Speaker 1: It's been over ten years since Apple released its very
Speaker 1: first iPhone and remember you know, yeah, you know June
Speaker 1: when um customers were able to get the hands on
Speaker 1: on the units. But it doesn't mean that I love it.
Speaker 1: I love it. One of the best days of my
Speaker 1: life as well. I was thirteen years old at the time,
Speaker 1: right around the time of my bar Mitzvah. I waited
Speaker 1: in line at my dad at an Apple store in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, and my mom and brother joined us later
Speaker 1: that day. It was actually my parents wedding anniversary, and
Speaker 1: they have never let me forget that I was considerably
Speaker 1: older than thirteen. I was in my in my mid thirties,
Speaker 1: working for the New York Times covering Apple, and we
Speaker 1: actually fanned out and we're talking to people waiting in line,
Speaker 1: and I remember being somewhat dubious about this enthusiastic display
Speaker 1: about what at the time seemed like just another device.
Speaker 1: You have no idea, man, I mean, this is something
Speaker 1: our hours anyone best part It was one in line line,
Speaker 1: but I was that was sleeping outside of my local
Speaker 1: teen T store, local Apple store for days. The line
Speaker 1: starts over there, but it snakes all the way behind
Speaker 1: me around this Manhattan block some of these. Yesterday when
Speaker 1: we were here, there about nineteen people waiting in line
Speaker 1: for this phone. Today, as you can see, hundreds more
Speaker 1: people cheered and yelled as they walked out of the
Speaker 1: store with their new phones for the first time. It
Speaker 1: was a great, if slightly corny moment in technology history.
Speaker 1: But I've always wondered what this moment was like for
Speaker 1: the people on the inside. I ended up I had
Speaker 1: a personal trip to Chicago, so I decided to to
Speaker 1: watch the the unveiling of the first customers from the
Speaker 1: Chicago store. And to this day, I mean, right now,
Speaker 1: just talking about it, my skin, you know, it's getting
Speaker 1: goose bumps, and I remember literally tears just coming down,
Speaker 1: coming down my eye. Right. Everything that we sacrifice, all
Speaker 1: those unseen worth it, you know when you started to
Speaker 1: look at the faces of the customers that were gripping
Speaker 1: through the box and getting the hands on on the
Speaker 1: unit for the first time. Now, ten years and billions
Speaker 1: of dollars in revenue later, Apple is revving up for
Speaker 1: perhaps its most important new phone since that very first release. Hi.
Speaker 1: I am Brad Stone and I'm Mark German, and this
Speaker 1: week on Decrypted will bring you the untold story of
Speaker 1: the original iPhones development. We'll take you inside the room
Speaker 1: when Steve Jobs was making important decisions about the iPhones
Speaker 1: key features. We'll also talk about how Apple recruited its
Speaker 1: engineers from all over the world. We'll even reveal a
Speaker 1: crisis that almost killed the entire project, and these original
Speaker 1: team members relived those final moments before the iPhone was
Speaker 1: announced back in two thousand and seven. We'll give you
Speaker 1: a peek into what goes on inside Apple when the
Speaker 1: company is gearing up to launch a new key product.
Speaker 1: As we approached the unveiling of the next iPhone, there's
Speaker 1: teams of people at Apple going through all of this.
Speaker 1: Right now, this year's model, which is going to be
Speaker 1: a major overhaul, has been much discussed. There's clearly some
Speaker 1: excitement in the air. Stay with us, so let's start
Speaker 1: at the very beginning. The year is two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: Steve Jobs is at the top of his game. Thank
Speaker 1: you very much. It's great to be here. So we've
Speaker 1: got a lot of great stuff for you today, a
Speaker 1: lot of first two. Apple is nearing a transition from
Speaker 1: power PC two Intel chips for Smax. That was a
Speaker 1: huge step forward Apple's on track to announce the ipole Nano,
Speaker 1: which turned out to be a smash hit. Internally, Apple
Speaker 1: was already thinking about how to cannibalize the iPod, which
Speaker 1: already sold tens of millions of units. Six years after
Speaker 1: coming back from the brink of disaster, Apple was growing
Speaker 1: into a technology powerhouse, and part due to Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1: Then Steve dreamed up a new project. Not only were
Speaker 1: we uh you know, asked to you know, develop a
Speaker 1: product of the company had never done before. Uh and
Speaker 1: and literally pick up skill sets. It didn't necessarily exist
Speaker 1: within the company, but we had to do it any
Speaker 1: very aggressive schedule, very aggressive timeline. That's Jose Kong today,
Speaker 1: he runs Plause. It's an HR software startup. Back in
Speaker 1: two thousand five, two of apples most celebrated executives, Steve
Speaker 1: Jobs and Tony Fidel, asked Jose to recruit the team
Speaker 1: that would go on to build the iPhone. You know,
Speaker 1: I remember heading in the first time. Uh. It was
Speaker 1: shocked because one, you know, whole side of the building
Speaker 1: in which the IPOT or the Special Projects Group SPG
Speaker 1: was was house all of a sudden had a wall
Speaker 1: with a batch reader. There was the utmost secrecy around
Speaker 1: the project. It even had a code name Project Purple,
Speaker 1: and only the team involved knew what the product was.
Speaker 1: And that's when I knew that it was serious. That's
Speaker 1: when I knew that it was secretive. UM, I couldn't
Speaker 1: tell anyone. I remember signing a pretty thick n D
Speaker 1: a UH that basically stated that if I leaked any
Speaker 1: knew so any information about this particular project, my boss
Speaker 1: and my boss's boss reliable and you know, potentially looser jobs.
Speaker 1: My name is Andy greg Nun and you and I
Speaker 1: are in half Moon Bay, California, which is just south
Speaker 1: of San Francisco by about twenty minutes if you drive
Speaker 1: real fast. Andy was an up and coming software engineer
Speaker 1: at Apple when the iPhone project started. I met Andy
Speaker 1: at a beachside brewery, which he calls his office. He
Speaker 1: works from a laptop on the bar counter, but he
Speaker 1: reserved a nice back room for us to chat Apple.
Speaker 1: Andy has firsthand knowledge of how hard it is to
Speaker 1: build a phone. His team was responsible for the phone's
Speaker 1: functions that specifically related to making calls. Andy had a
Speaker 1: background developing software, and earlier he actually worked on the iPod. Well.
Speaker 1: He was at another startup, but taking an iPod and
Speaker 1: turning it into a phone, that was a really big challenge.
Speaker 1: Here's Jose I remember, you know, as the recruiter assigned
Speaker 1: to this project. One of the first requisitions that came
Speaker 1: through was for an antenna engineer. Uh, I had no idea.
Speaker 1: I had never recruited for, you know, anything in that
Speaker 1: particular space. Today, almost every phone is trying to look
Speaker 1: like an iPhone, but not. Back then, the BlackBerry ruled
Speaker 1: the land. Business People were certain that they needed a
Speaker 1: hardware key word in their phones. You had phones like
Speaker 1: the Sidekick, um feature phones where keyboards split out. Those
Speaker 1: were popular at the time. There was a lot more
Speaker 1: variety in the phone world, and the idea of a
Speaker 1: piece of glass that you typed on seemed frankly, very
Speaker 1: strange to a lot of people. And don't forget at
Speaker 1: five it was one of the most expensive phones to date,
Speaker 1: but that clearly didn't matter. Yeah, there was a lot
Speaker 1: of skepticism, and it also only worked famously on the
Speaker 1: Singular network, which became a T and T and coverage
Speaker 1: was terrible, right, you know, you had those famous dropped
Speaker 1: calls over the first couple of years, and so I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people, probably particularly the folks up
Speaker 1: in Waterloo, Canada at BlackBerry, they underestimated what the iPhone
Speaker 1: could become. Over the course of the two years, working
Speaker 1: on the iPhone went in cycles. You know, here's the thing,
Speaker 1: I think that a lot of people don't really get
Speaker 1: about development of major projects. Right, there's no one defining
Speaker 1: moment on on a project like this. But some episodes
Speaker 1: were intense. We were looking for UH imaging technology, right
Speaker 1: and at the time Nokia probably had the best team
Speaker 1: in the world. And UH, Steve had become fixated on
Speaker 1: a great candidate that we found who he had met,
Speaker 1: and he wanted to make an offer to him. But
Speaker 1: you know, this is being Apple, This being Steve had
Speaker 1: to be an aggressive opera offering had to be UH
Speaker 1: and over the top production. And so last minute I
Speaker 1: was told, hey, you had a head to Helsinki. You
Speaker 1: have to go meet with this particular candidate so that
Speaker 1: we can make an offer. And so uh, within you know,
Speaker 1: literally a few hours on my way to s Foh
Speaker 1: no luggage, look at my at my itinerary and it
Speaker 1: was basically get their head, dinner and turn around and
Speaker 1: come back. At what point I had the highest level
Speaker 1: of travel recognition with United, so that that should give
Speaker 1: you. You You know, there wasn't a flight that I that
Speaker 1: I wasn't upgrade because I had so many miles that
Speaker 1: I was using. Thanks to Jose's recruitment drive, the iPhone
Speaker 1: team was growing. But you know, I remember one time
Speaker 1: in particular, UM, we were we were doing a quote
Speaker 1: unquote open house. Basically, Jose had gone to Libertyville, Illinois
Speaker 1: or Motorola's offices were they booked a hotel room to
Speaker 1: do a mass meeting of Motorole's engineers. The plan was
Speaker 1: to bring motorole as best engineers and bring them over
Speaker 1: to Apple. I remember getting a call from the legal
Speaker 1: department at Apple basically say Nope, you have to cancel it.
Speaker 1: There's no way that you can go. You know you nope,
Speaker 1: can do it. Uh, it's too aggressive. Um. But at
Speaker 1: the same time I got a call from you know,
Speaker 1: the product side of the house saying, no, no, you
Speaker 1: have to deal. We need these individual's. Uh. Fearing you know,
Speaker 1: being fire for not doing my job, I decided the
Speaker 1: top of the plane and we went. I would fear
Speaker 1: the repercutions of letting Tony and Steve down more than
Speaker 1: the repercussions of the legal department coming down on me.
Speaker 1: Thanks to that open house, Apple ended up bringing over
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of people from Motorola. They went on
Speaker 1: to become key members of the original iPhone team. Now remember,
Speaker 1: at the time, Project Purple is top secret and Motorola's
Speaker 1: offices were in Illinois. Jose was convincing people to relocate
Speaker 1: to California and join Apple, all without telling them even
Speaker 1: what they'd be working on. As the team was closing
Speaker 1: in on the final months before the big unveiling at
Speaker 1: the Macworld conference, something happened. It quickly escalated to the
Speaker 1: level of a full blown crisis with this bug where
Speaker 1: we couldn't reliably keep a phone call going, and to
Speaker 1: the point where you didn't know when it was gonna
Speaker 1: stop when before we announced them in the fall of
Speaker 1: two thousands six, okay, so three months before the phones
Speaker 1: have some some amount of time right inside Apple, this
Speaker 1: was a major problem. Who's going to buy a phone
Speaker 1: that well, I can't make phone calls. There was a
Speaker 1: serious risk that if Andy and his team couldn't fix
Speaker 1: the issue, it could derail the entire project. At this stage,
Speaker 1: with just three months to go, the product should have
Speaker 1: ideally been locked and loaded for its splashy January unveiling
Speaker 1: the chips verified on either side. The chip that made
Speaker 1: the phone call was fine. There's no reason it should drop.
Speaker 1: We had the people you know, from Korea and in
Speaker 1: Germany and in everywhere else who wrote the code that
Speaker 1: made the chip single stepping, along with the deepest technical
Speaker 1: bench we had at Apple. We dragged in people from everywhere.
Speaker 1: But just imagine for a second, you're dragging in colleagues
Speaker 1: to fig this issue. But with all the secrecy around
Speaker 1: Project Purple, they can't know what the product actually is.
Speaker 1: And of course Steve Jobs had to get involved. In
Speaker 1: all the years of experience I had with Steve, sometimes
Speaker 1: when you screw up, you gotta take the verbal lashing.
Speaker 1: He'll scream in holler, and they'll make you feel like
Speaker 1: when you knew you were in trouble, not you personally,
Speaker 1: would you the royal like the program was in trouble
Speaker 1: was when he moved well past screaming and yelling, what's
Speaker 1: past screaming, pensive rocking in his chair, it was you
Speaker 1: you still like you don't really know what to do anymore?
Speaker 1: He knew innately. When we came to him, We're like,
Speaker 1: this is a show stopper. In the end, this problem
Speaker 1: was so difficult that it actually didn't even get solved
Speaker 1: in time, So we ended up shipping with a workaround. Uh,
Speaker 1: for the very first iPhone. We never figured out, by
Speaker 1: the way, until it was after the phones were shipped,
Speaker 1: what the actual core problem was. Luckily, and he found
Speaker 1: a workaround so Apple could stay on track to un
Speaker 1: field the phone at Macworld, which was scheduled for January nine. Seven. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the iPhone team is entering the final stretch. Two
Speaker 1: and a half years of working in secret is about
Speaker 1: to come to an end on January nine. The stress,
Speaker 1: the pressure, the long work hours is starting to get
Speaker 1: to everyone. Steve was expert at finding people who wanted
Speaker 1: to ship a thing above all else, And that and
Speaker 1: above all else goes to not eating, not sleeping, you know,
Speaker 1: not being with your family, you know, not being with
Speaker 1: your partner, not being like you know, you would do
Speaker 1: anything to get this thing up. It's a conscious decision
Speaker 1: I made every day to put all of this ahead
Speaker 1: of everything else. This was a recurring theme for the
Speaker 1: people working on the iPhone. Their personal lives are basically
Speaker 1: on hold until the news of the phone became public.
Speaker 1: You know, from my perspective, it was tough. I mean,
Speaker 1: two thousand and five to two thousand and seven, I
Speaker 1: hardly saw anyone in my life. You know, I didn't
Speaker 1: get to see my family very much. I didn't get
Speaker 1: to see my friends very much. I neglected, you know,
Speaker 1: my relationships. Uh. To this day, yes, I feel guilty
Speaker 1: about missing birthdays uh and special occasions, even weddings. But
Speaker 1: to be honest with you, you know, the iPhone was
Speaker 1: so important. We were so emotionally connected to this project
Speaker 1: that if you had to do it all lover again,
Speaker 1: I would still do the same thing. The big unveiling
Speaker 1: at Macworld was scheduled for January nine, two thousand and seven.
Speaker 1: At this point, there's only a few weeks ago. Steve
Speaker 1: and a small trusted team start preparing the keynote. You know,
Speaker 1: you could cut the tension in the offices with with
Speaker 1: your fingers, with your hands, as I think it was
Speaker 1: because it had to be perfect, right, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is Apple, this is Steve on stage. We can't just
Speaker 1: you know, unveiled the product. You know, the customers, the media,
Speaker 1: the market. Everyone expects this to be a massive theatrical
Speaker 1: you know, unveiling, but for Andy and the team, the
Speaker 1: iPhone still wasn't completely finished. We're there late one night.
Speaker 1: It was you know, Christmas this time, you know, coming
Speaker 1: up late December, before Christmas and before the announcement. So
Speaker 1: it's two thousand six, right December. We're hanging out. There's
Speaker 1: like four of us in the hallway, the way Andy
Speaker 1: tells it. Another colleague walks up to the group and
Speaker 1: starts asking the questions about the status of the iPhone.
Speaker 1: People are exhausted, overworked in the conversation suddenly gets confrontational,
Speaker 1: and that quickly escalated into effectively a yelling match between
Speaker 1: these two people on who had spent less time with
Speaker 1: their kids, Like who had missed what performance, you know,
Speaker 1: Christmas thing or whatever, who hadn't seen this, who didn't
Speaker 1: buy Christmas presents? But whatever? It was just but it
Speaker 1: turned into like this, like clearly pent up frustration of
Speaker 1: just all of it, right, the program, We're not ready,
Speaker 1: you know, I haven't seen my family, I haven't seen
Speaker 1: my kids, like just right, and it just all came
Speaker 1: out and finally this this person was screaming off down
Speaker 1: the hall and goes into off slams the door so
Speaker 1: hard that it breaks the lock. Eventually, the team used
Speaker 1: a steal bat to break down the door and get
Speaker 1: their colleague out, who was stuck on the other side.
Speaker 1: That screaming match happened with maybe a month ago before
Speaker 1: the iPhones January debut. Andy couldn't have been prepared for
Speaker 1: the crisis that still lay ahead. Having worked hard with
Speaker 1: this small number of individ edibles in a very confined
Speaker 1: environment where you couldn't even talk to your family or
Speaker 1: you couldn't talk to other individuals within the company about
Speaker 1: what you were working on, you know, realizing that the
Speaker 1: unveiling was was near. Uh, let me tell you for
Speaker 1: for for for the first phone at least, it was
Speaker 1: probably the most exciting time of my career. It was exciting, sure,
Speaker 1: but Project Purple still had to get through the keynote
Speaker 1: address at McWorld two thousand seven, when Steve Jobs would
Speaker 1: walk out on stage and tell the world what Apple
Speaker 1: has been up to. Remember, Steve had a terrifying reputation
Speaker 1: in the industry as a perfectionist. Keynote addresses had to
Speaker 1: be dramatic and absolutely flawless. Apple prepares months ahead of
Speaker 1: its events, leaving nothing to chance. The company prepares for
Speaker 1: anything and everything that could go wrong. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean there haven't been close calls. We're coming up to
Speaker 1: the announcement day in at Musconi and at the time,
Speaker 1: all of the keynotes were staged in this one particular room.
Speaker 1: As he gets closer and closer, as people started to
Speaker 1: practice with Steve for for for the keynote, tensions just
Speaker 1: became a lot higher. You know, you knew, you knew
Speaker 1: that we were getting closer. Uh by the calendars. All
Speaker 1: of a sudden, certain members of our organization, which is unavailable.
Speaker 1: Apple keynotes, which some people call Steve Notes, had become
Speaker 1: major events in the tech industry. Fans and media would
Speaker 1: even wait in line overnight just to get a seat
Speaker 1: inside the event designed to tell you when you can
Speaker 1: wait in line for the actual product. All the laptops used,
Speaker 1: all the cabling, production people were there, but it was
Speaker 1: like instead like this huge room, it was like a
Speaker 1: tiny room and everyone just kind of shat you shoulder
Speaker 1: shoulder with laptops, but it was that exact same equipment configuration.
Speaker 1: Everything was then report was packaged up, labeled, and then
Speaker 1: replicated on the giant Mausconi stage. The Mosconi Center is
Speaker 1: one of San Francisco's giant conference halls. It's right in
Speaker 1: the center of the downtown and on any given year,
Speaker 1: Apple would use Macworld to make a whole range of
Speaker 1: product announcements. The Macworld stage had been used to unveil
Speaker 1: some iPods, the first MacBook Pro, and iTunes. The two
Speaker 1: thousand seven event would also include the Apple TV at
Speaker 1: a new airport extreme Internet router. But the iPhone was
Speaker 1: obviously the main event. And yet Andy and the iPhone team,
Speaker 1: we're up against one huge issue. They were preparing Steve's
Speaker 1: iPhone announcement without having the actual iPhones. We we didn't
Speaker 1: have enough phones because they were building the phones over
Speaker 1: in China. They were being hand carried in suitcases from
Speaker 1: from Vascon. If you're working on the hardware side, um,
Speaker 1: most of the engineers and operations professionals are spending a
Speaker 1: lot of time in the factory in China, right. You know,
Speaker 1: if I had not seeing my family in you know,
Speaker 1: for a couple of years, this individuals may net had
Speaker 1: seen their homes for several months at a time. They
Speaker 1: were under unimaginable pressure to make sure the units coming
Speaker 1: out of the Chinese factories were meticulously finished. The units
Speaker 1: come in from Asia, and the process was, you know,
Speaker 1: Steve and Johnny would put on like these white gloves
Speaker 1: and they would take the units out of out of
Speaker 1: the packaging and all the other stuff, and they would
Speaker 1: inspect them with jeweller's loops and they would grade them.
Speaker 1: So that's Steve jobs of course, and Johnny I've back
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven. Johnny was Apple's chief industrial designer.
Speaker 1: He's actually still at Apple today in a bigger role
Speaker 1: as the company's chief design officer. So each unit got
Speaker 1: a grade. So it started off the best unit that
Speaker 1: we could produce at the time would be a double A,
Speaker 1: and then we go down to an A and then
Speaker 1: B C D. You know they and they are just
Speaker 1: in terms of mostly visual quality, like how how is
Speaker 1: the fit and finish on it, Like does the bezel
Speaker 1: lineup with the cases there? Sky Mars is there? Whatever
Speaker 1: it is? Is everything seated properly and um and so
Speaker 1: like anything below like A B isn't really suitable to
Speaker 1: be on stage or the show. Once Steve and Johnny
Speaker 1: signed off on the hardware, the phones were sent for programming.
Speaker 1: That meant Apple to lay all the software that would
Speaker 1: power the phone. Everybody signs off on it, and UM,
Speaker 1: the team responsible laying down the final software on the
Speaker 1: show units, UH gets gets the building right, and so
Speaker 1: they started. They did a gang programming where they did
Speaker 1: eight units at a time that we could flash right,
Speaker 1: and so again, brand new units off of the floor,
Speaker 1: and they start with the double a's first. They plug
Speaker 1: all of the double A units in and UH software
Speaker 1: goes on and as the flashing process finishes up, they'll
Speaker 1: start rebooting, like just repeatedly rebooting, and then they go dead.
Speaker 1: Turns out there was a buck. This is a day
Speaker 1: I've been looking forward to for two and a half years.
Speaker 1: Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along
Speaker 1: that changes everything. I'm January nine seven, Steve Jobs got
Speaker 1: on stage at the Moscony Center and unveiled the iPhone.
Speaker 1: He would begin the event by announcing the Apple TV
Speaker 1: the company set up box. Then the big moment happened.
Speaker 1: We introduced the Macintosh. It didn't just change Apple, it
Speaker 1: changed the whole computer industry. In two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: we introduced the first iPod and it didn't just it
Speaker 1: didn't just change the way we all listen to music.
Speaker 1: It changed the entire music industry. For years leading up
Speaker 1: to two thousand seven, the rumor meal speculated that Apple
Speaker 1: could be writing its entry into the smartphone world, but
Speaker 1: nobody had imagined what a departure the iPhone would be
Speaker 1: from everything else in the market. The iPhone couldn't be
Speaker 1: more different than the rocker phone. For example, an Apple
Speaker 1: Motorola team up that put a version of iTunes on
Speaker 1: a bulky Motorola phone. It was a huge flop. An
Speaker 1: iPod a phone, and an Internet communicator, an iPod a phone.
Speaker 1: Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices.
Speaker 1: This is one device, and we are calling it iPhone today.
Speaker 1: Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. And here
Speaker 1: it is. And about those perfect iPhones fresh from the
Speaker 1: factory floor, the ones that crashed in Apple's offices when
Speaker 1: they were being meticulously prepped for the keynote day. What
Speaker 1: was supposed to happen with those units was they were
Speaker 1: supposed to be these big glass bell jars that were
Speaker 1: stationed all the way around Mosconi for the people who
Speaker 1: are the invited press and people who were there to
Speaker 1: take a look. And and what was supposed to be
Speaker 1: on them was a little a little video reel that
Speaker 1: was just playing a video over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: that's all. And it was supposed to rotate around, and
Speaker 1: you could you guys could all get up there with
Speaker 1: your cameras and get a super close, tight shot showing
Speaker 1: whatever was on the screen at the time. And there's
Speaker 1: a few of you'll see it in some of the
Speaker 1: photos around. There's a few of them where the screens
Speaker 1: are black. It's because we want we we decided it
Speaker 1: would be better for them to see a finished, polished product,
Speaker 1: not showing the demo reel, than a flawed product. Andy
Speaker 1: couldn't bring the phones back to life. A few months
Speaker 1: after the iPhone launched, and he decided to move on
Speaker 1: to something entirely new. It was another phone, another new
Speaker 1: operating system. He went to Palm to work with former
Speaker 1: Apple executive John Rubinstein on the Palm pre Jose stayed
Speaker 1: with Apple for several years after the iPhone launch, but
Speaker 1: then left the company in two thousand eleven. After Apple,
Speaker 1: he went to Nest, the startup founded by Tony Fidel.
Speaker 1: We mentioned Tony earlier in this episode. He was one
Speaker 1: of the top engineers leading the iPhone team. When Andy
Speaker 1: decided to resign, he had that final conversation with Steve Jobs.
Speaker 1: He made a comment when when he and I parted
Speaker 1: ways at the end, he made a comment, He's like, um,
Speaker 1: I should have fired you that night, like referring to
Speaker 1: the night that we had put the we'd put the
Speaker 1: bats off for out And I knew exactly what he
Speaker 1: was talking about, and he was livid over that. Once
Speaker 1: the iPhone was on the market, you and I know
Speaker 1: most of the story. It wasn't just a success. It
Speaker 1: didn't just change the phone market. It changed all of computing.
Speaker 1: It tilted the computing world away from PCs and desktops
Speaker 1: and towards these slabs of plastic and glass that we
Speaker 1: now all carry in our pockets. So far, we've been
Speaker 1: through over ten generations of the iPhone. Apple sold over
Speaker 1: one point two billion phones in that time, and the
Speaker 1: phone has made hundreds of billions of dollars for Apple.
Speaker 1: And of course many other players have entered the smartphone market. Samsun, Google, HDC, Huawei,
Speaker 1: show me. These are some of the biggest smartphone brands around,
Speaker 1: and everyone from Microsoft to Amazon has tried to win
Speaker 1: a piece of this lout cretive market for themselves. You know,
Speaker 1: the smartphone has become more more of a commodity, even
Speaker 1: though there are so many great um competitors out there
Speaker 1: with with with with with great solutions themselves. Uh. To me,
Speaker 1: I'm still blown away at the fact that that team
Speaker 1: continues to put out products that gathers so much you know, interest,
Speaker 1: so much attention, so much revenue. But what about the
Speaker 1: iPhone eight? I'm excited, you're excited, well, Mark, as you know,
Speaker 1: I have always been an Android, but you're still excited.
Speaker 1: I'm of course excited. No, it's always interesting to see
Speaker 1: what Apple does next, how they package all the leading
Speaker 1: components into into these devices that people really love. And
Speaker 1: the new iPhones design is going to be pretty slick, right, Well,
Speaker 1: you tell me, because you're kind of a soothsayer on this.
Speaker 1: Why are they Why are they going to release three
Speaker 1: different iPhones? Isn't that isn't a little bit unusual for
Speaker 1: the company? Yeah, that's that might be a little bit much.
Speaker 1: But what they're doing here is they're going to upgrade
Speaker 1: the seven plus and the regular seven to a higher
Speaker 1: end version of that with a faster processor. Then they're
Speaker 1: gonna have a premium model to come over that that's
Speaker 1: going to be the third phone. That's the big one.
Speaker 1: That's the one everyone is, the one that has the
Speaker 1: so called O L E D screen. That's right. Why
Speaker 1: is that a big deal? Because it looks so much
Speaker 1: better and because the screen technology is so advanced, it
Speaker 1: allows them to chop off the top and the sides,
Speaker 1: so you'll be able to get a phone that's about
Speaker 1: the size of the iPhone seven but with a screen
Speaker 1: size bigger than the one on the iPhone seven plus,
Speaker 1: so you're getting more in less space and face recognition.
Speaker 1: What is what is that? Because that's going to be
Speaker 1: on the new iPhone as well? Right, So the phone
Speaker 1: will be able to look at you, it'll know who
Speaker 1: you are, and it says, if this is Mark's phone
Speaker 1: is gonna unlock. I'm saying Mark, because I assume you're
Speaker 1: not going to get one. Can I say one more
Speaker 1: thing about the introduction of the iPhone because this is uh,
Speaker 1: I'm almost embarrassed to say this, but it's a measure
Speaker 1: of how underestimated was at the time. In that January
Speaker 1: event when the iPhone was in views, I actually was
Speaker 1: covering consumer Electronics for The New York Times at the time.
Speaker 1: I was at CS in Las Vegas. During the keynote,
Speaker 1: I just checked my records. It's kind of amazing to
Speaker 1: me that I was among all those companies and products
Speaker 1: that didn't end up making an impact, and here in
Speaker 1: San Francisco where I lived, history was happening. And that's
Speaker 1: it for this week's episode of Decrypted. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: We also have a correction to me. In our previous episode,
Speaker 1: we said that hydrogen typically has one neutron. Mark German
Speaker 1: correct or incorrect? Well, brad Stone, if you're reading it,
Speaker 1: I guess that it's incorrect. Yes, good guests. The most
Speaker 1: common version of hydrogen, in fact, actually has no neutrons,
Speaker 1: while it's other ICEO hopes deuterium and tritium at one
Speaker 1: and two neutron's respective. Many of you must be listening
Speaker 1: to this on an iPhone. Are you excited about the
Speaker 1: phone eight? We want to know what you think. Get
Speaker 1: in touch with us at Decrypted at Bloomberg dot net,
Speaker 1: or tweet at me. I'm on Twitter at Mark German
Speaker 1: and I'm at brad Stone if you haven't already subscribed
Speaker 1: to our show. Wherever you get your podcast, and while
Speaker 1: you're there, please leave us a rating and review. This
Speaker 1: goes a long way to get this show in front
Speaker 1: of more listeners. This episode was produced by Pia Getgary,
Speaker 1: Liz Smith and Magnus Henrickson. I'm running a whole series
Speaker 1: of special stories around the launch of the new iPhone
Speaker 1: thanks to Robin Agello and Alis for Barford the help.
Speaker 1: You can read them at Bloomberg dot com slash Technology.
Speaker 1: Alec McCabe is head of Bloomberg Podcasts. We'll see you
Speaker 1: all next week.