Slashdot Mirror
The Story of the Original iPhone's Development
jds91md writes "Today's NY Times delivers a great story of the development of the iPhone by Apple. It focuses on the events during the leadup to Steve Jobs taking the stage with shockingly buggy prototypes and pulling off the show that is now history. 'Only about a hundred iPhones even existed, all of them of varying quality. Some had noticeable gaps between the screen and the plastic edge; others had scuff marks on the screen. And the software that ran the phone was full of bugs. The iPhone could play a section of a song or a video, but it couldn’t play an entire clip reliably without crashing. It worked fine if you sent an e-mail and then surfed the Web. If you did those things in reverse, however, it might not. Hours of trial and error had helped the iPhone team develop what engineers called “the golden path,” a specific set of tasks, performed in a specific way and order, that made the phone look as if it worked.' One of the big problems was the phone's connectivity. The man in charge of the iPhone's radios, Andy Grignon, had to deal with Jobs's anger when rehearsals didn't go well. Grignon said, 'Very rarely did I see him become completely unglued — it happened, but mostly he just looked at you and very directly said in a very loud and stern voice, "You are [expletive] up my company," or, "If we fail, it will be because of you." He was just very intense. And you would always feel an inch tall.'"
The whole story is a great testament to engineers, in that (a) it's incredible they could have made the demo work that well, and (b) Apple actually shipped the thing described in that story just six months later - and it was basically pretty functional and solid.
Even for you Apple Haters out there that have zero interest in reading something like this - well anyone who is an engineer should read it, and if you can't bring yourself to do that at least read the very last paragraph which is fun for everyone.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"The 55 miles from Campbell to San Francisco make for one of the nicest commutes anywhere. The journey mostly zips along the Junipero Serra Freeway, a grand and remarkably empty highway" Spend some time commuting on I-280 (the Junipero Serra Freeway) and you'll soon realize that it's clogged with people doing 5 mph under the speed limit in the fast lane...
copy and paste
...perhaps you shouldn't be demoing it to the public yet.
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Every engineering failiure starts with an managment failiure
The word "innovation" does not mean "invention." What you're describing, however, does fit the definition of innovation.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
...cunt. I don't know why people revere this workplace bully so much.
I don't know why this surprises anyone. EVERYTHING I have ever designed had to be demoed before it was ready, sometimes a year or more before it was ready. Usually we could arrange to have the actual engineers (me or someone on my team) do the demo, and we always tred to practice to insure we could demo only things that worked. When the boss had to do the demo we always had extensive rehearsals, and emphasized that he must perform the steps exactly as we practiced or bad things would likely happen. On some projects hardware was so late we had to build simulators and hide them under the table so the software would have something to control/monitor. I believe this sort of demo is very common in any sort of R&D environment including big name companies demoing new products/technologies for the first time. Every demo of an early prototype will crash or show unexpected behavior at some point during the demo, the key to the impression it makes is how well the demonstrator handles the issue - getting mad in a public demo is never a good idea. Usually you just tell someone else to file a bug report, and move on - explaining that there is, of course, still some polishing to do; or use it as an opportunity to explain the way you work with customers to resolve such issues - leaving the impression that you engineered the failure in order to fit that topic in to the presentation. My ex boss was a master of that technique. Even in my current job where my products are for internal use I am frequently asked for demos before products are ready, the difference being I don't have to offer smooth explanations when things go wrong, usually I just have to offer an estimate of when it might be done.
It's a difference between seeing the forest (a well designed product that people will use) instead of the collection of trees (stand alone features that didn't work well together).
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Ford didn't invent the car either, but the Model T was certainly innovative and redefined the automotive industry. The same can be said for the iPhone.
I just rewatched Steve's iPhone demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_m2F_ph_uU
When he clicks on The Office and says, "Let's watch a TV show", Pirates of the Caribbean plays.
The next chapter in the The Time Traveling Adventures of Reginald Smitherington, Klutz: In Reginald's previous episode he dropped in on Preston Tucker and helped him with the debut of his revolutionary car, mistakenly connecting the fuel line to the distributor and starting a fire.
This time Reginald helps Steve Jobs improve upon his perfectly assembled and functioning mobile phone, by introducing some last minute code, to make the presentation even more spiffy...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
never flaming disasters carefully masked.
It wasn't a flaming disaster though, just a lot of components that all worked pretty well already, but very very unstable - especially in combination.
That is very, very far in the live demo world from a "flaming disaster". Flaming disaster would have been a browser that could only parse simple HTML, mail client that ate emails, phone that failed to dial ever, etc.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No, the original iphone was made by the Brazilian telephone company. Apple just ripped off the name without doing any research.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Android phone riddled with malware and spyware? Not my experience. Are you just typing in the garbage you're paid to type in?
But considering how inflexible the first version of the OS was, not impossible.
If you look at the jailbreaking stuff from launch time though, the platform itself was not really inflexible at all. Many of the classes iOS developers know and use today were there at launch. The device itself have a limited set of applications but underneath it really was running a scaled down OSX and using ObjectiveC for applications just as the desktop did...
I totally agree with you on the need for groups to be able to work together being a reason why the announced it so far ahead of launch (comparatively). They got it as far as they could (really farther) with the left hand not being able to know what the right was doing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
People who are dicks are dicks no matter what you are doing.
People with intense focus are only dicks if you are getting something wrong.
There is a big difference - and the reason why people were willing to work so hard for jobs where no-one would ever work that hard for a real dick.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But that difference didn't exist. All the smartphones at the time had pretty much the same features in the same combinations as the iPhone. A Palm-based phone around the time the iPhone came out already was pretty much like an iPhone: same kind of launcher, same productivity apps, same kind of syncing, music player, online market, dock, sync cable, etc. The main difference between iPhone and the rest was not innovation or combination of features, it was appearance, design, and (a moderate increase in) usability.
And it all lead to that moment Steve Jobs announced the iPhone to the world, and started the downward fall of Blackberry.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/the-inside-story-of-why-blackberry-is-failing/article14563602/?page=all
No. They had low resolution displays and was pretty much an upgraded Palm Pilot with a cell phone built-in and a blackberry like keyboard that made life easier since graffiti required a stylus to input well. I had one. I also had to work with Nokia's offerings. There were absolutely no comparisons between these devices and the very first iPhone. The windows mobile version of the treo was a little nicer, but still had a low resolution display and had very little in common with the iPhone.
There is a reason the smart phone market didn't take off until the introduction of the iPhone.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Jobs got through a long and involved demo without a crash nor even a glitch. Compare this to so many Microsoft presentations, where you know good and damned well they put every bit as much effort into finding a "golden path" for the demo, but it crashes ANYWAY!
IOS 7 is just NOW getting the palm card-style interface as a task manager. My wife saw it and even said 'o it works like my Palm does'. When iphone came out i had a palm Pre as well, and it wasnt until Iphone 4s that i thought Apple had a worthy replacement for my Palm.
Good-bye
I'm sure what Nokia and Palm feel real good right at the moment, now that you've finally given them the credit they deserve.
Hey dumbass. They've been dominating the market BY REVENUE for YEARS now.
What disappoints me about all the stories of Jobs's excellence is it's apparent that, because I'm unable (and unwilling) to work 80 hours per week, I'll never be part of something amazing. Seems like no one has ever taken their kids to soccer practice *and* changed the world.
Except they weren't really "Apple innovations". Apple did a great job with the design and engineering of the iPhone, and they popularized these ideas and interfaces. But the innovations themselves largely came from Palm, Nokia, and a whole bunch of startups.
In theory, yes, Palm and Nokia could have come up with an iPhone before Apple, but the fact was they didn't.
I have used the Palm V since 2001, and I have been waiting for them to come up with a good PDA phone for years until I finally gave up on them and bought an iPhone instead.
You could have all the great ingredients on your hand, but if you cannot cook up a good dish, you can't say you are a great cook because you "could have" made a great dish, and that other cook who did just copied your ingredients.
Jon Rubinstein, Apple’s top hardware executive at the time, says there were even long discussions about how big the phone would be. “I was actually pushing to do two sizes — to have a regular iPhone and an iPhone mini like we had with the iPod. I thought one could be a smartphone and one could be a dumber phone. But we never got any traction on the small one, and in order to do one of these projects, you really need to put all your wood behind one arrow.”
Wow, they really need to revisit this idea now. The world has changed since 2007, and Apple now has a lot more money, resources and competition from a range of Android phones, big and small. I personally prefer the "small" 4 inch screens, but I know that most of the market wants gigantic phablets. It made sense back in 2007 to have all the wood behind one arrow, but now they've just got all their eggs in one basket.
There were some full touch screen versions, and 320x320 isn't "low resolution" (compared to the iPhone's 320x480). You didn't have to use the stylus, there were touch keyboards, although the hard keyboards were nicer than iPhone for a long time.
Apple has never been the dominant smart phone vendor, so they certainly didn't cause it "to take off"; they simply grew with a market that has grown exponentially since the early Palm/Nokia days.
I blame them for the smartphone-fueled dumbing of the world, and I blame them for the tablet fueled dumbing of PCs. Both are 'innovations' by apple.
The people who actually created those technologies may feel better at least.
I know one of the engineers who worked on that. He was a quiet, competent guy, and didn't like being screamed at by Jobs. He quit right after the iPhone shipped.
The revolution was how they were built so they could be cheap enough for ordinary people to afford them.
Somehow, I don't think comparing the Model T to the iPhone is quite appropriate.
Not my experience. Are you just typing in the garbage you're paid to type in?
Yes, they are.
Social Media Marketing companies like Burson Marsteller, Waggener Edstrom and others have teams posting FUD and moderating in all tech sites on behalf of Apple, Microsoift, Facebook etc.
And you're right:
"Contrary to what you’ve heard, Android is almost impenetrable to malware
Until now, Google hasn’t talked about malware on Android because it did not have the data or analytic platform to back its security claims. But that changed dramatically today when Google’s Android Security chief Adrian Ludwig reported data showing that less than an estimated 0.001% of app installations on Android are able to evade the system’s multi-layered defenses and cause harm to users. Android, built on an open innovation model, has quietly resisted the locked down, total control model spawned by decades of Windows malware. "
http://qz.com/131436/contrary-to-what-youve-heard-android-is-almost-impenetrable-to-malware/
Of course, Slashdot doen't consider this news bcause it's sponsors haven't paid it to.
I pick up all my toys and go home. I never have and never will need a job that bad.
The Treo 180g was the only fullscreen pilot phone made prior to the iPhone and it had a 160x160 resolution. Palm didn't introduce another fullscreen phone until the Palm Pre series in 2009.
While most of their models were 160x160 resolution, and the windows mobile versions were 240x240 resolution. The Palm Treo's that had 320x320 resolution just prior to introduction to the iPhone were the Treo 650, Treo 700p, and Treo 680. The 650 was plagued with filesystem problems, random restarts, piss poor microphone, and a weird buzzing in the background of conversations. The Treo 700p was more stable but Palm didn't make a GSM version. The Treo 680 was the GSM successor to the 650.
All three models had the following issues. The lack of WiFi drove people nuts because the regular PDAs had WiFi and wireless data was very slow. WiFi would have helped a lot. The UI took up a lot of screen space, since it was as if they just scaled up the applications designed for 160x160 resolutions to the 320x320 screen. Finally the screen size was a small square due to the built in keyboard.
From the article:
"The story was that Steve wanted a device that he could use to read e-mail while on the toilet — that was the extent of the product spec".
I had no idea I was taking part in such an important use case.
If you're making anything more than a quick, throwaway prototype it shouldn't be riddled with so many bugs that it'll cause months of additional work
If you're making anything of any complexity it WILL be riddled with lots of bugs well before release. As it was, it didn't seem to cause "months of additional work" because the work that was done after was the work that was simply required to finish.
You are living in a dream if you think you can develop a product without at some stages having a lot of bugs.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley