point, Jobs met with some executives from Verizon, who promptly turned him down.
  • It took almost a year to shrink down Mac OSX to fit the iPhone.
  • Through it all, Jobs maintained the highest level of secrecy. Teams were split up and scattered across Apple's Cupertino, California, campus. Even the iPhone's hardware and software teams were kept apart: Hardware engineers worked on circuitry that was loaded with fake software, while software engineers worked off circuit boards sitting in wooden boxes. 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.
whole story:
wired magazine

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