Tony Fadell, who also designed the iPod, tells how he was the gestation of the Apple smartphone
“Steve warned me that it was a matter of top secret and that would fire whoever told you a single word about it. I was sweating la gota gorda”. Tony Fadell considered how he was going to explain to Steve Jobs that he had lost the prototype which was to become the technological product most successful of all time, the iPhone of Apple, which on Monday celebrates the tenth anniversary of its launch.
Just get off a plane, checked his pockets… and nothing.
“I Thought of every possible scenario of what could happen,” I said Fadell. And none of them had a happy ending. After two hours came the relief, thanks to a rescue group that I didn’t even know what I was looking for. “Oh, I fell out of the pocket and had remained embedded between two seats!”.
In just a few months, the world got to know all of the details on that little device. But, until then, Fadell not off of their hands.
The influence of the iPod
sometimes refer to Tony Fadell as the “father of the iPod”. He left Apple in 2010, he founded Nest, the company of smart devices for the home that now belongs to the parent company of Google, Alphabet. The past year also left that company.
In the opinion of Fadell, this Monday is true, in reality, 12 and a half years of the launch of the first iPhone. It was then when he began to work on the idea, born of the acceptance of the iPod, which was generating a fortune to Apple, it was a device that could be developed much more.
At that time, the iPod already had video capabilities and even games. “All we saw that the data networks were coming and that we should consider them as a platform for general use”, tells the BBC.
thus was Born the magic ingredient that would cause the iPhone to break the limits, says Fadell. While competitors like Microsoft tried to shrink the PC into a phone, Apple was looking for the way to convert the iPod into something more sophisticated.
One of the first concepts of design used the touch wheel of the iPod as your input method, although it was soon discarded. “What we were becoming-a-phone rotary as the 60′s,” recalled the engineer. “But we saw that was not working and that it was too complicated to use”.
But in another part of the Apple, had begun to develop a Macintosh computer touch screen. “They had been working on it in secret. It was the size of a ping-pong table. Steve he showed it to me and I said: ‘I Want you to take this and you place it on an iPod’”.
Fadell warned him to Jobs that make a touch screen device like that imagined would require time, money, and a new infrastructure is delicate. And they launched to make it. “We needed thousands of people working on it at the same time for the launch. Of course, we did, but it was not easy”.
The mystery of the theft of Malmö
Apple employed many of their best brains on the project, but until that moment he had never manufactured a phone of their own. Fadell organized a world tour to meet experts and visit the laboratories of research of specialists in telecommunications. He started with a manufacturer in Malmö, Sweden, on a journey in which they stole all their bags, records, and equipment while having dinner in a restaurant.
“they Knew that we were making a phone,” says Fadell.
“We asked our host where we could eat dinner and spent there about 20 or 30 minutes because we were tired,” he recalls. “When we returned to the car, there was nothing left. Each one of the bags had disappeared. It was corporate espionage”.
The team returned home without many of their belongings, but with a head full of ideas. In the meantime, began a heated debate.
saying goodbye to the keyboard
it Was the following: how Should the iPhone have a keyboard or not?
“The fight lasted about four months. It was a very unpleasant situation,” explains Fadell. Jobs, who had all their hopes pinned on the touch screen, became so angry with those who did not share their ideas which imposed a strong policy.
“not Until you agree with us, you can not re-enter this room”, remember, Fadell said Jobs to those who were in favour of the keyboard. “If you don’t want to be part of the team, you’re not in it”. Soon ceased the discrepancies. “A person was expelled from the room and everyone understood the message and went on sidewalk”.
But, although the debate ended, was not of the computer’s memory. And many still believe that was a wrong decision by Apple to not create a phone with a Blackberry-style keyboard.
“we Presented all the possible risks of using only a touch screen. We had to work on each one of them.”
The secret strategies of the Apple Pencil
From the beginning, Jobs was clear: the iPhone did not require a stylus because the finger was all that one needed. But Fadell told the team that worked on the development of the multi-touch screen -possibly, the biggest advancement of the iPhone – to ensure that it was compatible with a stylus.
“we Knew that there would come a day that we would need a pencil,” recalls Fadell. “We made it back to Steve. If you had noticed I would have started the head.”
Doing things in secret was a common strategy of engineers and designers are adamant that they felt that the Jobs I did not know I could not annoy you, and that if it could prove that they were right, they would get recognition.
“it Was what happened with the iPod to the PC,” said Fadell. “Steve did not want to have anything to do with it, but when the growth of the iPod has stagnated, said: ‘By the way, we’ve been working on this.’”
Jobs was able to have subsided to make Apple products work in Windows, but took aversion to the stylus to the grave. However, his successor, Tim Cook, introduced the Apple Pencil in 2015.
The laugh out of Steve Ballmer
And so it was until the January 9, 2007. Hordes of fans and media moved to the Moscone Center in San Francisco to see what was “that thing” that Jobs brought to the end of his opening speech of the event Macworld that year.
The device on the stage was “half-assed”, he recalled Fadell. But soon it bautizarían as “the phone of Jesus.”
The press laughed at how he had presented the iPhone. Steve Ballmer, at that time ceo of Microsoft, laughed of the device, and defined it as “an appliance is not very good for sending emails” that I would not call the attention of the buyers.
“we All laughed about it,” said Fadell. Since that day, has sold over a billion iPhones, making Apple the most valuable company in the world. “When you create a new product -and I learned it with Steve [Jobs]- if they laugh at you, go ahead, ‘hit the nail’”.
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