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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."
Given the absurd numbers of rumours which abounded over the past few months, what is this "secret" of which you speak?
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
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
You don't even know IF my company exists, not to speak of WHAT we're going to produce.
I'm just gonna scrummage around in my closet for my old turtleneck and then watch out!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
After checking the feature set on Apple's web site, mark me down for at least two of those things.
My Treo looks positively anemic in comparison. It is enough to overcome my disgust for Cingular too.
I dont think anyone outside of Apple anticipated just how well recieved that phone would be.
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.
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."
After checking the feature set on Apple's web site, mark me down for at least two of those things.
You want it because all you saw was what Apple wanted you to see. You have no idea how it'll actually perform as a phone in ways that matter. I don't care how sexy it animates the UI if it's a shitty phone.
All the fervor is akin to GM showing off a new sexy looking car, and people wanting it, having no idea if it'll actually be a good car or not.
You won't know any of this until Apple gives units to users (or maybe SOME journalists who aren't too distracted by "OOOO, NEW SHINY APPLE TOY". You're an absolute fool if you "pre-order" this thing.
Please help metamoderate.
not enough DRM in it.
I've got a Nokia 9300 that pretty much rocks the party.
I've got ssh and rdp clients for admin work, mp3 player, removable flash media, email, sms, good back-up restore functionality and works in linux too. There's even an OSS gui toolkit on sourceforge.
No, it didn't come from the Jobs Reality Distortion Field, but it allows me to have a life when I'm on weekend support rotation.
FYI, it's available now.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
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
OS X is now EMBEDDED. Apple can now take their OS and use it to run a whole mountain of consumer electronic devices.
So how long till they announce HD based widescreen iPods.
Andy
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.