"A product manager slammed the door to her office so hard that the handle bent and locked her in"... geez... not sure i wanna work for Apple anymore... 
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The Origins and Development of the iPhone
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Simply incredible. I remember reading an article a while back in Newsweek (circa 2005) in which the author claimed that mobile phones with music capability would soon kill the iPod. It shows Jobs' genius by the fact that he had the foresight to plan for this ahead of time. (it also shows just how wrong that article was about iPods, but that's another story).
Yes it will the big question is which one 08, 09 or 10?
I guess the answer is the one it's ready for.
Does two cores running at 1.6GHz count?
Not to mention they said they could "make a similar interface for a phone". That means the iPhone interface really comes from the Apple Tablet
I can't wait for them to announce it! My guess is MWSF '09 but I hope it is next week And I wonder if iPhone 2 will have a new Multi-Touch screen like with the pressure stuff Apple is working on since they had been creating the current iPhone/Tablet screen for years.I guess I can cut them a little slack now about the underwhelming iPhone updates so far. I had no idea how much work all of it really truly is. I'm sure now that they have it more solid they will be adding the features etc. And who knows what they are going crazy working on for 5 years down the road now
I love Apple 
Very interesting. It's always cool to see behind-the-scenes of anything, just to see how the people were when they were making it, how much it took out of them, or what a typical day would be like for them. I liked the bit about engineers quitting, catching up on their sleep, and rejoining days later. And it's always way scarier when someone who usually looks furious when they yell to look incredibly calm but have every word pierce through you tenfold.
They don't expound very much on the Apple-Verizon negotiations, though. I would've liked to read more about how that fell through.
They don't expound very much on the Apple-Verizon negotiations, though. I would've liked to read more about how that fell through.
I can't believe how much money apple gets from these things. $400+$240 per contract?? That's WITHOUT accessories. What was their estimated cost to build, 200? (really stretching the memory on that one, not at all confident).
I'm so frustrated with our cellphone industry in the U.S. Compared to the rest of the world, we're so backwards and are being abused left and right by the carriers. Why can't I buy a phone and THEN pick my carrier based on if my phone is GSM or CDMA? Makes no sense. I think the cellphone marketing strategy should be for a set fee. Ie, you pay $40/month and that includes all data, texts, and as many minutes, within the U.S., as you can use. I don't get all the 'minutes' crap.
I'm so frustrated with our cellphone industry in the U.S. Compared to the rest of the world, we're so backwards and are being abused left and right by the carriers. Why can't I buy a phone and THEN pick my carrier based on if my phone is GSM or CDMA? Makes no sense. I think the cellphone marketing strategy should be for a set fee. Ie, you pay $40/month and that includes all data, texts, and as many minutes, within the U.S., as you can use. I don't get all the 'minutes' crap.
$150 million was roughly one order of magnitude more than the typical cell phone development program ran at the time. A large chuck of that $150 million, however, probably went into capital expenditure for all the new test equipment needed, not just for the development labs, but for the production line(s), too. Apple will be able to amortize some of those costs over the next couple of iPhone product as the equipment won't change, e.g., those robotic antenna test chambers are extremely expensive to initially set up and calibrate (even Motorola has just three of them at their main cell phone development site: they're run round-the-clock), but after that they just need periodic re-calibration and hardware & software updates.
[loser]Apple is really giving you a big Steve Screwjob, since it only cost 200$ to make the handset that they sell for 400$ [/loser]
This is one of the reasons the handset cost so much - R&D.
This is one of the reasons the handset cost so much - R&D.
Apple may be an extreme case, but I can personally testify that when there are rapidly-approaching delivery deadlines and large sums of non-recoverable funds invested in the development of a product, it's pretty much par for the course."A product manager slammed the door to her office so hard that the handle bent and locked her in"... geez... not sure i wanna work for Apple anymore...
The current phone industry reminds me of PCs and what would happen if the Mac never came out and everyone only used DOS, CP/M, and all the other command line systems of the 80's. I guess they are the only ones with a vision, that is sad.
Nice. Apple more than recovered their R&D costs just from the amount they got from AT&T. The extra amount paid by the early adopters (like me), the AT&T income, and the profit from each unit gives them a very nice cushion. They can cut costs on an iPhone mini/nano and they also have a lot of room for price wars and contract renegotiations with AT&T.
Any other company is going to have to charge more for their competing devices in order to recover their own R&D costs, likely making them cost more than the iPhone -- and have the shortcomings and warts that the iPhone had at introduction, six months or a year prior. So it'll be like they're coming out with iPhone knock-offs, a year later, and at a higher price than the iPhone. If these companies cut their price to try and steal the iPhone's thunder, they just plain won't make enough money to sustain its profitability.
Perhaps that was the reason for the "early adopter" tax and the draconian terms with AT&T -- recover the R&D early while the competition is still reeling, then provide a cushion to remain not only the most powerful and attractive offering, but also reasonably-priced.
Any other company is going to have to charge more for their competing devices in order to recover their own R&D costs, likely making them cost more than the iPhone -- and have the shortcomings and warts that the iPhone had at introduction, six months or a year prior. So it'll be like they're coming out with iPhone knock-offs, a year later, and at a higher price than the iPhone. If these companies cut their price to try and steal the iPhone's thunder, they just plain won't make enough money to sustain its profitability.
Perhaps that was the reason for the "early adopter" tax and the draconian terms with AT&T -- recover the R&D early while the competition is still reeling, then provide a cushion to remain not only the most powerful and attractive offering, but also reasonably-priced.
Nitpick
"and its unique affect on the wireless industry."
should be
"and its unique effect on the wireless industry."
(now I can sleep)
"and its unique affect on the wireless industry."
should be
"and its unique effect on the wireless industry."
(now I can sleep)
Got it in one. Putting a computer next to an extremely sensitive radio receiver (which is any cell phone) and keeping both from interfering with each other is still very much a black art, especially on the radio side of things since you now have potentially three transmitters (cellular, Wifi, Bluetooth) and four receivers (cellular, Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS) operating simultaneously. Throw in a digital camera (got to tune the auto white- and color-balance for the lens stack used), a metal case (more work for the radio engineers and a magnet for static discharges), USB 2.0 port (sitting right next to the antennas, of all places!), and a truly huge slew of carrier (AT&T, Orange, T-Mobile, and O2 for the iPhone), industry (CTIA), federal (FCC), and international (GSM Association) standards that a phone needs to meet before it can ship, and it's a minor miracle that these things frequently ship on time.
Apple as Carrier...
"...Apple was also prepared to buy wireless minutes wholesale and become a de facto carrier itself..."
If only they had stuck to this... The one thing that puts me off the iPhone is carrier choice.
Imagine Apple as Software / Hardware developer of the iPhone AND the carrier - could only be a good thing. Yes, they would have to spend more on call centre support etc for the device, and the wider reach of retail outlets of the carriers gives them better sales coverage - but there are other companies out there doing it successfully.
It makes me wonder why they would want to introduce a 3rd party?, especially greedy carriers who don't have consumer experience at their core...
"...Apple was also prepared to buy wireless minutes wholesale and become a de facto carrier itself..."
If only they had stuck to this... The one thing that puts me off the iPhone is carrier choice.
Imagine Apple as Software / Hardware developer of the iPhone AND the carrier - could only be a good thing. Yes, they would have to spend more on call centre support etc for the device, and the wider reach of retail outlets of the carriers gives them better sales coverage - but there are other companies out there doing it successfully.
It makes me wonder why they would want to introduce a 3rd party?, especially greedy carriers who don't have consumer experience at their core...
"They built a prototype of a phone, embedded on an iPod, that used the clickwheel as a dialer, but it could only select and dial numbers not surf the Net."
Hahaha! I was thinking along the same lines. It reminded me of this spoof mock up I had seen before the iPhone came out when everyone was making their mock ups of what they thought it would look like.
That was a great article. Thanks for the link MacRumors! It's always interesting to see the inner workings of innovative companies like Apple and what the process is.
Great read. I started giggling when reading about the clickwheel mockup that was made. For some reason I kept imagining an alternate reality version of the iphone that used a click wheel to create the world's most advanced rotary phone.
And come on folks, don't go betting the rent money on a touch screen mac next week just because wired mentioned "tablet" in an apple article
Hahaha! I was thinking along the same lines. It reminded me of this spoof mock up I had seen before the iPhone came out when everyone was making their mock ups of what they thought it would look like.
That was a great article. Thanks for the link MacRumors! It's always interesting to see the inner workings of innovative companies like Apple and what the process is.
Attachments
Apple had the benefit of designing a cell phone tabula rasa. The other cell phone manufacturers are very much like Microsoft and Windows: they've spent decades developing constantly evolving hardware and software, and typically look to leverage previous work as much as possible. Backwards compatibility -- in both hardware and software -- is thus a serious plus, profit-wise, but it can result in rather slow progress in certain areas.
There's no practical reason other manufacturers can't take the same approach Apple did, but it's a huge financial risk: what if the initial product doesn't sell well? Few companies have the cash on hand that Apple, much less Microsoft have to absorb a serious bomb, or a singular visionary leader to drive development.
I definitely agree. That would have been so nice to see Apple as the carrier. If that had been the case, I would probably have an iPhone provided it was a reasonable rate. As things are though, I would not go with AT&T.
For Apple to sell a single "world-phone" and not multiple versions of the same phone, it was never going to have very many choices in domestic carriers since it was limited to GSM. That immediately narrowed the choices down to AT&T/Cingular and T-Mobile.
Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) have a spotty track record. Remember ESPN's? Disney's? Amp'd? Virgin Mobile is one of the very few successful ones. And MVNOs still run on the same network as their parent carriers, and thus share the exact same limitations. This way, Apple only has to worry about the hardware and software, while its carrier partners deal with all the network-related issues.