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?

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

Agreed

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

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

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

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:just the beginning

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.

Remember how people said the iPod was too expensive and had no market when it came out? I think the iPhone may be in the same situation. It certainly has a lot going for it, including integration, design and simplicity. When you consider that there is the $4000 Vertu [vertu.com], that is getting bought by people with deep pockets and those who want to make a statement, I believe there is market enough for a well design, easy to use Smart Phone. This may just be the product to bring the smart phone to the masses.

Re:Agreed

I have to agree with you.

One of my biggest gripes when moving to a Treo 600 (I now own a 650) from a Kyocera 6035 was the fact that it was too easy to smudge the display with a cheek imprint during normal telephone operation. This was because the Kyocera had a GIANT keypad over the display that flipped down for PDA usage (It was, by all standards, a phone first and a PDA second, unlike all of its smartphone predecessors. I consider the Kyo 6035 to be the first good smartphone.) This keypad protected 75% of the screen during normal "phone" usage and transport. The Kyo 7135 was a step forward in screen protection, unfortunately Kyo botched the software on that one. :(

The iPhone takes that issue and makes it FAR worse - the screen is no longer recessed or protected in any way. It'll get smudged by fingerprints during normal PDA operation, smudged by one's cheek during normal phone operation, easily scratched during transport, and potentially easily scratched during normal usage if you oversleep and have to run to work without shaving.

Apple doesn't seem to have noticed that every attempt at a phone that didn't have tactile buttons for basic phone functionality (i.e. real buttons for actual dialing) has been a massive flop. Telephone users want (in fact NEED) to be able to "dial blind". This is why my Kyo 6035's giant dialing buttons (it wasn't a thumbboard, it just had the basic phone keys) had a little raised bump on the 5 key, as did my Treo 600 and current 650. As slick as Apple's UI is, they have no way of replicating such a simple and critical feature as the ability to locate a "home" key on your device's interface for "no-look" dialing.

What next, after 50 years of being taught that proper typists don't look at their keyboards, is Steve going to try to replace Mac keyboards with an on-screen gimmick? That is effectively what he is trying to do with the iPhone.

Re:Agreed

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:Agreed

That's the parent's whole point! Nobody should care about the iPhone. It doesn't do anything that hasn't already been done by the likes of Motorola, Samsung, Nokia and a dozen other companies, including Apple itself.

Since when has Apple ever been about doing things that others cannot? The iPod doesn't have any functionality that other mp3 players don't have, Macs don't have any real hardware that your average PC doesn't have already... The secret sauce for Apple is usability and fashion/style. They took bland, boring mp3 players, and made it cool to use and wear. They took clunky laptops and made it sleek and sexy. They are doing the exact same to cell phones. Technically there is nothing the iPhone does that the vast majority of smartphones cannot - but the iPhone looks slick, it looks like it'll be a joy to use, and it'll be cool as hell to have it.

Which, in the end is exactly where they want to be. Why sell bargain-basement hardware for low margins when you can hook the self-proclaimed elite that are willing to pay a premium for ease of use and cool bling factor?

Re:Secret? What secret?

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?

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.

And one of the year's biggest tech launches?

Fortune's Peter Lewis goes inside one of the year's biggest tech launches

It's January 10th. Obviously this is going to be the year's biggest tech launch to date. Talk about hyperbole. Talk to me in November and then we can talk year's biggest tech launches.

Re:And one of the year's biggest tech launches?

Talk to me in November and then we can talk year's biggest tech launches.

It's a date. As soon as I awake from that trick or treat sugar coma, I'll call your iPhone from my iPhone...

How to keep somthing seceret.

Step 1) dont tell anyone about it.
Step 2) dont deny it exists.

Thats about it realy.

Re:How to keep something seceret.

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!

Secret?

I think most of us who tool around the macrumor sites had a pretty good idea of what they were going to release. The only 'secret' was when. I wasn't surprised by any feature the phone had.

Secret?

Everyone and their mother has been waiting for months, maybe even a year, for the official announcement of an iPhone. How exactly is this a secret?

Not all that's secret

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

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

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

"You'll also notice that the Japanese have almost universally shunned any form factor other than the clamshell... just as we have"

Yeah, but not in Europe, no.

While I personally prefer clamshell style phones, in Europe candy-bar is either king or head-to-head (around 17/28 offers on Spanish Vodafone-subsidized consumer phones are clamshell http://tienda.vodafone.es/do/catalogo/moviles/todo s [vodafone.es] ), hell, not so long ago Nokia candy-bars were nearly universal around here...

Do not underestimate the phone market, it is HUGE, and there are many massive markets besides the US and Japan, Europe is no small fry (GSM / GPRS is truly universal in Europe and it was spearheaded here). On the other hand, UMTS and beyond is yet to gain a significant foothold in the mass-market consumer phone european market, no matter where the markedroids would like UMTS (and others) to be, it is nowhere as ubiquitous as GPRS/GSM.

3G is still to become what it's meant to become, no true killer-apps, no user critical-mass, expensive provider fees, expensive provider fees perception, sub-par network coverage (heck, my GPRS phone sound quality and coverage runs rings around my CIO's 3G exec phone), FUD about the VoIP and other data services, etc.

Don't discount other markets in the phone business, don't discount legacy, don't discount 2G, don't discount 2.5G...

Re:Not all that's secret

"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

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

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

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

Legally most probably no. Consider how paranoid apple about iPod games - developers had to send their sources to apple and can't even run binaries on the real device, not speaking about on-device debugging. About underground hacking - hassle with versions, danger of bricking the device, voiding warranty - most users probably wouldn't bother.

Re:Not all that's secret

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!!"

Not Really....

It wasn't kept under wraps. We knew about it more than a year ago, we just didn;t know whay it looked like or who was involved. We didn't know any more about this product before it was revealed than we knew about the iPod, Zune, Macbooks, a new cell phone, or any other tech product before their releases.

How sad...

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.