2023-05-21 13:15:02
News JVTech “Phones suck”: Apple CEO didn’t want to make smartphones. It was the idea of the iPhone that convinced him
If Apple is today one of the companies that sell the most smartphones in the world, nothing suggested that this was going to be the case before the release of the first iPhone. For the simple and good reason that Steve Jobs was not convinced by telephones at all…
iPhones might never have existed
Making a millionaire decision is never easy. Steve Jobs will always be the name we associate with the iPhone. But there was a time when Apple’s most legendary product was nothing more than a very vague project or rather one of many timid ideas that might have ended up in the back of a drawer.. There’s a book that vividly recounts the strained relationship between the ex-CEO of Apple and the iPhone: The One Device : The Secret History of the iPhoneby Brian Merchant, reflects some of the more curious details, such as the constant contradiction of investors and managers and opposition from Steve Jobs himself to the production of this revolutionary product.
The iPhone started as an experimental project undertaken without his (Steve Jobs) knowledge and became an official project at the behest of his management team and was designed by a brilliant and inscrutable team of programmers and hardware experts. Brian Merchant
According to the journalist and author, Steve Jobs hesitated on several occasions when faced with the concept of a mobile phone, going so far as to say that “phones suck”. But in the end, it seems that the teams followed the rule of: “If you want to do something, do it well”.
Apple: an initial rejection that will lead to a legendary product
Publicly, Steve Jobs didn’t want to make a phone, because he judged that Apple would not perform well “going through the orifices to reach the users. » Par « orifices » it referred to mobile carriers like Verizon and AT&T who had compiled a list of phones that might access their networks. Early Smartphones Were Rugged, Heavy, and Aesthetically Awful, but with enormous potential from an engineer’s point of view. According to Brian Merchant, Steve Jobs lacked the visual support to buy into the idea: “He needed to see an interface that was intuitive and exciting for lay users before he was convinced that Apple should enter the phone market. »
The reality is that the first iPhone is a pharaonic feat of engineering. A long-distance race where all the components, from the battery to the very resistant screen, had to be up to the challenge. To realize, under the first model hide more than 200 licenses and patents associated with the product. However, the embryo of the first iPhone took years of iteration. There came a time when the vast majority of the engineering team, led by Andy Grignon, tried to convince Steve Jobs that an Apple phone was a great idea. And despite that, the CEO at the time continued to opposewhich had the effect of tightening the rope and forcing the teams to rethink the idea.
Michael Bell was the key, a man of confidence and knowledge. He began his career at Motorola developing mobile operating systems and wireless technologies. He was also the main architect of MotoMagx and led the development of the Motorola A760. In 1991, he joined Apple and for years was a key figure in the development of the iPhone and the first Apple TV, until his departure to Palm in December 2007. But that’s another story. On November 7, 2004, Michael Bell therefore sent an e-mail explaining the reasons why Apple should embark on the creation of a telephone. One of the fundamental ideas was precisely in the user interface, which would end up being imitated once more and once more. Steve Jobs accepted and the rest is history.
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