The One Device

The Secret History of the iPhone

Brian Merchant
Little, Brown US © 2017
416 pages
[@] getab.li/30964
Book:

Rating Take-Aways

9
9 Importance • The iPhone grew out of the brainstorming of a small group at Apple seeking novel
ideas for a computer interface.
8 Innovation
9 Style • Apple didn’t invent the smartphone concept. In 1992, the IBM engineer Frank Canova
Jr. patented and prototyped the first working smartphone with a touchscreen.

• In 2004, Apple CEO Steve Jobs decided to build a smartphone with a touchscreen.
 
Focus • Apple based the touchscreen interface on the FingerWorks company’s multitouch
technology.

Leadership & Management • One of the original iPhone concepts was an iPod that could make calls.
Strategy
Sales & Marketing
• The device became a mobile computer after engineers squeezed a version of the Mac
operating system into it.
Finance
Human Resources • The launch was a media sensation, but early sales proved disappointing.
IT, Production & Logistics
• Many believed sales were sluggish because the device ran only Apple apps. After Jobs
Career & Self-Development
invited third-party developers to participate, the iPhone became a sales juggernaut.
Small Business
Economics & Politics • The iPhone sparked the multibillion-dollar “app economy,” including the launch of
Industries
firms like Uber.
Global Business • By 2016, Apple had sold one billion iPhones – the best-selling product ever.
Concepts & Trends

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getabstract

getabstract
Relevance
getabstract
What You Will Learn
In this summary, you will learn:r1) How Apple drew on precursor technologies when designing the iPhone; 2) How
Apple’s software designers, industrial designers and engineers collaborated; and 3) How Bolivian miners and Chinese
factory workers contributed to the iPhone.
getabstract
Recommendation
In his engrossing history of the iPhone, Brian Merchant tells a complicated, inspiring and not-always-pretty story.
Merchant shows how the world-changing device emerged from decades of scientific innovation and the hard work
of Apple’s often-unsung software designers, engineers and industrial designers. He acknowledges the thousands of
laborers who extracted the phone’s raw materials from the Earth and assembled millions of the devices in dystopian
factories. Even though you know the story ends with Steve Jobs on stage at Macworld introducing the product
“that changes everything,” Merchant brews surprising suspense around the iPhone’s development. getAbstract
recommends this object lesson in collaboration, creativity and doggedness to Apple fans and to anyone who manages
teams or seeks to cultivate innovation.
getabstract
getabstract

getabstract
Summary
getabstract
Changing Everything
Since its introduction in 2007, Apple’s iPhone has become the most popular product ever, in
any category. Smartphones have become an essential tool of modern life, transforming how
getabstract people communicate, work and play. Between 2007 and 2016, the percentage of smartphone
“There were 20 to owners in the United States grew from 10% of the population to 80%. In 2016, technology
25 people working
on the iPhone in its industry analyst Horace Dediu calculated that the iPhone was the highest-selling product
early stages – a paltry in history.
number, given the
known stakes and the
ultimate impact of the In the lore surrounding the origins of the iPhone, Apple CEO Steve Jobs usually plays a
device.”
getabstract starring role. Although he was a driving force in its development, his contribution was only
one among many.

The iPhone is an example of a “convergent technology,” an innovation that drew on the

collaborative creativity of Apple’s designers and engineers and on past breakthroughs in
fields as diverse as particle physics and materials science. Transforming technical concepts
into a tangible object required the contributions of thousands of workers, including the
miners who extract its raw material from the ground and the factory workers who put the
getabstract thing together.
“The smartphone,
like every other
breakthrough Many contributors remain hazy figures in the iPhone narrative. That’s partly because the
technology, is built on archetype of the lone inventor offers such an appealing narrative. But it also results from
the sweat, ideas and
inspiration of countless Apple’s “culture of secrecy.” Apple rarely allows interviews with its staff. Jobs was so
people.” paranoid that word of the iPhone might leak out that he banned cleaning crews from the
getabstract
office used for iPhone development. During the early phases of the project, Jobs decreed
that staffers had to cover prototypes with black cloth whenever they moved them around
the building. The culture of secrecy persists even after consumers bring the phone home:
Apple bolts the device together with special screws to prevent you from looking inside.

The One Device                                                                                                                                                                       getAbstract © 2018 2 of 5

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 Wireless Communication
Apple didn’t invent the concept of the smartphone. In 1992, IBM engineer Frank Canova Jr.
patented and prototyped the first working smartphone with a touchscreen. IBM marketed
the device as the Simon Personal Communicator the following year and sold about 50,000
getabstract
“Like many mass- units before discontinuing it.
adopted, highly
profitable technologies,
the iPhone has a For a long time, only the wealthy or the government could access wireless communication.
number of competing Executives used it to conduct business on the move, Britain’s Royal Navy used it to track
origin stories.”
getabstract its warships, and US police forces outfitted their cars with “radiotelephones.” Early mobile
networks used regional telecom providers, which limited their range. In the 1980s and
1990s, Europe led an initiative to spread the Global System for Mobile, which allowed
wireless cellular coverage across borders and varieties of terrain. This set the stage for the
wide adoption of cellphones.

getabstract Genesis of the iPhone

“The story of the Apple’s quest for its own smartphone began after Jobs’s 1997 return as its CEO. A
iPhone starts, in other
words, not with Steve small group had begun meeting informally in an abandoned user-testing lab at Apple
Jobs or a grand plan to headquarters. The group – engineers, software designers and a member of Apple’s industrial
revolutionize phones,
but with a misfit crew design unit – brainstormed how users might interact with computers in a more direct way
of software designers than using a keyboard and mouse.
and hardware hackers
tinkering with the
next evolutionary step The group considered touchscreens. Touch technology had been around for decades. In
in human-computer
symbiosis.”
1965, engineer Eric Arthur Johnson at England’s Royal Radar Establishment created what
getabstract was probably the first touchscreen. The organization used it to assist in air traffic control.
In the 1970s, engineer Bent Stumpe at the European Organization for Nuclear Research
(known as CERN) built a touchscreen control for a particle accelerator.

“Multitouch Finger Tracking”

The touch technology most applicable to Apple’s interests was multitouch finger tracking.
getabstract Electrical engineer Wayne Westerman and his company FingerWorks developed it for use
“The story of why your
iPhone can effortlessly on tracking devices manipulated by computer operators with hand and wrist injuries. The
direct you to the closest technology replaced older-style touchscreens, which relied on finger pressure and were
Starbucks begins, as so
many good stories do,
notoriously imprecise. Westerman’s innovation used capacitive sensing, which harnesses
with the space race.” the human body’s electrochemistry. He devised a vocabulary of dozens of finger gestures,
getabstract
some of which survive in the iPhone.

Apple acquired FingerWorks and applied for a patent for a new multitouch device. The team
put together a rough prototype by projecting an image of a Mac screen onto the surface
of the trackpad.

The Design Process

getabstract
In 2003, Apple industrial design chief Jony Ive showed Jobs the mechanism his team was
“Apple tapped a half a developing. Jobs was unimpressed. But over the next few days, he grew enthusiastic and
century’s worth of touch
innovation, bought
soon claimed it had all been his idea. He directed team members to use their experiments as
out one of its chief the basis for a new touch-based tablet. At this point, no one was thinking about telephones.
pioneers and put its
own formidable spin on
its execution.” As the elements of the tablet began to come together, the project ran into roadblocks. The
getabstract team couldn’t decide on the nature of the tablet’s software. They realized that whatever
they came up with was going to be expensive, with a retail price around $1,000. When Jobs
became ill in 2004, the project stalled.

The One Device                                                                                                                                                                       getAbstract © 2018 3 of 5

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 After his sick leave, Jobs decided to refocus the project on creating a phone instead of a
tablet. He had the project proceed on two paths. The P1 team, which included people who’d
worked on the iPod, was to pursue the idea of a hybrid music-player and phone. The P2
team would work toward something resembling a miniaturized computer incorporating the
getabstract
“The iPhone would multitouch interface as well as Mac software. The P2 group included software experts who
be billed as three had worked on the Mac operating systems and on software for NeXT, the company that
devices in one – a
phone, a touch music Jobs founded when he first left Apple. Interface designers were supposed to work with both
player and an Internet groups.
communicator.”
getabstract
The iPod team proposed a device that could switch between music-player and phone modes.
The user manipulated an iPod-style click wheel to control the music-player and to dial
numbers on the phone – reminiscent of dialing on a rotary phone. The click wheel proved
too unwieldy and Jobs concluded that the interface had to be a touchscreen.

This left open the question of the phone’s operating system: Should it use the more
rudimentary iPod operating system, or should the P2 team figure out how to shrink the
Mac’s operating system (OS) into the phone? The question was unresolved because Apple
getabstract
“It was quickly dubbed hadn’t decided what it wanted the device to be: Was it an “accessory” – a music-player that
the Jesus phone by made calls – or was it a “mobile computer”? They decided the P2 team would develop a
Apple watchers and
warily denounced by version of OS X.
competitors.”
getabstract
By 2006, the basic outline of what was to become the iPhone was in place. Staff raced to
have it ready for Jobs to introduce at Macworld in January 2007. The process was grueling:
They worked day and night, slept at the lab, and canceled their vacations.

The Outsiders
Several people outside of Apple made essential contributions to the iPhone, often under
stressful or even harrowing conditions:

getabstract • Samsung – In 2006, as the Apple team members approached their January 2007 deadline,
“Many of the iPhone’s
base elements are dug they still faced a major roadblock. The device lacked a central processing unit. Samsung,
out in conditions that which manufactured chips for the iPod, agreed to provide a new chip – made to Apple’s
most iPhone users
wouldn’t tolerate for
specifications – in five months even though chip development usually takes a year or
even a few minutes.” more. Apple’s team worked closely with Samsung, devising the chip’s specifications
getabstract
even as Samsung built it. Samsung delivered a chip with 137,500,000 transistors without
knowing it was helping to build what would be the iPhone.
• Corning – Apple had planned on using a plastic touchscreen on the iPhone. A few
months before launch, Jobs decided he wanted glass – he disliked that the keys in his
pocket scratched the plastic screen. The teams had to find a glass screen that would meet
the specification of not shattering when dropped from the height of one meter [3.28 feet].
Corning Glass, which had experimented with shatterproof glass since the 1950s, had
shelved the effort because no market seemed to exist. The company had recently revived
getabstract the concept under the moniker Gorilla Glass, intending to market it to cellphone makers.
“The cutting edge is
conceived and designed
The technology was just what Apple needed.
in Silicon Valley, but it • Miners – The iPhone depends on thousands of miners on every continent delivering
is assembled by hand in the tin, cobalt, aluminum and other elements essential to the phone’s appearance and
China.”
getabstract operation. Bolivia’s Cerro Rico mines in the Andes became one source of Apple’s tin.
The miners there work as freelancers, digging ore with pickaxes and explosives and
selling it to smelters and processors. Many Cerro Rico miners die annually in accidents,
with fatalities also occurring among the estimated 3,000 children who work as miners.
In 2008 alone, 60 children died in the mines.

The One Device                                                                                                                                                                       getAbstract © 2018 4 of 5

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 • Factory workers – Most of the factories that assemble iPhones are in China. The
primary manufacturer, Foxconn, employs 1.3 million people. At Foxconn’s main plant in
Shenzhen, workers toil under extremely stressful conditions: They work 12-hour shifts
while scrambling to meet high daily quotas. For some departments, that means working
on more than 1,000 iPhones per day. If workers fall behind, managers inflict humiliating
public rebukes. Beginning in 2010, Foxconn attracted media attention because workers
were committing suicide by jumping from the tall dorm buildings; there were 18 suicide
getabstract
“Its killer app wasn’t attempts that year and 14 deaths. Foxcomm hired counselors and hung nets on the
the phone, but a store buildings to foil suicide attempts. Apple made efforts to curb the abuses: It started
for more apps.”
getabstract a program to audit its supply-chain and took action against firms that employ child
laborers. Advocacy groups such as China Labor Watch charge that Apple’s moves are
little more than public relations tactics.

The Launch
On January 9, 2007, Jobs took the stage at the Moscone Center in San Francisco and
announced a product “that changes everything.” At this point, the iPhone was still buggy
and the main chip wasn’t finished. Engineers finessed the device’s operation so Jobs could
successfully demonstrate the touch gestures, the web access, the inertial scrolling – and
getabstract how to use Google Maps to search for a nearby Starbucks.
“We aren’t great
at conceiving of
technologies, products, The team got the bugs ironed out in time for the June retail launch. Lines stretched outside
even works of art Apple stores. The company claimed sales of 270,000 units in 30 hours during the first
as the intensely
multifaceted, sometimes weekend. But sales disappointed over the longer term.
generationally
collaborative, efforts
that they tend to be.” One stumbling block was the high price, but the lack of apps was a bigger drawback. Jobs
getabstract regarded the ability to make calls as the iPhone’s “killer app.” He refused to allow outside
developers to make apps for the device aside from those that Apple developed with Google.

The first release of the iPhone came with four “anchor” apps – including Phone, Mail, Safari
and iPod – along with Text, Calendar, Photos, Camera, YouTube, Stocks, Google Maps,
Weather, Clock, Calculator, Notes and Settings. Users couldn’t download or add any other
getabstract
“As more people start apps.
regarding smartphones
as their primary The App Store
Internet devices and
conducting more of Hackers helped demonstrate the iPhone’s potential when they broke into the operating
their sensitive affairs system and installed their own apps. Jobs relented and opened the phone to third-party
on them, smartphones
are increasingly going developers, a move that marked the turning point when the iPhone did begin to change
to become targets everything. The real power of the device wasn’t as a phone, but as a platform for apps that
of hackers, identity
thieves and incensed deliver enticing content, including social media, entertainment and GPS directions.
ex-lovers.”
getabstract
Apple opened its App Store in the summer of 2008; it became the iPhone’s most popular
feature. When Jobs announced the store, he envisioned that it would carry hundreds of apps.
Today the store hosts more than two million. It helped usher in the app economy, now a
multibillion-dollar market including companies like Uber and Facebook.
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About the Author
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Brian Merchant is an editor at Vice Media’s Motherboard and has written for The Guardian, Fast Company, Fortune,
Wired, and other publications.

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