About iphone history

I phone history

I phone product comes along that changes

everything today Apple is going to

reinvent the phone here it is why in the

world would Apple Computer want to jump

into the handset market with so much

competition we use all the handsets out

there it's really frustrating it's a

category that that needs to be

reinvented with over 2 billion units

sold the iPhone is the most influential

product of all time it created the

modern smartphone and turned the device

into an instant gateway to the world

everything you desire in the palm of

your hand it changed everything but

where did it come from if it wasn't a

sudden idea from Steve Jobs who actually

came up with the idea who are the people

that built it and what are their stories

with the most recent release of the

iPhone it's easy for many people to

forget just how revolutionary it once

was today we're gonna see how it all

began and how the pressure of doing the

impossible cost some people their

marriage and their health this video

will include my exclusive interview at

kenka gender one of the pioneers of the

original iPhone he worked directly with

Steve Jobs on the project this is the

secret history of thE iphone

to begin our story we have to go back

he early 2000 at this time

human-computer interaction was a 

before smart devices manipulating

digital objects was a chore in the early

2000s zooming in on an image usually

meant clicking on a menu selecting the

zoom option and then selecting the

amount you wanted to zoom in by how we

zoom in on an image today couldn't be

more different we can simply pinch a

screen and manipulate it with our

fingers back then such interactions

weren't obvious and only became possible

with touchscreens touchscreens existed

back then but they were predominantly

resistive touch that's the kind of

screen where you have to use a lot of

force to touch think ATM screens or

information screens at train stations

and airports on smaller screens

resistive touch is inexact and

frustrating in the 90s Apple tried to

use resistive touch in a device called

the Newton but it failed before even

dreaming of a device like the iPhone

this was the first problem that had to

be solved by 2007 the world was looking

for a new way to approach the mobile

phone they just needed a company to be

in the right place at the right time

with the right product he may be

surprised to find out that the first

seeds of the iPhone came not from Apple

but from a small company in Delaware

called finger works founded in 1998 by

Wayne Westerman finger works had figured

out how to use a different type of

technology effectively it was called

capacitive multi-touch it was fast

responsive precise and most importantly

smart enough to recognize multiple

fingers and what they were trying to do

I reached out to Wayne for an interview

but unfortunately after his company was

bought by Apple in 2005 he was whisked

away and sworn to secrecy

he couldn't give me any interviews about

his work in the early 2000s finger works

released a trackpad called the ire

gesture it helped people with wrist

injuries to easily use a computer

without aggravating their injury Wayne

westerman the founder of finger works

had suffered from a wrist condition

himself sometimes he couldn't tie more

than a page without his wrist

instead of despairing this condition

motivated him to innovate new solutions

for his university research paper and

this resulted in the finger works

technology Wayne even wrote a simple AI

program to help the system understand

the differences between accidental and

intentional touches when gestures were

performed the pet would interpret them

and turn the movements into computer

shortcuts like copy paste and scroll

Wayne Westerman and finger works would

play a critical role in the development

of the iPhone he is Ken Kashi anda to

talk about it a bit more my name is Ken

cash Enda and for many years I worked at

Apple from 2001 until 2017 in 2005 I was

asked to join the iPhone project I had

very good experience working with Wayne

but back at the beginning he had a

company called finger works which is an

independent company which Apple bought

apart for the technology and part to get

him because he was so talented

early on Steve Jobs hated the idea of

Apple making the phone he was concerned

about a lack of focus in the company the

precise issue that he'd solved on his

return to Apple in 1997 Steve Jobs

believed that a phone would only serve a

niche gink market cell phones at the

time were not the easiest to use so you

can understand why it wouldn't have

seemed bright for a trendy company like

Apple to get into this market as we all

know this sentiment would later change

meanwhile within Apple a group of

engineers and software designers would

meet weekly and what used to be a user

testing room there were all from

different departments but united by

curiosity and imagination they realized

that the web and digital revolution was

bringing richer and ever more complex

media to computers they realized that

clicking and typing may not be the best

way to navigate this new future what if

there was a more fluid way to interact

with content with this idea that would

start an informal human-computer

interaction group within Apple their

goal was to improve our interaction to a

technology one day in 2002 an Apple

employee by the name of Tina Huang

brought a finger works device to work

due to a wrist injury it was a black

rectangular pad that allowed the

seamless execution of complicated

computer tasks by just the use of her

fingers

the finger works touchpad was seen by

some curious Apple human interaction

employees and they use a testing room

because they're already thinking of new

ways to interact with technology to them

multi-touch interaction was an

interesting prospect inspired they

whipped up a demo to show Apple's

marketing department using the

multi-touch gesture pad and a projector

they displayed an interactive image of

Mac OS the idea was that you could use

finger based gestures on the pad to

manipulate elements of the desktop

software the demo was met with minimal

enthusiasm from the marketing team they

just didn't see a need for it and how

could they there was no product that

would really need it unfazed the

interaction group continued to have

weekly meetings to discuss the

possibilities johnny if' who was one of

the weekly members of the informal group

had also shown Steve Jobs the concept

initially Jobs rejected it he remarked

that would only be good for quote

reading something on a toilet in quote

Johnny I EV being of a sensitive nature

took the comment personally and was hurt

by it after some further thought however

Jobs warmed up to the idea and the

project would be greenlit but it became

riddled with problems and was ultimately

shut down

July of 2004 Steve Jobs had a surgery to

remove a tumor in his pancreas the

realization that he might have a limited

time on this planet helped accelerate

the timetable of what needed to be done

at Apple about a year ago I was

diagnosed with cancer I had a scan at

7:30 in the morning and it clearly

showed a tumor on my pancreas I didn't

even know what a pancreas was the

doctors told me this was almost

certainly a type of cancer that is

incurable and that I should expect to

live no longer than three to six months

I have looked in the mirror every

morning and asked myself if today were

the last day of my life would I want to

do what I am about to do today and

whenever the answer has been no for too

many days in a row I know I need to

change something your work is going to

fill a large part of your life and the

only way to be truly satisfied is to do

what you believe is great work and the

only way to do great work is to love

what you do if you haven't found it yet

keep looking and don't settle as with

all matters of the heart you'll know

when you find it

around this time Tony Fadell who led the

successful iPod division suggested two

jobs that it would be a good idea to put

Wi-Fi in an iPod while Jobs thought

about it Tony and his small team would

get to work on a new iPod a PDA hybrid

prototype the result was a disaster

imagine an iPod with modified software

allowing users to navigate the web with

a click wheel Jobs hated it he

understood his that it worked but

thought it was a rubbish experience Jobs

told Tony to try another wAy

in 2005 best sorting a programmer and UI

designer received a call from Steve Jobs

asking him to make a demo of a touch

interface of a scrolling list Steve now

wanted to do a touchscreen phone

demos were the way that Apple as a

company worked through creative concepts

and ideas to see what could be the next

product and then we would make demos and

something you could try out right away

and you know the thing is these first

demos and prototypes are never any good

you know you think that there is going

to be some genius aha moment but it

never worked like that well hopefully

there's some little kernel in there

there's some aspect of it that's

stronger than other aspects of it and so

you you go and look for those strong

parts natural world uses natural

selection generation after generation

improving and improving in technology we

have creative selection taking our ideas

and building up a product from these

humble beginnings it's a long iterative

evolutionary process while ording was

making the contactless demo he noticed

that when scrolling the text image would

suddenly stop when he hit the bottom of

the screen because of this sudden

stopping of all the motion he thought

that his code had crashed after some

time ording noticed that he had in fact

reached the end of the list this gave

him an idea why not have the image

balanced so that there's some visual

feedback that lets you feel like you've

reached the end of the list and not like

it suddenly crashed this was the genesis

of the rubber banding effect on the

iPhone when Steve saw audience rubber

banding effect for the first time he

realized that a phone could indeed have

a touch interface while work on the

scrolling list demo was happening other

touchscreen projects were secretly going

on at Apple as well as cool as these

demos were there were no more than a

bunch of disjointed concepts some

pinching and zooming here a few widgets

there some notes and the calculator but

nothing with a unified structure

Steve wasn't impressed with the

disjointed array of demos didn't seem

like those a product to sell in early

2005 Jobs gave the team two weeks to

create something great and it had to be

great or else a small team at Apple

spent two sleepless weeks trying to get

the company's first touchscreen phone

right they focused on the vision of a

phone and its function how do you make a

phone call on a touchscreen how do you

get from a calendar to web browsing

what's the logical flow of getting from

one application to another amazingly by

the end of the two-week period they had

something to show jobs the first time

Steve Jobs saw the prototype he didn't

jump for joy or exclaim anything he was

silent sitting back and he said show it

to me again he was in fact blown away

the project would be top secret with an

apple from that point forward around the

same time Apple would purchase finger

works bringing finger works his whole

team on board to try and help figure out

this new jackpot

so now Apple had two choices on how to

transform this technology into a product

one enlarged the already successful iPod

into a phone or to shrink Mac OS down

into a phone using finger works touch

technology nobody knew which would work

best so Steve let both ideas run the

iPod enlarging team was led by Tony

Fadell and the multi-touch Mac OS team

was led by Scott Forrestal force tools

team was seen as the underdogs

after all Tony Fadell had helped push

millions of iPod sales and was also

working on to Smash Hits the iPod Nano

and the iPod video

the battle had begun neither team was

allowed to know what each other was

doing in fact the hardware guys weren't

allowed to see any software and the

software guys weren't allowed to see any

hardware hardly anyone working on the

phone at Apple knew what the device was

going to look like until the keynote and

they weren't given a solid date for that

either during the stress some members

would quit and others would be fired at

one point Phil Schiller head of

marketing had had enough and thought

that both projects should be scrapped an

Apple phone with a blackberry style

keyboard seemed like the most sensible

option while these projects were going

top Apple executives convinced jobs that

something needed to be done about

encroaching the mp3 capable mobile phone

sales and quickly Jobs agreed to partner

with Motorola the coolest phone company

at the time with their thin razor phone

they would make an iTunes phone the idea

was people would try out iTunes on the

phone and then hopefully go off and buy

an iPod Apple would have no involvement

in the hardware only focusing on iTunes

integration the result was the Motorola

ROKR already outdated on release the

thing just sucked I go there and I just

resume my music right back to where it

was well I was supposed to resume my

music right back to where it was

I hit the wrong button but you can

resume your music right back to where it

was if you hit the right one the rocker

was so bad that it was soon being

returned at a rate of six times higher

than the industry average consumers for

expecting something big from Apple and

this wasn't it

after the Motorola failure Jobs returned

his attention back to the iPod phone

which was Tony fedele's team as it was

the safer option he still did leave the

touch Mac OS team led by Scott Forstall

to continue Tony's team tried a plethora

of designs one of which was similar to

an iPod video but with a phone mode if

you wanted music it would behave like a

regular iPod would touch controls for

play pause etc around a scroll wheel

when he needed to dial a number you

would switch it into phone mode and the

device would behave like a rotary phone

it wasn't perfect but Jobs still

insisted that the idea could work

nobody within Apple really knew what

this new device was the iPod team saw it

as another portable accessory like the

iPod so software wasn't important the

touch Mac OS team on the other hand saw

it as a fully fledged multi-touch

computer that fit in your hand Tony

Fadell and his team were certain that

this new phone should run a beefed-up

version of iPod software while Scott

Forstall and his team thought a shrunken

down version of Mac OS would be better

they theorized the mobile chip

technology had become powerful enough to

run a version of Mac OS it was juddery

at first but soon they managed to get

scrolling to work smoothly on a compact

version of Mac OS and from this point it

was decided that this would be the way

to go the shrunken down version of Mac

OS will become known as iOS and soon

Tony fedele's iPod phone idea would be

abandoned and all efforts would be

focused on iOS as the software began to

take place details have to be ironed out

how do you unlock this thing without

doing it by accident in your pocket

there's actually an interesting story to

have this was solved one day Freddy

answers a user interface designer within

Apple found the solution in the most

unlikely of places a toilet

one day Freddy was on a US domestic

flight and felt the need to relieve

himself he got up from his seat and went

to the toilet as Freddy lost the cubicle

door he happened to observe the locking

mechanism it was so simple

he just slide it to unlock and that's it

this concept little light bulb and the

result was the famous original slide to

unlock feature to test out this concept

an iPhone engineer later gave a

prototype to his three-year-old daughter

without hesitation she took her finger

slid and unlocked the phone if a

three-year-old to figure it out anyone

could

meanwhile Johnny if' was beginning to

imagine what the hardware of this phone

could look like although later designs

would stray the first sketch from Johnny

if' was close to the final product he

was imagining an infinity pool quote

this pond where the display would

magically appear the rest of the device

had to get out of the way end quote

interestingly Johnny if' didn't want a

headphone jack in the original iPhone as

the project dragged on tempers rose

within the company due to secrecy

competition and the time pressure of the

project and it was no wonder everything

the teams were making was new

touchscreen technology was in his

infancy

the Apple engineers had to figure out

how to make a transparent version of

multi-touch mass-producible untested

custom chips had to be developed so

reception had to be worked out material

designs needed to be perfected basically

these teams which had never made a phone

before were now trying to make the most

ambitious device ever imagined imagine

how it must have been for the developers

- if any app they're working on crashed

it could have been because of virtually

a million things from their coding to

any one of the numerous experimental

hardware components by February of 2006

the team at Apple's didn't have a CPU

basically the brain of the device and

they was supposed to ship in a year they

decided to contract Samsung who they'd

partnered with previously for chips

within the iPod they are Samsung if they

had any powerful CPUs within certain

specifications and they did but the only

thing Samsung had was from a cable box

without telling Samsung about the iPhone

Apple said they would have need

modifications to this chip in just six

months this is much less than half the

usual development time for a new chip

and this would later cause problems by

early 2006 the iOS software was making

great progress but the keyboard still

sucked it was just too small to type on

and it failed in all of the demos

without a good keyboard the whole phone

wouldn't have worked realizing that the

entire project was in jeopardy

Scott Forstall paused all development of

applications on iOS and made everyone

focus on the keyboard issue everyone on

the team built keyboards for three

straight weeks when it came time to test

the results of their work they all still

were no good

there was only one engineer left to

demonstrate his keyboard it was Ken

Koshi endo nervously he set it up for

Scott to type on surprisingly it worked

and it was accurate the breakthrough was

made by using primitive AI to figure out

what was actually being typed

essentially a predictive text for

example if you were to type the letter T

there was a high chance you're going to

type the letter H next so the keyboard

would make the contact to region four

age larger without changing the

appearance of the button to the naked

eye Ken also had the foresight to use a

dictionary to power suggestions and

order correct it was clear to me after

the first couple of demos that's since

the screen was so small and since there

were no there was no tactile feedback on

the touchscreen that there was gonna

need to be some new element now my first

ideas were different shaped keys

different different ways of highlighting

the keys so that that you would just

move your fingers but that was that was

a failed idea that didn't work and so it

was the dictionary and software

assistance the notion that some code

running in the background looking at

your touches on the screen and trying to

figure out well what did you mean and so

combining that notion with the notion of

a dictionary and a lot of work and a lot

of experimentation gave you know printed

help to produce that that first result

of auto correction through for the first

iPhone

without Ken's ideas in that

high-pressure moment it's possible that

the iPhone wouldn't have made it off the

ground

as always all coming down to the wire

for Apple disaster struck just three

months before the launch the custom CPU

chips from Samsung still had bugs that

cause the phones to crash would such

little time left on the clock

it was looking like a catastrophe wasn't

the making a stress built engineers

started working seven days a week and

some slept in their offices tempers

flared and employees shouted at each

other

one employee slammed the door so hard

out of frustration that the door handle

broke and she got trapped in her office

and had to be broken out with a baseball

bat it seemed like the iPhone which held

so much promise would be apple's

greatest disaster other aspects of the

iPhone were still being slapped on very

late in a product development cycle one

of its killer apps Google Maps was only

added as an afterthought on the hardware

side the original iPhone screen was

supposed to be plastic like the iPods

but the decision to use glass was made

one month after the launch

when the day of the keynote came on

january 9th 2007 none of the teams that

Apple knew exactly what the final iPhone

product would look like even though they

had worked on the project for years when

Steve Jobs took to the stage some things

were still incomplete

the iPhones buggy CPU is she hadn't been

properly solved yet only patched up for

the demo this meant that the phone could

crash at any time during the

presentation the Apple team held their

breath sweating as they sat and watched

Steve Jobs excitedly proclaimed and

we're calling it iPhone

it was mostly positive reaction from the

crowd but also some uncertain laughter

as some thought that Jobs was joking

about the name yet the demo was going

well the crowd was loving the smooth

scrolling and technological magic they

were witnessing there we go right there

and to unlock the phone I just take my

finger and slide it across all right I'm

gonna see that again okay sleep we

wanted something that you couldn't do by

accident your pocket and just slide it

across boom well how do I scroll through

my list of artists how do I do this I

just take my finger and I swirl

I mean that cool rubber banding up my

run off the edge we call it the pinch I

can bring them closer together and move

them further apart to make it bigger or

smaller and so I can just move them

further apart and stretch the image and

move it around

as Tony Fadell leader of the iPod fine

team looked on Steve Jobs did something

pretty cool when showcasing to the crowd

had until a contact

he gleefully slid Fidel's name of the

iphone contacts list Tony's changed his

number I gotta update this anyway so I'm

gonna get rid of that and I could just

remove Tony boom there we go it's that

simple to edit these things he was

basically saying to Tony you're fired

it's got four still states that during

rehearsals of the presentation Steve

would always delete a random contact

never Tony's to the crowd it was just a

demonstration of how this phone made

everything fun and cool to use to those

working at Apple it was a message Tony

was in trouble in all of this there was

one glaring omission Wayne westerman on

lookers never knew his name and Wayne

wasn't even invited to the event but

without his multi-touch innovation there

would be no iPhone instead on stage

Steve Jobs stated that Apple had

invented multi-touch these events were a

summary of how the project had been for

most brutal the project was so hard in

the secret teams that are ruined

marriages and cost some workers their

health some employees worked every day

giving up their nights and weekends for

years at a time

iPhone engineer Andy Greenland speaks

quote the iPhone is the reason I'm

divorced it was probably professionally

the worst time in my life

he created a pressure cooker with a

bunch of really smart people with an

impossible deadline an impossible

mission and then you hear that the

future of the entire company is resting

on it there wasn't really any time to

kick your feet back on the desk and say

this is going to be really awesome one

day every time you turned around there

was some just imminent demise of the

program just lurking around the corner

it was especially hard on the married

guys there were a lot of

oblivious to the sacrifice the world was

electric with the buzz of the iPhone but

that new phone that yeah there right now

you see Brandis on tops everything here

we go

many people were anticipating the Mac

World Trade Show this week including

Andy and so far they've not been

disappointed the latest from this show

Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiling what many

are calling a revolutionary new product

the iPhone you scroll lists like by

flicking like this and it's like a

roulette wheel stop like that it's just

so cool it's very clear to us that the

world's going mobile and we really

believe that that a device like this

which is you know an order of magnitude

more powerful than any mobile device or

any cell phone that's ever been created

and yet vastly easier to use is the

future when it was all said and done

keen fans lined up to get one you paid

five hundred dollars to secure a spot in

this line know just yeah come and sit

here what are you looking forward to

using your iPhone for um just the fact

that I could put all my music and

everything on there and it has a

touchscreen and I don't know I seen the

commercials it looks really cool for me

in 2007 after seeing Jobs's demo of

scrolling in gestures it made sense to

me that this was the perfect interface

for a small screen device the iPhone had

way more than a thousand times more

computing power than NASA did in 1969

when they put man on the moon yet it was

super easy to use with a full web

browsing experience to boot even

children could pick up an iPhone and

know what to do

capacitive multi-touch and gestures had

broken down the walls of human-computer

interaction the future had arrived

finally a computer in your pocket his

Apple software engineer Henry lamb

uruk's would put it quote we took a Mac

and we squished it into a little box

unquote other small touches like a

proximity sensor that turned the screen

off during a phone call so that it

didn't touch your face by accident and

an accelerometer that could sense if

you're holding the phone in portrait and

landscape made the whole package feel

like magic today it's just so easy to

forget just how much of a leap the

original iPhone was

what followed the iPhone was a complete

shift in how we thought about technology

now information in news was instant

we became totally connected all the time

though in the next decade this over

connectedness will cause some issues

[Music]

once the initial fanfare was over the

sales of the iPhone would be slowed it

would take the introduction of the App

Store in 2008 to really kick things off

again for Apple if it wasn't for the App

Store the iPhone could have just been

one of those devices that look cool and

was cool to use but never caught on for

an entire year after the iPhones launch

it could run a grand total of 16 apps

there's only one home screens worth of

apps and that was it and this isn't to

mention how limited the iPhone was

compared to some other devices out there

they had no multimedia messaging no

video camera no cut and paste no 3G and

the list goes on but that wasn't

important

Nokia blackberry and the rest of the

established phone companies had been

providing these features for many years

but the difference was for the first

time a device was now a changeable blank

canvas with no buttons since the device

could run apps on it the iPhone software

creators could make it whatever they

wanted it to be their creativity it was

only limited by their imagination and

the hardware capability today billions

of apps have been sold and the mobile

app space has become a new industry

companies like Nokia blackberry and pom

thought they knew the game but they

couldn't visualize the future they

thought things would never change and

before they realized it was too late to

prosper in this brave new world

Google was working on their own

BlackBerry's star phone with a hardware

keyboard but when they saw the iPhone

presentation they abandoned that idea

and went for full touchscreen the result

was the very first Android phone but

that's a story for another day

[Music]

as the years passed people became less

and less excited with each new release

of the iPhone maybe who have reached a

point where the devices are just so good

there's only incremental improvements we

can make I asked Ken what he thought of

Apple's direction and he stated that if

he was perfectly happy with Apple he

wouldn't have left in 2017 but he hopes

that they continue to innovate as we all

know Apple isn't the only game in town

anymore competition is much stronger

than ever before will may be the next

big thing from Apple is around the

corner but at this stage only time will

tell the story of the original iPhone is

one of great sacrifice risk and reward a

story that shaped technology and the

world as we know it it gave the average

person an interface to almost infinite

information and knowledge all in the

palm of their hand but sadly almost

nobody knows who invented these

technologies and what the cost was to

innovate such a device to finish off

we'll have some words from Ken I hope

that you all use technology and and

enjoy it and some of the products that

may be that I made are useful and

meaningful to you and bring you some joy

in your life if they do then I've done

my job

in all of this something has to be said

for Steve Jobs he may not have invented

the technologies and Ken told me he

wasn't the nicest person to work for

but Steve did care about making great

products and he would push people and

squeeze the very best out of them to

make these products happen and in that

vein without Steve there also would be

no iPhone if you've watched this video

to the end thank you I appreciate it I

hope you can now look down at your

iPhone all the other smart phones that

followed and appreciate how they came to

be if you want to see more video

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future.thanks for reading