How Apple Kept the iPhone Secret

An anonymous reader writes "Bogus prototypes, bullying the press, stifling pillow talk — all to keep iPhone under wraps. Fortune's Peter Lewis goes inside one of the year's biggest tech launches. One of the most astonishing things about the new Apple iPhone, introduced yesterday by Steve Jobs at the annual Macworld trade show, is how Apple managed to keep it a secret for nearly two-and-a-half years of development while working with partners like Cingular, Yahoo and Google."

Secret? What secret?

[thegameiam (671961)]

Given the absurd numbers of rumours which abounded over the past few months, what is this "secret" of which you speak?

Agreed

[snowwrestler (896305)]

To me the untold story is how Apple managed to build such a strong buzz for their product, while avoiding any of the negative backlash that can accompany such a campaign (compare to Sony's PSP debacle right before the holidays, for instance).

They waged a viral campaign so effective that analysts and customers were basically demanding to be given the opportunity to purchase the new product--and they did it so silently that I'll probably get responses arguing that Apple didn't even do a campaign. THAT, to me, is the real story of secret-keeping.

Re:Agreed

[jandrese (485)]

Did you see the keynote. It's not just a phone + iPod, it's a smartphone (with all of the features you expect when you hear "smartphone") + iPod with an interface that doesn't suck. A smartphone with an interface that doesn't suck is truly newsworthy, as the industry has been trying to build that for years and failing miserably.

I do think there is a bit of euphoria right now over the product launch that is likely to subside a bit as June rolls around and people remember that $700 is a hell of a lot of money for a phone, smart or no.

Re:Agreed

[flyingsquid (813711)]

Did you see the keynote. It's not just a phone + iPod, it's a smartphone (with all of the features you expect when you hear "smartphone") + iPod with an interface that doesn't suck. A smartphone with an interface that doesn't suck is truly newsworthy, as the industry has been trying to build that for years and failing miserably.

Agreed: it's the "doesn't suck" that's key. Apple's iPod wasn't the first portable MP3 player by a long shot, but they created one that was small, stylish, had a good interface, and was actually enjoyable to use (and yes, marketed the hell out of it). Apple took the portable MP3 player to the masses and led a revolution in how we listen to music. They don't deserve all the credit, but in putting out the first non-sucky MP3 player, and in continuing to push the boundaries of the technology, they deserve a heck of a lot of credit.

The question here is, can they do the same thing to phones that they did to music players? Coming off the successes of the iPod, I wouldn't count them out. On the other hand, the iPod is a tough act to follow, and Apple has created a monster wave of hype that they're somehow going to have to live up to. This thing has to be good enough to survive on more than novelty and buzz, it's got to offer real advantages over your cell phone, rather than just being an awkward chimera of phone and iPod.

I think that Apple is clearly heading in the right direction. But being a pioneer is dangerous. Think back on the Newton- it came out not quite ready for prime time, so even after they got the text recognition working better, they had already lost the brief opportunity to capitalize on the device's novelty and buzz, and it never really took off. One or two major snafus in the iPhone and the same thing could happen.

just the beginning

[acvh (120205)]

I think it serves as a great tech demo. Features that work will start showing up elsewhere, patents or no patents. Phones are a commodity business, the iPhone is a boutique product. Too expensive for wide adoption, but maybe a portent of things to come.

Re:Agreed

[hamburger lady (218108)]

i think when the parent said 'joy to use' he/she was talking about to the average person, not to the sort of person that would run linux on their phone.

Re:Secret? What secret?

[Merkwurdigeliebe (1046824)]

While Mr. Wu and many other analysts who scour the supply chains for hints of what might come had an idea that an Apple phone device was almost certainly imminent; no one outside the loop knew what the specifications, configurations, capabilities, software, interface (soft and hard) were going to be to a reasonable degree. Surely, many people guessed at the features. Some people actually got some right; many got them wrong but no-one got it all right. Most guessed incorrectly and were working from obscurity and not from secret, in-the-know information. It was predominantly wild-guessing. Therefore it can be asseted as a secret. If one guesses enough one is apt to guess right.
Isn't that what brute-force password attacks are about? One cannot claim that hackers knew one's secret password only because they were able to discover that a password existed and then were able to gain it by brute-force attack.
I think it can be classified as having been an unqualified bona-fide industrial secret to the extent they were able to keep the details about the device at large from the press and the public and even their competitors.

Re:Secret? What secret?

[bynary (827120)]

Did you watch the keynote speech? Did you read any of the summaries from it? Apparently not because it doesn't just make phone calls and play music. The LG Chocolate does both of those (as do many other devices). The key difference is that, if this device lives up to Apple's claims (which most of the products in recent years have), it will make phone calls and play music better than any other device has ever done it. That's why the iPod has been as successful as it has: it doesn't just play audio and video files; it plays audio and video files better. Apple didn't just cram an MP3 player into a phone or vice versa; they engineered a new device that was designed to do both equally well. It's not just a handheld device that happens to run Windows Mobile; it's a device whose software and hardware were designed from the ground up together to create a seamless thing that makes my life easier. No I don't work for Apple.

Not all that's secret

[hirschma (187820)]

Seems that Apple is keeping the secrecy going... questions that I have:

- What processor?
- How much "system" RAM in the thing?
- Can users install their own software? Rumor is that you cannot - you have to buy it from Apple or Cingular.
- What bluetooth profiles are available?
- Can I get shell?

I have a feeling that this is not going to be a geek's toy.

jh

Re:Not all that's secret

[amokk (465630)]

I'm pretty sure that the stunning overwhelming majority of cellphone users will not pass over the iPhone because they cannot get a shell. It'll be a geek's toy in the sense that it'll probably do more than any other cellphone out there today while simultaneously doing it in a more elegant way than has so far been conceived. It'll be a geek's toy in that it has a good web-browser installed from the get-go instead of some barely useable, slapped-together piece of crap that most cellphone users nowadays have come to accept as a "mobile browser." It'll be a geek's toy in the sense that it has some real horsepower behind it to do what many people would like to be able to do with their current phones.

I think what Apple has here is a "digital life manager" first that is incidentally also a cellphone. They will absolutely not miss the market of people who want to open a goddamn shell on their phone.

Re:Not all that's secret

[badasscat (563442)]

Here's an even better one, a "VGA+" display at 690x480. http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/product/foma/903i/n903i [nttdocomo.co.jp] /topics_01.html .

Yes, these are of course Japanese phones, and Japanese phones are for some reason much more advanced than western phones.

While you're at it, why not show off NTT's full FOMA lineup? Here: http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/product/foma/ [nttdocomo.co.jp]

Almost all of these have better raw specs than the iPhone, with higher res screens and cameras, expandable memory, user-installable apps, 3D graphics and more. You'll also notice that the Japanese have almost universally shunned any form factor other than the clamshell... just as we have. That's going to be a big problem for the iPhone in terms of attracting mainstream users (in the United States). The iPhone's problem is that it's attempting to redefine a market that's already been defined through market forces; it's not like we've never had candy bar style phones here before, and it's not like we haven't had touch screens. They just don't sell as well as clamshells, and phones with buttons.

Back to NTT, though... what's the one thing all of these have that the iPhone doesn't? 3G support (which is old hat in Japan at this point). Another big minus for the iPhone. It's not like Cingular doesn't have 3G phones here either - I've got one myself. So this is another big negative - how are you expected to actually make use of all of the iPhone's internet features on a 2G network?

On the one hand, it doesn't serve much purpose to compare the iPhone to Japanese phones, which are almost universally more advanced than ours (funny thing is NTT does sell the Moto Razr, but it's like at the bottom of their lineup of already bottom-rung 2G non-FOMA phones, and I didn't see a single one last time I was there). On the other, I do think it's worth pointing out that the iPhone is really not as advanced as some people seem to think it is. And I also think it's interesting (and telling) that even a place like Japan, which has embraced Apple's design ethos and which places so much importance on industrial design, continues down the clamshell/button road even in their ultra-high end stuff. There are reasons for this. Apple should have taken a lesson.

Re:Not all that's secret

[nine-times (778537)]

Can users install their own software? Rumor is that you cannot - you have to buy it from Apple or Cingular.

There hasn't been any real information on this, but I've heard people complaining that it will be sold "as is", and that you won't be able to get new software on it at all. While nothing has really been said about it, it seems ridiculous to me. Jobs made a big deal of the idea that it's running OSX with support for Cocoa and Core Animation and such. He made a point of saying that the screen would allow people to think of new, clever interfaces and be able to add things that are unforeseen at the time the device is sold. These statements don't make a lot of sense unless they intend to encourage third-party development.

My guess is that the version of Xcode distributed with Leopard will have support for making iPhone applications and widgets. I suppose it's possible that Apple and Cingular would try to control installation, but it doesn't seem realistic. First, it would discourage 3rd party development. Second, these things tend to get hacked, and Apple knows it. The only reason to do it would be if Cingular insisted, but Cingular might just be happy to be gaining so many data-plan subscribers.

Re:Not all that's secret

[alanQuatermain (840239)]

Given that it is highly doubtful that there is an Intel processor inside the iPhone, it will mean recompilation to run on the CPU that is in there. Honestly, given the form factor, it's much like trying to take a Win32 application to CE or vice versa - it doesn't work. Not because you can't scrape or expand the API to fit one another, it's just a totally different UI paradigm.

It's worth remembering that Xcode already has cross-platform compilation built in via gcc, and that likely the APIs used for user-level applications will be Objective-C, which shields programmers from a lot of low-level stuff. ObjC's message-passing even insulates developers from things like function-call ABIs to a large extent. Don't forget that OS X is based on NeXTStep & OpenStep, which (just like the PPC/Intel 'universal binaries') were able to recompile/bundle applications to run on multiple processors. Unless you're doing something fairly close-to-the-metal, writing apps via the Cocoa framework (and probably a separate ObjC iPhone framework) will likely mean that compilation is just a couple of clicks away -- and it'll build an Intel/PPC version for local debugging, and an (ARM? PPC? etc?) for deployment/final testing.

As for the differing UI, it's not all that difficult to change an app to match that -- after all, we're talking about a somewhat slimmed-down device -- because it would use the same standard high-level view, control, and layout code. While something like Delicious Library might have some potential for an iPhone application, it wouldn't look exactly the same, because the current UI for it has been designed -- by the app's developers -- according to a larger available screen. For something with a small screen, it could be tweaked to have each view appear in sequence, like the iPod menus & the iPhone mail application: List of libraries, contents of library (even with the cover browser UI), and select an item to view details. But being Objective-C, it likely wouldn't need a vast deal of changes beyond that; the code for each view might well be exactly the same. Certainly the item information view probably needn't change, nor the library list. The cover/shelf view might need tweaking to optimize it for smaller displays -- then again even that might not be necessary.

Then again, we may be restricted to HTML/Javascript 'widgets' -- who knows?

-Q

Re:Not all that's secret

[xjerky (128399)]

"Not support" is not the same as "not run". I can see why Apple doesn't want to feild requests of random people trying to get particular apps running on it.

Re:Not all that's secret

[soft_guy (534437)]

Duds currently has a phone with no service - he dials 911 every time he wants to order a pizza.

Operator: "911 - what is the nature of your emergency"
Duds: "I'm starving to death; send over a pizza!"
Operator: "You again!!"

How sad...

[Skadet (528657)]

As Macworld approached, dinners were missed, kids were not tucked in properly, and family plans were disrupted, especially over the holidays. And for what? "Sorry, that's classified" is not considered a satisfactory answer in many households when Mom or Dad misses the school play or the big wedding anniversary dinner.

I'm not sure any job is worth this, let alone producing a gadget.

Everyone knew, but nobody knew...

[LibertineR (591918)]

that the thing was going to rock.

After checking the feature set on Apple's web site, mark me down for at least two of those things.

My Treo looks positively anemic in comparison. It is enough to overcome my disgust for Cingular too.

I dont think anyone outside of Apple anticipated just how well recieved that phone would be.

you have no idea if it'll rock or suck

[SuperBanana (662181)]

After checking the feature set on Apple's web site, mark me down for at least two of those things.

You want it because all you saw was what Apple wanted you to see. You have no idea how it'll actually perform as a phone in ways that matter. I don't care how sexy it animates the UI if it's a shitty phone.

All the fervor is akin to GM showing off a new sexy looking car, and people wanting it, having no idea if it'll actually be a good car or not.

• How is reception/signal strength- cellular, Wifi, and Bluetooth?
• Does it drop calls mysteriously? (lot of early smartphones did)
• Does it explode in shards of expensive bits when dropped on the ground? (treos are famously fragile. Newtons were very tough. Will this be a Treo, or a Newton?)
• How clueful will Cingular be in sales and tech support?
• Will voicemails in the new "random access voicemail" system get deleted/disappear?
• How does the touchscreen feel? Is it a real problem having no actual buttons for tactile use of the phone (say, when driving?)
• Is the speakerphone loud enough/clear?
• Is the touchscreen durable?
• How well does it load pages over EDGE, which by all accounts is high-latency, slow, and already outdated? (I guarantee anything Steve did was over Wifi.)
• Will it support 802.11N so that it doesn't knock an N network down to G wherever it goes? It'd be pretty stupid to have an N network if your iPhone on your desk knocks you down to G.

You won't know any of this until Apple gives units to users (or maybe SOME journalists who aren't too distracted by "OOOO, NEW SHINY APPLE TOY". You're an absolute fool if you "pre-order" this thing.

Hence no FCC approval

[tlhIngan (30335)]

It's interesting to see that Apple "gets it". They must have been planning on doing the iPhone for a long time - for there are legions of people who scour the FCC website regularly for new registrations to catch the latest and greatest cellphone to hit the market. And add to that the legions of Apple fans who probably scour the FCC website just incase there's something wireless going to hit the market.

That's why iPhone doesn't have approval (though I bet it already passes certification - they just haven't filed yet) - the instant it's filed, it's public information, and Apple hates that. (Especially since a lot of collateral gets filed - internal photos, external photos, user manuals, lab reports, etc).

Honestly, until now, I really didn't find anything that made me want a new cellphone (the one I have is great, but it's coming up in the years), so I wouldn't know what to get when it died. Guess I do now. It's pricey, but I paid more for my current smartphone...

And given how difficult it is to do a cellphone (very - carriers are very picky - if the color of the button is wrong... or if it has certain features like call timers or byte counters...), I wouldn't see Apple as being able to get one in since it has no experience. (I expected it to be some super-hyped rumor that someone started and everyone ran with it after being upset at how crappy their current phone was, or some half-assed thing as is typical reaction.). But I suppose GSM carriers are less strict than CDMA ones since you don't strictly need carrier approval to sell a GSM handset (just replace the SIM card).

Yet Another Phone (or PDA), huh?

[xxxJonBoyxxx (565205)]

Yet Another Phone, huh? The secret isn't so much how they kept this thing "under wraps" (as if) but how Apple is getting various media outlets to flog what appears to be Yet Another Phone (or PDA) as the "next generation", "innovative", etc.

At $500 a pop it may be Sony-ing it's way out of its target market too.

I'm not getting one

[bazorg (911295)]

not enough DRM in it.

Nokia 9300 Anyone?

[mpapet (761907)]

I've got a Nokia 9300 that pretty much rocks the party.

I've got ssh and rdp clients for admin work, mp3 player, removable flash media, email, sms, good back-up restore functionality and works in linux too. There's even an OSS gui toolkit on sourceforge.

No, it didn't come from the Jobs Reality Distortion Field, but it allows me to have a life when I'm on weekend support rotation.

FYI, it's available now.

Something else of interest here....

[plazman30 (531348)]

OS X is now EMBEDDED. Apple can now take their OS and use it to run a whole mountain of consumer electronic devices.

So how long till they announce HD based widescreen iPods.

Andy

Re:How to keep something seceret.

[ColdWetDog (752185)]

Ha! Apple is nothing!

You don't even know IF my company exists, not to speak of WHAT we're going to produce.

I'm just gonna scrummage around in my closet for my old turtleneck and then watch out!

Re:Seriously.

[ProppaT (557551)]

You're right on two out of the three. They do scratch easily and they are overpriced. You may not be a fan of the interface (I myself am not an apple zealot when it comes to UI), but you'd have a hard time convincing anyone that the user interface is bad. Look at 95% of the other products on the market. Apple consistently has easier to use, more intuitive UI's than practically all of it's competitors. This is Apple's strength and they play off of this constantly with all of their products. That's like saying Nintendo makes crappy videogames. You may not like the hardware, you may not like the games, but you'll have a hard time convincing people that they make bad games. That's their bread and butter. They use it to push their hardware.