Former Apple Engineer Gives Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Original iPhone Introduction

WestonHarvey1 · Oct 4, 2013

This is par for the course with any new software product presentation. The stakes are almost never this high, is all.

I worked on a software product in the 90s that was demoed to a big customer while still in development. It worked well but was prone to sudden crashes. The guy who demoed the application simply opened about 5 windows on top of each other, so that if the one he was demoing crashed, it would just disappear showing the one behind it.

kobalap · Oct 4, 2013

slapppy said:
True...No such thing as a final finished product during presentation...specially a brand new never before built by said company. Even presentation notes, slide shows are all changed in the last minute. Sometimes during the presentation. Thats some serious engineering or hacking feat that they did to make it all work so seemless...

In fact, knowing how not ready the product was, makes the presentation all the more remarkable.

The margin of error was basically zero for those guys. People who have never had to do a presentation + product demo will never know what was accomplished that day by that team.

dojoman · Oct 4, 2013

If it weren't for Original iPhone we'd still be carrying flip phones. Say what you will but iPhone is the one that started.

notjustjay · Oct 4, 2013

Tones2 said:
Yep, Apple never cheats on anything.

That's not cheating. Lots of companies give demos using unfinished prototypes that might still be in early, unstable software releases.

Cheating would be if the demo looked flawless and then the delivered product, in your hands, was as crashy and unstable as described.

Cheating would be (as Microsoft was known to do), demoing a product, then telling your customers to hold off on their imminent purchase on, say, a Blackberry phone, because yours is "just around the corner" and will be so much better -- only to then delay it, or strip the final release of a lot of the features that were demo'd.

MacFather · Oct 4, 2013

Deleted.

Mike MA · Oct 4, 2013

MacRumors said:
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.

This probably explains why Steve had that piece of paper lying above the iPhone which he occasionally seemed to reference.

But nevertheless a great keynote by him, especially when knowing about the difficulties and he still was insisting on a live performance. Pretty cool!

bbeagle · Oct 4, 2013

Out company creates web sites. I can't tell you how many clients come to us wanting a web site, and in the presentation of 'why they should choose us' we show them a mock up of a website for them. It looks gorgeous. It might show current weather (hard-coded to 72 degrees and sunny), tweets (pulled the day before cut-and-pasted in), or like us facebook buttons (that don't work - are just images).

The iPhone presentation was a DEMO, and corners are cut. Same as when our company does DEMOS. The final product better work and not use smoke and mirrors is all though.

slapppy · Oct 4, 2013

kobalap said:
In fact, knowing how not ready the product was, makes the presentation all the more remarkable.

The margin of error was basically zero for those guys. People who have never had to do a presentation + product demo will never know what was accomplished that day by that team.

Haha...so true. I won't give away who I worked for, since the new "Gods" there are *******s... I remember doing 24 hours consecutive days and sleeping behind stage many times... I miss those crazy days when I was young!

bchery21 · Oct 4, 2013

Jobs appeared very excited to showcase the iPhone, not an ounce of nervousness on his face. According to this article so much should of gone wrong...

rei101 · Oct 4, 2013

Well, Apple cheats at their presentations but delivers a great product.

Microsoft delivers their products totally incomplete!

notjustjay · Oct 4, 2013

dojoman said:
If it weren't for Original iPhone we'd still be carrying flip phones. Say what you will but iPhone is the one that started.

I doubt it. Yes, Apple was the one that started it. But if it wasn't Apple, it would have been someone else. Palm maybe - look at the Treo smartphone, given a few more generations of product development, it would have essentially become the same thing.

A lot of the Apple faithful (I am carefully avoiding the use of another f-word) seem to think that if not for the Macintosh in 1984, we'd all still be using monochrome CRTs and typing in DOS commands. Like nobody else on the planet would possibly have invented a graphical windowing operating system if Apple hadn't done it. But that's simply not true. If ~~Henry Ford~~ Karl Benz hadn't invented the car, do you think we'd still all be riding horses and carriages, or might someone else have come up with the idea?

Tones2 · Oct 4, 2013

notjustjay said:
That's not cheating. Lots of companies give demos using unfinished prototypes that might still be in early, unstable software releases.

Cheating would be if the demo looked flawless and then the delivered product, in your hands, was as crashy and unstable as described.

Cheating would be (as Microsoft was known to do), demoing a product, then telling your customers to hold off on their imminent purchase on, say, a Blackberry phone, because yours is "just around the corner" and will be so much better -- only to then delay it, or strip the final release of a lot of the features that were demo'd.

It's definitely a gray area to me. Presenting a demo that represents a flawlessly working product when in fact that flawlessness is staged and the product cannot operate like that currently does ring ofdeceipt to me, whether it's common practice or not. If Apple wa upfront and just say "this is a protype" and not working excatly correctly but will with the final product, that would be more truthful. I' not sure if the final product actually operated exactly like the demo, but if it did I guess then it was OK. But still...

notjustjay · Oct 4, 2013

Tones2 said:
Presenting a demo that represents a flawlessly working product when in fact that flawlessness is staged and the product cannot operate like that currently does ring ofdeceipt to me, whether it's common practice or not. If Apple wa upfront and just say "this is a protype" and not working excatly correctly but will with the final product, that would be more truthful. I' not sure if the final product actually operated exactly like the demo, but if it did I guess then it was OK. But still...

The article mentions "no plan B" but what you just said is exactly what would have happened if the prototype had crashed. Steve would have just said "Well, it's a prototype", everyone chuckles, the keynote goes on. It has certainly happened before.

kobalap · Oct 4, 2013

bchery21 said:
Jobs appeared very excited to showcase the iPhone, not an ounce of nervousness on his face. According to this article so much should of gone wrong...

Magicians do this all the time.

----------

Tones2 said:
It's definitely a gray area to me. Presenting a demo that represents a flawlessly working product when in fact that flawlessness is staged and the product cannot operate like that currently does ring ofdeceipt to me, whether it's common practice or not. If Apple wa upfront and just say "this is a protype" and not working excatly correctly but will with the final product, that would be more truthful. I' not sure if the final product actually operated exactly like the demo, but if it did I guess then it was OK. But still...

He showed you a vision of what you would get in your hands in 6 months.

And that was exactly what you got 6 months later. He did not promise you anything he did not deliver.

ineedamac · Oct 4, 2013

MacFan782040 said:
"An iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator...are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device. And we are calling it iPhone."

(That still gives me chills)

Greatest line ever.

OriginalMacRat · Oct 4, 2013

Rogifan said:
What's interesting in this story is Jobs and Ive originally wanted an all aluminum phone, until engineers brought them back to reality. Makes you wonder if their original vision could have been something like the HTC One...

iPhone 5

aardwolf · Oct 4, 2013

I remember giving a presentation to a room full of the highest people at FedEx Services. The highest people at the table reported directly to Fred Smith. The software we were working on was just a bit glitchy, although we had worked out most of the bugs. At the very last minute, my VP made me develop slides with screenshots vs. giving a live demo.

alent1234 · Oct 4, 2013

notjustjay said:
I doubt it. Yes, Apple was the one that started it. But if it wasn't Apple, it would have been someone else. Palm maybe - look at the Treo smartphone, given a few more generations of product development, it would have essentially become the same thing.

A lot of the Apple faithful (I am carefully avoiding the use of another f-word) seem to think that if not for the Macintosh in 1984, we'd all still be using monochrome CRTs and typing in DOS commands. Like nobody else on the planet would possibly have invented a graphical windowing operating system if Apple hadn't done it. But that's simply not true. If Henry Ford hadn't invented the car, do you think we'd still all be riding horses and carriages, or might someone else have come up with the idea?

henry ford didn't invent the car
he started to mass produce it on an assembly line instead of custom building it. cars had been around for almost 50 years before the model-t ford came out

Tones2 · Oct 4, 2013

dojoman said:
If it weren't for Original iPhone we'd still be carrying flip phones. Say what you will but iPhone is the one that started.

Oh come on. Before the iPhone was even conceived, I had many smart phones with touch screens, apps, storage, etc. In fact, when I listened to this first Apple smartphone presentation, I was actually underwhelmed - the first iPhone could NOT run any 3rd party apps, no customization at all and had no 3G, three things that were REALLY important at the time.

I think I had an HTC Tilt (or Tilt 2) at the time of the iPhone 1 anouncement, and it had a FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE, Microsoft OS, a touch screen, 3G, could run 3rd party apps purchased from various vendors, a replaceable battery, file system and Micro-sd storage (not 100% sure about the latter). The iPhone to me seemed pretty old school at the time. What it DID have was a wonderful MULTI-TOUCH screen which no one had. That was the only thing revolutionary about the otherwise ho-hum iPhone 1. Now the iPhone 3G is where it got interesting and is what sold me initially to the iPhone, although the initial OS on the iPhone 3G crashed like crazy and bricked a LOT of phones for the first month or so. After that it was fine, though.

err404 · Oct 4, 2013

Honestly this isn't unusual. Developers are expected to provide demos of unfinished products all the time. All they had to do was follow a script that was known to work, and cross their fingers that the radio stayed online. if the radio failed, they could have jumped to a video demo while a fresh device was brought on-stage. I assume they had several devices on stand-by just in case.

/dev/toaster · Oct 4, 2013

notjustjay said:
I doubt it. Yes, Apple was the one that started it. But if it wasn't Apple, it would have been someone else. Palm maybe - look at the Treo smartphone, given a few more generations of product development, it would have essentially become the same thing.

A lot of the Apple faithful (I am carefully avoiding the use of another f-word) seem to think that if not for the Macintosh in 1984, we'd all still be using monochrome CRTs and typing in DOS commands. Like nobody else on the planet would possibly have invented a graphical windowing operating system if Apple hadn't done it. But that's simply not true. If Henry Ford hadn't invented the car, do you think we'd still all be riding horses and carriages, or might someone else have come up with the idea?

Apple did what Palm had tried for many years. Carriers would NOT allow customers to download apps unless the developer paid a heavy license fee. They also customized the hell out of every single phone. Most of the time it was to cripple it or add their own hideous red interfaces. (Looking at you Verizon)

Sure, someone would have cracked it in time. All in all, Apple did what others had failed to so many times over.

Look at Microsoft and tablets. They tried forever to make a tablet that worked. Apple created the magic recipe for everyone to follow.

elistan · Oct 4, 2013

Such an awesome device. I'm glad I still have mine. I even have my iOS 7 home screen layout modeled after iOS 1 through 3, since it's what I was used to for so long.

Rogifan · Oct 4, 2013

Tones2 said:
Oh come on. Before the iPhone was even conceived, I had many smart phones with touch screens, apps, storage, etc. In fact, when I listened to this first Apple smartphone presentation, I was actually underwhelmed - the first iPhone could NOT run any 3rd party apps, no customization at all and had no 3G, three things that were REALLY important at the time.

I think I had an HTC Tilt (or Tilt 2) at the time of the iPhone 1 anouncement, and it had a FULLY CUSTOMIZABLE, Microsoft OS, a touch screen, 3G and could run 3rd party apps purchased from various vendors, a replaceable battery, file system and Micro-sd storage (not 100% sure about the latter). The iPhone to me seemed pretty old school at the time. What it DID have was a wonderful MULTI-TOUCH screen which no one had. That was the only thing revolutionary about the otherwise ho-hum iPhone 1. Now the iPhone 3G is where it got interesting and is what sold me initially to the iPhone, although the initial OS on the iPhone 3G crashed like crazy and bricked a LOT of phones for the first month or so. After that it was fine, though.

Yep multi touch was the game changer. Looking back on it it's amazing all the "smart" festures the original iPhone didn't have.

BaldiMac · Oct 4, 2013

Tones2 said:
What it DID have was a wonderful MULTI-TOUCH screen which no one had. That was the only thing revolutionary about the otherwise ho-hum iPhone 1.

And the OS.
And the web browser.
And the reduction of carrier control.
And the iTunes integration.
And...

kobalap · Oct 4, 2013

/dev/toaster said:
Apple did what Palm had tried for many years. Carriers would NOT allow customers to download apps unless the developer paid a heavy license fee. They also customized the hell out of every single phone. Most of the time it was to cripple it or add their own hideous red interfaces. (Looking at you Verizon)

Sure, someone would have cracked it in time. All in all, Apple did what others had failed to so many times over.

Look at Microsoft and tablets. They tried forever to make a tablet that worked. Apple created the magic recipe for everyone to follow.

I had a palm treo before i had an iPhone 1. No one will ever convince me that someone else had the smart phone figured out before Apple did.

Former Apple Engineer Gives Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Original iPhone Introduction

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