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How Apple Kept the iPhone Secret
An anonymous reader writes "Bogus prototypes, bullying the press, stifling pillow talk — all to keep iPhone under wraps. Fortune's Peter Lewis goes inside one of the year's biggest tech launches. One of the most astonishing things about the new Apple iPhone, introduced yesterday by Steve Jobs at the annual Macworld trade show, is how Apple managed to keep it a secret for nearly two-and-a-half years of development while working with partners like Cingular, Yahoo and Google."
Step 1) dont tell anyone about it.
Step 2) dont deny it exists.
Thats about it realy.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Everyone and their mother has been waiting for months, maybe even a year, for the official announcement of an iPhone. How exactly is this a secret?
Seems that Apple is keeping the secrecy going... questions that I have:
- What processor?
- How much "system" RAM in the thing?
- Can users install their own software? Rumor is that you cannot - you have to buy it from Apple or Cingular.
- What bluetooth profiles are available?
- Can I get shell?
I have a feeling that this is not going to be a geek's toy.
jh
I'm not sure any job is worth this, let alone producing a gadget.
Sony ha
It's interesting to see that Apple "gets it". They must have been planning on doing the iPhone for a long time - for there are legions of people who scour the FCC website regularly for new registrations to catch the latest and greatest cellphone to hit the market. And add to that the legions of Apple fans who probably scour the FCC website just incase there's something wireless going to hit the market.
That's why iPhone doesn't have approval (though I bet it already passes certification - they just haven't filed yet) - the instant it's filed, it's public information, and Apple hates that. (Especially since a lot of collateral gets filed - internal photos, external photos, user manuals, lab reports, etc).
Honestly, until now, I really didn't find anything that made me want a new cellphone (the one I have is great, but it's coming up in the years), so I wouldn't know what to get when it died. Guess I do now. It's pricey, but I paid more for my current smartphone...
And given how difficult it is to do a cellphone (very - carriers are very picky - if the color of the button is wrong... or if it has certain features like call timers or byte counters...), I wouldn't see Apple as being able to get one in since it has no experience. (I expected it to be some super-hyped rumor that someone started and everyone ran with it after being upset at how crappy their current phone was, or some half-assed thing as is typical reaction.). But I suppose GSM carriers are less strict than CDMA ones since you don't strictly need carrier approval to sell a GSM handset (just replace the SIM card).
To me the untold story is how Apple managed to build such a strong buzz for their product, while avoiding any of the negative backlash that can accompany such a campaign (compare to Sony's PSP debacle right before the holidays, for instance).
They waged a viral campaign so effective that analysts and customers were basically demanding to be given the opportunity to purchase the new product--and they did it so silently that I'll probably get responses arguing that Apple didn't even do a campaign. THAT, to me, is the real story of secret-keeping.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
While Mr. Wu and many other analysts who scour the supply chains for hints of what might come had an idea that an Apple phone device was almost certainly imminent; no one outside the loop knew what the specifications, configurations, capabilities, software, interface (soft and hard) were going to be to a reasonable degree. Surely, many people guessed at the features. Some people actually got some right; many got them wrong but no-one got it all right. Most guessed incorrectly and were working from obscurity and not from secret, in-the-know information. It was predominantly wild-guessing. Therefore it can be asseted as a secret. If one guesses enough one is apt to guess right.
Isn't that what brute-force password attacks are about? One cannot claim that hackers knew one's secret password only because they were able to discover that a password existed and then were able to gain it by brute-force attack.
I think it can be classified as having been an unqualified bona-fide industrial secret to the extent they were able to keep the details about the device at large from the press and the public and even their competitors.
from the F*ing article...
In the end, Apple decided to reveal the iPhone several months ahead of its official June launch because it could not keep the secret any more. Apple has to file with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for the permits needed to operate the iPhone, and once those public filings are made, Apple has no control over the release of that information. So, Jobs said, he made the decision to have Apple tell the world about its new phone, rather than the FCC.
we need a new mod catagory, how about "-1, Didn't RTF"
--iggy_mon - www.ananonymouskiller.com - Die Trying -
Fortune's Peter Lewis goes inside one of the year's biggest tech launches
It's January 10th. Obviously this is going to be the year's biggest tech launch to date. Talk about hyperbole. Talk to me in November and then we can talk year's biggest tech launches.
Yet Another Phone, huh? The secret isn't so much how they kept this thing "under wraps" (as if) but how Apple is getting various media outlets to flog what appears to be Yet Another Phone (or PDA) as the "next generation", "innovative", etc.
At $500 a pop it may be Sony-ing it's way out of its target market too.
You're right on two out of the three. They do scratch easily and they are overpriced. You may not be a fan of the interface (I myself am not an apple zealot when it comes to UI), but you'd have a hard time convincing anyone that the user interface is bad. Look at 95% of the other products on the market. Apple consistently has easier to use, more intuitive UI's than practically all of it's competitors. This is Apple's strength and they play off of this constantly with all of their products. That's like saying Nintendo makes crappy videogames. You may not like the hardware, you may not like the games, but you'll have a hard time convincing people that they make bad games. That's their bread and butter. They use it to push their hardware.
Wise men say, "Forgiveness is divine, but never pay full price for late pizza."
I think you need to reconsider that statement in light of the iPhone's price and feature set. It may be good at making phone calls, but it is in the same class of device as smart phones, not regular mobiles.
I'd say they did pretty good.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Not a troll, this is the new hip gadget for yuppies. It won't cut it, imho, for business use because no matter how many times Jobs says it, you really do need a keyboard. It's also mac-centric, and thereby incompatible with most MS-house stuff (i.e. outlook).
I'd say it's potential downfall is the size - it's got a larger footprint than most full-size PDA phones. The HTC TyTN is 4mm smaller in both height and width, though it is thicker.
I'd have preferred the iPhone nano - something I can swap my SIM into when I leave the PDA/phone on my dresser for the weekend.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Death camp? Whooooooa! Where did that come from?
They knocked down the WTC? Whoooooooooa! I never saw that coming.
There are people in this world who are perfectly capable of ignoring the reality of what "everyone" is talking about. People are funny critters.
KFG
It's got a logical keyboard for casual use and if you really need more, bluetooth, so you should be able to pair it with a BT keyboard.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
you haven't looked at the specs but are dissmissing it because it's an apple product?
Talk about fanboy. Why don't you go take a look at the specs. Apple has built a smart phone that is unique. While I personally won't buy one no matter what the cost, I have to give apple credit. it's an amazing phone with an amazing feature set. No phone made today is an where close in all the features. No interface is as unique. No other phone uses accelerometers to rotate the display on the fly(to watch movies or broswe), or to turn off the display if placed near the face so you can talk with out a glowing face.
Those two features are the kinds of things that set Apple products apart from every day crap. I won't buy one simply because i like simple phones, I don't need a smart phone. Though I might get it for the ipod features.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Did you watch the keynote speech? Did you read any of the summaries from it? Apparently not because it doesn't just make phone calls and play music. The LG Chocolate does both of those (as do many other devices). The key difference is that, if this device lives up to Apple's claims (which most of the products in recent years have), it will make phone calls and play music better than any other device has ever done it. That's why the iPod has been as successful as it has: it doesn't just play audio and video files; it plays audio and video files better. Apple didn't just cram an MP3 player into a phone or vice versa; they engineered a new device that was designed to do both equally well. It's not just a handheld device that happens to run Windows Mobile; it's a device whose software and hardware were designed from the ground up together to create a seamless thing that makes my life easier. No I don't work for Apple.
http://www.bynarystudio.com
... because it hasn't been released - it's only been announced. What we do know is that Apple are a thousand and one times better at managing their prospective user base than anyone else out there.
I can think of lots of reasons why it may not be very good as a phone, or as a media player, and I'm sure plenty of other people can, but not too many people seem to be doing other than raving about it. One exception was the Register, with a couple of recent "emperor has no clothes" articles (which drove lots of traffic to their letters pages).
So it's going to be released some time in June (or not if it's late), and it'll completely dominate it's market, (or perhaps it won't). We just don't know yet. The thing that we can reasonably assume is that lots of people will buy it whenever it comes out, because Apple's marketing has been so good so far. So we'll find out whether it's any good real soon after it's been released.
I think it serves as a great tech demo. Features that work will start showing up elsewhere, patents or no patents. Phones are a commodity business, the iPhone is a boutique product. Too expensive for wide adoption, but maybe a portent of things to come.