CHM Live | Original iPhone Engineers Nitin Ganatra, Scott Herz & Hugo Fiennes (Part One)

ten years ago this month on June 29 2007 iPhone was released within just three months Apple had sold 1 million iPhones now a decade later more than 1.2 billion phones have been sold how did iPhone come to be tonight for members of the original development team will discuss that Apple secret project which in the past decade is remade the computer industry changed the business landscape and become a tool in the hands of more than a billion people around the world this program is part of iPhone 360 led by the exponential sphere Center here at the Museum and the goal of that is really to do we do here at the museum to explore and tell the story of transformational technology and how it's affecting all of our lives through technology through business and through social impact and then as sphere to that 360 approach we're telling it from many people's voices from many perspectives and we hope that this set up tonight in a 360 and around that perhaps you'll hear the stories tonight and think about this story from a new perspective throughout the year we've been exploring this iPhone 360 not only through public events this is a third of fourth in a series but also through collections through artifacts through oral histories developing new research of creating a new exhibit and publishing insights and creating new education materials that's at the heart of the mission of the museum if you're a part of the story and can help us capture the story of iPhone or tell it please be sure to contact me or a part of our curatorial team many of them are standing in the back we have a amazing team of curators and project members that would love to talk with you and now I'd like to introduce our speakers for tonight's program titled putting your finger on it creating iPhone first John Markoff who will lead tonight's conversations John was a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist at New York Times anywhere he covered business and technology and has been a well respected author on several books the beginning of the year he joined us here at the Computer History Museum as a historian and he's a member of the iPhone project please give John a warm round of applause our first panelist and to introduce our panelists I'll bring up five numbers 1985 was the year he launched his first startup in the UK 12 was a number of phones that he owned in just three years before joining Apple one hundred and twenty million the number of iPhones matress a manufacturer during his tenure as Hardware manager five the number of years he worked at Apple and 27 the number of hours he spent on his longest day in a factory please join me in welcoming to the stage Keuka fine so glad to have you here and for our next guest 10 was age when he first used an Apple computer three was a number of platforms at Apple supported in 1993 his first year at the company 19 the number of years he worked at Apple 17 continuous years running a pre-release operating systems at Apple and 30 plus the number of operating systems released that he contributed while at Apple please join me in welcoming Natan Gundotra [Applause] thank you so much means thank you [Applause] and now to round out our panel 10 was the grade in which he made his first software demonstration 110 the highest speed and frames per second contacts could scroll on the original iPhone 16 years at Apple and 58 seconds it was less than a minute 58 seconds the fastest timecode turnaround during a human interface review at about 45 the number of amazing teammates he said he was privileged to work for work with and platform experience please join me in welcoming Scott her thanks Scott hey in 1991 Mark Weiser who was then a computer scientist at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center published an article in Scientific American in which he argued that computing was beginning or was about to disappear into everyday devices and they would become magic and for me at that time it was both an alluring and really foreign idea because I was just getting used to the last big concept in computing which was that computers would become personal the the sort of the best example of that point was an idea that had been created by another Xerox computer scientist Alan Kay the Dynabook and the idea was that you would have one computer for one person and all of a sudden computers were about to go away but like the Dynabook which preceded the first useful comportable personal computers it was about 15 years and the same thing ended up being true with this idea of ubiquitous computing it took about 15 years and I'd sort of like to make the argument it was the iPod in which a microprocessor disappeared into a music player and then the iPhone in which a phone was blended with a microprocessor and it became magic was sort of first two successful examples of this new era of ubiquitous compute that we're deeply into now so with that in mind let's explore how it came to be and I'd like to start by asking you guys about there's sort of a tale of which I guess I'd call the invasion of the body snatchers about how this got going and I'd like to have each of you describe how you came to the iPhone project how were you recruited in how did each of you arrive that Hugo do you want to do on a start I does they had a couple of attempts in 2004 I came over to the US and interviewed and they wouldn't tell me what I was working on which is quite normal and I decided no I wasn't going to do it that two years later they came back and so it's really cool this time really cool but they couldn't tell me what it was until I left my country left the UK moved to the US signed another NDA and I was very glad I'd done that but it was it was was that a big deal did you was it I mean it was a big deal leaving the country yeah and coming working on project that I didn't know what was going to be pretty sure it was gonna be a photocopier but um I was interviewing your interviews a lot of X motorola people it's like huh Oh radio hmm everyone been talking about phones dead well unit they've been the rumors for years you were a processor guy at this point um it was a a an mp3 player guy actually but competing with iPod so you know I had a start-up in 98 was acquired by Rio and you know I'd actually met Tony Fadell I think in like 2003 we had technology meeting about Apple maybe buying some IP from us and that's how we my name is just like all him and I think that's how I they kept on calling me so I was lucky I did actually say yes otherwise okay yep new ten how did you how did you get recruited him so I had already been working at Apple for 11 or 12 years by then I was working in the operating systems group and I was managing the the mail and address book teams for Mac os10 and it was just a just matter of course just sort of during the day we would talk about electronic products that were out there and you know this is early 2000s and there were some development happening on on phones and any time somebody somebody received a new phone or something like that we'd pull it out and play with it and look at what was neat and look at what was terrible and a lot of it was more terrible than neat so we just had these hallway conversations and and it just so happened that Scott Forstall was in the office next to me so he would participate in these conversations as well I'm not I haven't heard from Scott I I'm not sure how much that played into what would happen later but but one day Scott did walk into my office close the door behind him and and said we're going to be starting this new phone project how would you like to give up managing the mail and address book teams and and manage the the software part of this phone thing and it was I mean it was kind of a I mean it was both terrifying and it was also amazing all at the same time did you make a decision on the spot oh absolutely yes yes I made the decision right on the spot yeah it was not played it cool like I don't take this right away but disappear is that the right way to describe it uh several days later or a couple of weeks later something like that it yes we well first of all I mean I think Scott can probably tell this story a little bit more I was in the office next to him so after I think he went to your office but you know very quickly you know hey you know come and talk to me whatever come come to my office whatever and we kind of yeah we'd kind of like been talking about maybe there's something kind of cool going on and I've been on address book and one of the things that we at we done for that is like we had these little the Bluetooth connection to the you know the crummy little a candy bar phones that you had and so we had piles of those usually from like Europe always had the best ones like our phones in this country weren't anything to like get excited about and so when Scott was like so what do you like about your job I made sure to be like well these phones you know I think there's a lot we could you know we could do some pretty cool stuff with these phones and then it was like well maybe you would want to do this it was like absolutely want to do this where did you go to where did you disappear to so so I think it was it must have been a week later or something like that small number of days later we moved our offices Scott and I and two other guys Greg and Virgil from the from the male team as well we all moved up to the human interface hallway so we were in the inn sitting across and and next to the human interface designers and what we didn't what I didn't know before that was that I mean obviously they had been working on these projects that they work on lots of stuff so you know it's not a big surprise that they're working on more than what we knew about but lo and behold they had this you know that they had this Macintosh that was hooked up to a tablet like device and a big thick cable between the two and and that was where we saw the first designs was that that's where I saw the first designs was was on this Macintosh with this prototype tablet hooked up to it and and you know and the funny thing is that those first designs look an awful lot like what the rest of the world eventually saw I mean there were a lot of changes and a lot of churn in between there but but it had that thing where like you know the scrolling contact stuff that boss did where it's just like we just had there like like gaping idiots just bouncing this thing because it's just like it just felt so good and you knew like when you saw it that like I mean I imagine this is like what people say like oh well you saw this and you knew everything that's gonna be that way and like I feel like when we saw that it was just like like like this is what this is how everything is going to be and I if I can do something to help bring it into this world that I want so that was 2005 yeah yes yeah okay okay so before we go too far I want to happen to view how you got into computing yeah I think there's some interesting stories why is a huge nerd so nobody else nobody else would have me so it was like you know know what was my deal like I think what I think was cool is like when I was in the fourth grade we had like an apple too and I was like you know really was into that and stuff and I remember having to fill out these like three by five cards of like well what are you going to do from your 20s to 30s or what are you gonna do whatever and it was like I remember from like my 20s to 30s I was like supposed to be at Apple and so this is before in the back this is at a fourth grade uh yeah what did I have I had my first Mac was like a Mac Plus that my dad's office partner had to give up because he heads I don't hit something where basically couldn't have it at work because it was like an OSHA hazard and so they brought it home to me neat on how did you get into computing I too was a huge nerd it was just something that it interested me from the first time I saw an Apple 2 plus and you know and these these awful now awful games like I think there was one called Trek and some some other games that that you know it started with games and then eventually and then over time it turned into well how have you actually make a game like how do you you know did somebody sit down and really write this all in this basic thing that you know seems to be good for printing my name across the screen but really did people write games in this and so I mean I think that that sort of piqued the curiosity was you know starting with the games and then going into basic and then learning assembly and and just sort of learning a little bit more about how you know how the Apple 2 actually worked behind the behind the scenes did you try to write games I didn't really write anything of you know of interest back then I you know I wrote I you know I wrote some small tools here and there to help me out you know with a yeah you know like Spanish vocabulary you know that kind of thing or you know just little things here and there but nothing of consequence you go oh because I was a huge Annette as well I was like maybe disadvantaged and I grew up in rural Somerset in southwest England a dairy farming area my father worked for Clark's shoes they had a my CL mainframe and I I got to walk through the computer room with clearly marked exits in case the Argonne fire-suppression came on but we do have a computer so so my dad would borrow a Commodore pet and monochrome one and what I remember was it was in 1832 with the proper keyboard but when I was typing in the games from magazines all those funny little graphic symbols aren't labeled on the business keys so I had to learn which function key to get like the half diagonal you know so any I got into it like that and you know pretty soon but my dad was easily persuaded on computers so when the BBC came out they call BBC B we went to buy just the BBC we ended up getting distros on a monitor so I was just like in heaven but it starts off with that and I was a big acorn nerd all the way through so you know the first ARM processors and and stuff I wrote the first sound tracker player on the ARM processor which is it was an amiga guy before that so it was cool yeah but you know it was it was a yeah I said most you have the same stories about computing really I don't remember though they're not it's like you know I'd say that is minor in hypercard they're not as legit real is you know yeah picking picking and poking it like you know I want to ask a little bit more about the secrecy involved in the in the iPhone project when you guys were in what was it like outside when you went to dinner with friends or how awkward was it friends no no that's a later out that's how that happened right what was his dinner you say those were all in 2007 right dinners right now that period between 2005 and 2007 how hard was it took people I mean I think about Apple is like people they we all get it we all live in that culture and we understand it and we respect it and it's kind of not a cool thing to be like Oh tell me whatever thing you're doing and so I don't know that people do be working on something cool and they would kind of give you maybe a hard time about that but they were very respectful I don't ever felt feel like I got like pressure to leak something to them it's interesting you start - one of the things I noticed was you develop a talent for describing something that you're working on without too many specifics without giving giving away you know too many too many details right and so you can I mean there are multiple ways you can you know tell the same story and you can deep dive into you know well these phone calls didn't work or you know this entry wasn't in the database and who the hell knows what's going on or you can just sort of say well we're adding some data to the database and this thing is not doing the Sailor thing is supposed to so then there's somebody's paying attention they may go you're using a database that doesn't it doesn't do it Ellen telemedicine you know my sense is that you did better than many other Apple projects I mean now today it seems like everything Apple Apple does leaks and I think bigger I'm is my memory right of you did pretty well keeping a lid on things in Honda we were in one corridor purple red purple corridor a new bottom for Mariani and and you know they were like 15 people tops in there doing that stuff and there was no one there was own to talk to and it was everyone was like you didn't want to let anyone down you knew everyone personally right yeah you're not gonna be a chi and you're not gonna be said that you know those people if you leak it like then you're screwing your buddy over and like it's not something you want to do so yeah purple was that the code name of the original project and does anybody remember where the I mean there's been a little bit of discussion recently about kangaroos about a kangaroo not a cloud yeah an aardvark B wasn't there an aardvark it's that's what rate all right so the radar icon I mean there's the radar icon which is a aardvark anteater guy he eats bugs right and then I want to say I know Andre didn't you do the simulator icon all right let's say Andre he's not here the uh there was there was a wallaby that there's a wallaby which kind of looks like a kangaroo I guess that was purple but I think they're kind of unrelated I would ask your follow-on guests maybe yeah you know how do that came on so I also want to ask about the the sort of the competitive terrain that was out there while you guys were involved in the project because I would I spent a fair amount of time in 2006 in Europe and I had this real sense that that that innovation was shifting in terms of mobile computing particularly to Europe it really felt like for the first time Silicon Valley might miss the next turn and then all of a sudden the iPhone happened and everything reset everything came back what did the competitive terrain look like it was wasn't didn't the rocker happen in like 2000 he doesn't mean it's okay okay okay that's not a good split so there was palm there was blackberry there was Symbian there was some Japanese variety of Japanese things did you feel urgent si did it did you feel like you know we're slow somebody's going to come to these ideas first non the hardware point of view I mean I I've been that actually work comes from the Symbian Code back in my 98 I've been contracting for Symbian we're actually they've cut my boss at Apple actually turned out he was like five floors above me and I didn't know him he was doing hardware it's Indian at the time at Zion but actually you know when and I've been a big phone nerd as you could see the number of phones I used to buy the latest release that this is the one this is the ones can be are it's awful sell it on eBay buy another one and I've been through all the different ones and you looked that no one was really pushing the boat out to what was possible and so when you know came in the specs we're doing that the speed of the processor the size of the screen we done in Hardware team we didn't really know when it was multi-touch but like the first time I saw pinch-to-zoom was at the keynote I didn't get Sophia : that's just amazing um you know it's like need to know does the touchscreen work yes we get touch events okay you're done and and you know there was there was a lot of stuff there which was you know you looked at that stuff and it was just like it's obvious that everyone else was just they had to make so many different variants to phone there was just like incremental they were holding stuff back and I feel had nothing to hold back it's just like this go for it what's the best stuff we can get let's add a bit to that and push hold ship Bend is a bit harder than the bit screen vendors and everyone a bit harder and and get this amazing thing and it was just naki was being incrementally everyone was being incremental yeah review was more like the like the gaming world seemed like it was starting to get it quicker than like the phone world did you know back in the day you look like I think Sony had like a like a portable out that actually had some kind of like graphics that actually moved at something faster than 10 frames a second or something right and you could trying to see that and go like you know well the hardware somebody was I mean it was huge but like you know somebody's able to make something that kind of does this for an hour before it runs out of battery like it gave you some hope that we could pull off something cool yeah that's kind of more like more happening with the console so with consoles were like every time a console came out like Sony would put so much stuff in the ps3 everyone go you can't possibly make money on that throw a chips in it and into work out in the end but they had you always had said seriously not one up get to to up the last console to be noticed yeah and that's kind of because yeah I was just going to say that yeah yeah you're right that every every single time a new phone came out for me anyway that I had this hope that okay this was actually going to be the phone that I want to use and they never were and it was it was because they were they were very incremental like you know ever you know it's in brand-new year and Sony Ericsson now they have this brand-new phone and you know last year's was okay but boy they've done a year of learning let's see what they come out with now and one year later it's about like what they had released a year's ever have like a special key that did something stupid on the side of it yeah yet all right yeah and it was slower than last year's and probably had slightly worse battery life and had this buzzy screen that allegedly was color and you know it's just sad in all these ways so it was waiting for disruption so one of the things I don't get about secrecy I mean you guys talk about you were heavily compartmentalized inside is a sense I got and I just seems to me that that would be an impediment to making things you know interaction right it obviously there was some way around it but wasn't didn't you have to get over the walls to work together yeah we did and and I it was an impediment of I mean I think of course it was an impediment but but at the same time there was there was at the same time there was so much value there as well by having this secret and having it having it be that you know let the whole West the rest of the world think that in order to develop a phone you have to do this incremental thing right you know on that and that's what the industry looks like and you know everybody's going to have effectively a dot one and they're going to take a whole year to come out with that you know I mean I think that all served us very well in the end that nobody knew what was coming and nobody knew what we were working on you know and and if anybody had to guess they would think that it looked probably a lot like the blackberries did at that time or the trio's did at that time and you know maybe if you asked anybody based on what had already been happening in the phone industry before they would that we were going to have a very minor increment on top of the best phone that was there in 2006 right you know because that was the pattern that everybody else was following so why would we have anything better you know and and so you know that that all you know I think those years of you know sort of slow development in the phone industry also helped us to in addition to keeping it secret it helped us really make a big splash when Steve Jobs led the development of the Mac team he basically created a speed core by convincing and they were pirates even they even flew a pirate flag at one point it was there anything had it what what was the you know the chemistry that that sort of motivated you was there anything like piracy or to be pillage anything we tillage employees we pillaged employees that's a lot I mean I would say that's like yeah here's that was as close as it came is like we would go to build so this building too which is kind of where we were and then we would wander over to building three which is kind of where a lot of other people were you know to hang out because we have like friends there and whatever and then like like little like I chat storms would blow through that like those people they're they're you know they're over here poaching again like you know managers would come out and like you know right I walk into building three and and within just a couple of minutes two or three managers are coming out and they're asking you know who are you talking to can talk to him leave him and you know because yeah I mean obviously they knew that the lat the previous three conversations I had ended up with you know an employee getting yanked and pulled on to the end of the private er and we were giving a secret area then how do we do some best results is like Anna be like the best layer engineer yeah we got a we got dog it's like oh I'm sorry guys we got Doug which is busy he can't help you anymore yeah so so there was there was tablet computing work going on at Apple and yet you guys brought a phone to market first did I mean did you guys think tablet at all I mean it was there anything to cannibalize the Jemmy did multi-touch sort of emerge from tablet work to end up in the phone first what was the history I don't know that's probably all we a Scott okay we have some answers stay tuned for the exciting will and you know today it all seems so natural and obvious but there are things in that interface that I've been told you guys like died over say you talk a little bit about seeing it first seeing things scroll and seeing momentum yeah or seeing my pinch or what were the hardest things to do and when people look at their phones today what should they look at and say you know this is this was an innovation because now it's just like the air we breathe so I'll start with one I can't tell you how many how many times I heard Scott Forstall going into poor Andrew Platt sirs office wherever he is later and it's also out here talking about the scrolling the scrolling deceleration at the how the phone while it's decelerating or while it's while it's scrolling when you touch what is it you know what is the behavior of the screen at any of those moments how should all of these you know just very being very specific about the details around scrolling and and just moving through a list and and the whole UI and how it responds to touch if you you know if you look at phones that that or if you look at any devices that were touched before the iPhone came out there's really this feeling that you're you know that you that you're you you're wearing like three gloves and you're trying to hit these tiny little buttons you know it feels very detached it feels like you're you're pushing something that pushes something that pushes something whereas with with the iPhone it not only does it respond immediately but but it does in a very natural way and there's a lot of freaking math that that goes into making off to work that well and a lot of those details - how much compute was there were you pushing the edge of the computing that was available to make that oh yeah yes that is okay no I mean like I mean kind of the interesting path of it is like so we got it working on a g5 which is like the biggest the fastest thing we had and we were pretty excited about that and then we got it working on a like a blue and white g3 and then we got it working on and then Virgil figured out that you could super crap up one of those orange iBooks and make it even slower and we got it working on that right and every time you would optimize it you would different stuff would bubble to the top of being really really slow and then what was interesting is then we started to transition over to kind of more real hardware and you start to play with for kind of our experience anyway was one of the early times where hey we have this GPU that maybe isn't total garbage compared to like the CPU which is like total garbage like how do you optimize I mean gnarly is probably great like you know like it was the best you could get it was um but like it you know it started making us think like okay well maybe the way to do this is not that you know the draw model that we had done on the desktop you know maybe like so like Harper and core animation and all that stuff kind of came to be where it was like maybe we draw as much of the stuff as we can ahead of time and then let the GPU do its magic if I compositing everything and once we kind of had that it it every time we moved to like a slower or close a piece of hardware that was closer to what we were actually going to have we would have to kind of like reaaargh attack things and make it faster and to the point finally where it yeah you know so there was an the first iPhone yeah it was actually limited very limited lower case you have some yellow acacia cheeks and so the graphics all all happens the compute graphics all happened there at the end the gist of the idea was that like things like text drawing and all that stuff is just like notoriously slow and so you do that like on this on the CPU and you basically build a layer right and then the the compositing is really good at compositing compared to the CPU and so the idea was that like okay on the you know kind of get everything ready to go get the recipe for how you're going to like composite the scene together do that on the CPU and then let the GPU do the business of actually placing you know compositing where all those bits need to go and then you're not putting and redrawing all the stuff all the time right you can be picking your leisurely time the 60th of a second until like you know you have a little more the time however long it however fast you're throwing it to go make the next layer so that you can then you have a positive so it seems totally obvious and nobody noticed it all but when you reach the bottom when you're browsing a page and you reach the bottom it bounces yeah where did that is that an idea and where did it come from that's mr. Ross mr. boss right now so Mima nobody thinks about but was that a big deal I mean was it would you can I think is a huge deal yeah I mean it was a big yeah I mean a lot of people thought it would I think was a big deal yeah but it's part of that some I'm being a little you know yeah certain court systems because it was a big deal so you know the believe it of that yeah yeah so what's the story of the did the icons kind of move over from dashboard was what's the story of the is that I don't remember today move over is that sort of the route okay welcome welcome back to that and how about the is the the the homepage you I see was that code name spring springboard uh-huh did is there a story behind I thought they kind of bounced and so I thought was a springboard for was originally like this thing that I wrote as a quickie thing because we are we're starting to get all these like apps and and in the demos that the H I guys had done like they're always very you know its sprung to life and it was all this other stuff and it like our when we were showing our apps once we finally had apps like it seemed like it would be nice for them to do the same thing and so we wrote I wrote like springboard to just do that kind of thing and then it kind of well it also hey we need to be able to show the lockscreen or hey we need a kind of organically grew as all good architectures do um into this thing looked like oh no no this is like a fundamental like you know piece of the system and I think one of the last one of the last commits I did was actually to pull out the there was a 700 K paying that represented the chrome for the when we do demos of like like some phone that never actually even existed and we have that out the last minute yeah so um did all of you guys there any of you work on what was called p1 the effort to do a scroll wheel did good ego were you those I arrived just off the p1 anyone was already gone I found stuff my drawers but but there's actually when we did the first board bring up you know that stuff wasn't ready on the first process yet said you know what why there so we had the original interface and I actually had the touchscreen but you could do click crinkle stuff on it yeah so it rendered the UI on that but there was a lot of stuff we were doing to check the hardware work before we passed it over to to you know the guys across the street who did all the darling stuff so yeah but there was this sort of dueling hardware do you guys compete were you always on the p2 side is that the way it works yeah well it's funny because yeah there I mean there was definitely two teams and there was this you know sort of rivalry or competition or what-have-you but at the same time we on the software side we we actually developed some some core components with the intent of sharing them with p1 because we knew that some of these pieces we we wanted to make sure that they were Road tested and they worked well when they went when they worked on when we eventually got to p2 as was plan of record at that time so we actually went over and spoke to what we met with the software team the p1 software team and said you guys need an address book you're making a phone and probably need an address book we're making one we're making one that's very memory efficient and very small and compact and we really want to make sure that as many of our components are working well as upfront as possible to kind of front load the work as much as we can because we know that there's going to continue to be more and more work as we keep going so let's try to qualify some of these core components early on and one way we could do that is if P 1 is the first boat that's leaving then let's get our pieces on that boat and make them a ship on p1 first so anybody who knows about the address-book api and if you wonder why it's in c and what the iOS team was thinking right that first version see it's t1 years later I would get also tell like no and why is it why is all this C garbage in here what were you thinking Bryce would there was reason and actually that the radio you know the radio part was reused so in different different AP processor and stuff but a lot of the radio design just came over yeah which is good to get enough stuff to worry about on the first p21 m-68 and then we had not stuff to worry about them having brand new radios as well yeah we had that worry later there was also an issue that had to be resolved I mean there was there was there was a Mac OS coming down from the top and then there was a there was a time that people talked about an embedded iOS coming up wanted anybody want to talk about sort of how you guys when it didn't become obvious at a certain point that that we I mean I know if this was kind of a getting a bit like in the very beginning like we didn't really know like how capable this system is going to be and so we spent a bunch of time in the really early beginnings like in that early week where we're all like moving offices and stuff like trying to figure out like like how do you how do you render something is going to take a kit and chop it all up are we going to take like you know I made a I took a pet and like start chopping at it and I got like I think i removed my second or third bit of like two bit tiff rendering from like 1987 I was like even if even if we probably still there somewhere even if like we do this it's we're not building a system that is it's if it captures the heart and soul of the stuff that we're seeing and so we looked at like I did one in corefoundation it was kind of like a UI kit but done with corefoundation and then I started like some of the early the early UI ket stuff where it was like this objective-c kind of framework and it was I think kind of clear that like that was the way to go it was I think it was I don't we probably should have been more scared about like how much work that was going to be for Platts I really um but uh I think that's where we were at from it it's fine this nice middle layer and then start building you know from like sort of the foundation level up don't bring the whole back over but just you know start with what it takes to make the cool stuff at the age I guys were we're doing and you know apps came later but there was also this issue of whether you could actually use the browser as an application environment and it was was that was that was that a debate that ever actually I mean was it there was definitely a debate an internal debate about what what technology should we use should we use more web-centric technology for creating these apps because you know the way the web is grow the web is the web there's everywhere and and more and more people you know there was this thought that it would be easier to author apps if we if we opened up some web if we used a web technologies and they people who were arguing for that side that was not me we're saying that these things were getting better and better over over the years as well and so at some point and anything that you can do in native you could pretty much do anything when technologies and we just need to be smart about it and this is the right path going forward then there were other people who were saying no no forget all that native nothing beats natives nothing beats native compilation and running right on the bare metal and why are we we're building a phone here why are why would we possibly entertain putting a web browser on it's already hard enough to implement the design as it is using native code why would we throw this this you know this big ball of web in the middle of it as well yeah Magath web and so I'm sorry the baggers web a bag of web and I love it yeah so sorry yeah yeah some of us would like we done dashboard like right then like dashboard had come out not too soon before that and I know we'd done some of that and yeah a challenge for me I you know I were opening old wounds like like cuz we did that we did that and it was sort of a little bit I don't know I think it should be this way everybody had good points and then we we did we went away and then everybody came together and made something cool Apple had this other OS that was lying around called the Newton OS did it ever get any consideration well I I think our designer at the time the designer was Greg Christie who formerly worked on dude Newton so I don't think so that anything was directly carried over from it but at least we had that knowledge and at least one other person who had roots in the Newton as well and you know could tell us war stories so there was that but there was never the old furious treasure trove of code that we could go pull from you know build something great from there's people who seen an on processor before de yeah yeah that's true probably yeah which is what were them certain people who had a I mean ARM processor yah it was like oh yeah well I can you know when during can be done quite nicely yeah lots of fun stuff yeah so the keyboard even after you guys announced them it was it was like a huge question mark a huge gamble um when did you guys sort of buy into the notion you could build a device without a physical keyboard well I made the first crappy one that made everybody consider maybe this isn't going to work why was it crappy uh I was like I mean that's a question I think because like I had no business making a keyboard like back in the day you look at it now and it's like this beautiful machine learning problem right but then I was like just this idiot and I didn't I was like I knew what an Engram was which I thought was pretty cool but not nearly cool enough and but yeah but then maybe we'll hear stories about that later that we had like a competition and really awesome ones came out of it and so we shipped that I think at some point if I don't I couldn't tell you when it kind of felt like it wasn't as scary a thing we were talking about it's really hard to like you could that's one of those problems where you can then be really all in your head about it because it's like well like I type on this thing and it sucks and if I type on a blackberry maybe it's better and you you can get in your head about all this you know this sucks and this is better and when you're doing that math you're not thinking about well but yeah but but this phone does all of this other stuff that you can't even compare it like my grade isn't do any of that stuff you can get kind of like spun up about those kinds of problems and really kind of maybe not notice that yeah but the overall picture is is much much better we've got a ton of questions a little bit of time but I do want to ask one one hardware question while all this was going on you know you were building the supply too China and I mean was that something that you were deeply involved in and what was it like trying to set up a manufacturing operation at the time well Nina Apple was great at manufacturing already you know and they had a lot of the iPod people the EPM VPS is all the stuff like that I mean for us working that it was actually like all this was done for you that was the great thing about what it was like working for a start-up with infinite resources and you got top priority on everything you know you needed some new test gear it arrives the next day you know when you design stuff you got to pick the best chips for the best make stuff work someone else would worry about cost so it was always amazing you know we sort of fly to China and everything everything was organized everything would write processes would be like hand-carried from from Korea over and they they'd arrive just as the SMT line started to move sort of thing and it was like wow someone some lot of organizing here and I just turned up and like you know put Perrin and stuff smoked whoa okay I'm glad I'm here to help you know that there was Apple already had this very mature manufacturing machine you they haven't made a phone before they made lots of miniature stuff before they don't Wi-Fi radios before yeah sure they're also different challenges but Apple is incredible at designing and building and managing that that that chain I mean it was some things we didn't do for the flow in terms of like a really connected manufacturing process which was new and there were a lot of a lot of people lost a lot of hair over that making that work but it was great you know it was like it was like sovereign territory in the Foxconn office it was like in the need there's an office which only Apple people would go into and had like direct ds3 lines from from Texas into it and there was amazing things in the factory how often did you go to China for the first phone a lot and and then I had kids and an Apple very nicely my manager let me not go as often yeah but I really did like going to China I mean China's an amazing place I find manufacturing amazing I find the fact that the way China works nothing is wasted you know it's like if there's a room with no one in it the lights are off often it's unheated at nights or Alfia sometimes the unscrew every third light bulb but you know it's kind of a it's to see how efficient the world can be you kind of go to China you see efficiency yeah because it means something there and I think we get very insulated to that in the Western world slightly better don't I'm gonna start since I want to ask one last question what was it like to sit in the audience at the launch during Mac world and I were you guys nervous what I still get it's yeah I still get just now I just get like you know chills about it there's a funny there's a there's a Red Hot Chili Peppers song that happens the moment we hit our high watermark and when you hear that when you hear it play like you know I know we've had our high watermark for memory and we're not going to like screw up it's like and it's like I can be just like all pissed off at something and then that song will come the radio on the radio and it's like my blood pressure just dropped you know it was absolutely terrifying I mean it was it was it was surreal to see Steve Jobs demoing the the thing that you've been working on for for so many years but but at the same time remember the things that he was demoing were things that we had worked on and so you know the terrifying part was just okay we know that we've been through these demos and we know that we fixed a lot of bugs in here but there's always that chance that you're going that that he's going to hit some bugs that nobody has ever seen before and he's going to hit it on stage during the keynote and it's going to be in one of the things that I'm responsible for and and you know and so there's no amount of you know making yourself feel better about that until till the actual demo passes by and and you can breathe a little bit but but usually that you know then there's another app that's out or or Steve goes into this grand finale a Terry end and you know and now we're all having heart attacks because he's using four different apps and doing five different things and I love it listen great a little terrified at a different where I worked on the video output board and the tethers connecting the thing in the demo the demo know there were four things I'm thinking in one work the whole way through software and hardware but I knew the tether was only two meters long and I was more than two meters away so it couldn't hit me yeah I was kind of cool with the whole thing it wasn't a problem I want to ask you guys one sort of future and the question is resolved in about the iPhone but yeah now when I walk down the street in my home in San Francisco where I live fully half the people are looking at the palm of their hand yeah I mean really walking down Surya it's just it's it's stunning how you guys change the world that way and the same time I always think this can't be the end of you I there has to be something after this you guys have any thoughts I mean for a while I thought it was certain was going to be vr now I'm a little less certain that that's the next step but do you see a way forward in any in any time anytime soon I kind of think it's gonna be ambien ambien telogen Sesenta Lee you know the surroundings will be intelligent and actively help you with your life that's IOT is you know no I can't really guess at what it's going to be but but I do it I do feel like at some point you eyes are going to go away you know that it's that we're not going to be looking for you know graphical representations on this light up thing you know whether it's sitting on a desk or you know in your hand or something but I think but at the same time that there's so much so much information can be conveyed through a UI or through you know through a screen that there's probably it's going to be hard to come out with with something that's even better than than what we have today yeah I don't think it'll be I don't thing will be an all-or-nothing thing where it's like all of a sudden we'll be doing some things like I think they'll be yeah exactly I think there'll be things that are there tasks that are really good for like displays and they'll be tasks that are really good for you know voice assistant kind of stuff and yeah I think we'll just I think it'll just be ubiquitous as it was what will make it all work it's just like you won't have to think about it it'll just I'll go to the thing that you know helps me do this task the best okay we have a ton of questions I'm going to ask them quickly and one or both are all answers I predict forecast the app boom that would happen after the iPhone was released if yes what is the next boom well let's let's just start with did did any of you predict the app boom the you know that that was what was the iPhone was platform was going to create I did not I didn't know apps were really lucky on Symbian so yeah uh I know I guess I kind of thought I know I know I mean that early on there was it's funny because early on when we when we spoke about apps kind of the apps that we would talk about were sort of the they were more professional in nature like I know we talked about Epocrates a lot and we talked about you know Epocrates is this this app that ran on palm devices that doctors carried around it has it has a lot of medical information on it and and it became pretty clear pretty pretty early after we we had the you know sort of our the way we addressed apps for iPhone 1.0 was to say go use web tech web technologies where I go make the best web app you can and go you know go to your website and load it and will allow you give you ways to bookmark things and it wasn't great but but that was the answer but it became pretty clear that there are use cases that we wanted to support like something like Epocrates that maybe it wouldn't really work I mean how is that going to work offline like in a hospital where there's probably poor cellular reception do you really want to be trying to ping a remote server when you're doing that so so I think early on it started in my mind anyway it started as as you know we were just focusing on professional type apps which is it's such a funny thing to say now especially when you know the hundreds part app came out on the floor you know a lot of it a lot of them were pretty professional though it made the PI point you have it how did you how did you keep Samson from doing what you were doing as she found some was in the building with him yeah did we you know I think that they went 11 I mean in the hard way that they couldn't see any UI but yeah I think they had they had the chance okay that's a good answer how many Hardware prototypes were killed before the first launch of the first iPhone define killed okay as we got through quite a lot of them but no one wants to use the old ones you know Pro to zero and when ye VT comes out Nana no one touches the proto's anymore Tenakee are you supposed to hit them with hammers and put them in the blue bins yeah he'll endure have ever been as that scrollwheel iphone a prototype p1 gotten out into the public eye their pictures of it around it's pretty much not showing up yet has it and I think a lot of that early stuff like only ever shows up because of somebody's court something something right I don't know that yeah yeah sit like court discovery or something like that a court case yeah yeah I don't know what role did Steve Jobs play day-to-day on the iPhone that's probably yeah I don't know I mean making you know I I was certainly doing my best work because like he might be sometimes was working around the corner so right you know there was a time where like there's a time where I don't know somebody we had something somebody wanted to change whatever and they're like every 15 minutes somebody was coming to me and being like so hey don't pressure but Steve wants to see blah and like after about the fourth person he was like been cat or somebody was like hey Scott and I without looking I was like you know he'll see it when it's happening ready and then I and I turned and there's so Johnny was there and I was like no and then like and then Steve's kind of just pops his head through the my door like it's okay I like and I will wait and I'm like okay are we ready that's a fair amount of pressure what kind of impact could individual engineers have on features in the iPhone was it very top-down uh I don't think it was very top-down I mean I think a good idea was a good idea and I think it could come come from anywhere and I think two management's credit if you had a good idea let's do it yeah yeah so no it's not talking I mean there was a lot of top-down but it was not all top-down by any stretch why did the iPhone successfully jumpstart the mobile computer industry instead of for example palms PDA it's kind of a softball but I don't know for me I think it's just like it's so I'm gonna head up you know it's so fluid if so it's it's this magical I mean going back to the you know the rubber banding thing it just feels it feels lightweight it feels like just comfortable and I mean that's just from how I you know from how you use it never mind how I didn't fall so this beautiful piece of piece of hardware I think it's just it you know it checked enough of the boxes that were better and it did a bunch of things that other stuff just didn't even do you know and I think I think also the the internet helped as well I mean I think that that when when the the palm device was was out there really wasn't much in a way of of an internet and especially the utility that that people you know over the years that you know the utility of the internet was just growing and growing and growing when you had a palm it was really this you know you sink with this computer and then you're off on this little island with your palm device and then you go back and you sink with your computer again and now you have slightly updated information so so I mean I think it was both both I think the desire to actually connect to the open Internet but there was only that desire because there was enough utility in in connecting to the internet that that you wanted to actually do that right you didn't want to just oh I wonder what's on the Yahoo homepage right now which is what else are like Heights in 1996 but is that really going to do anything for your your life to improve great life if you could do that and our web stuff was like I mean it was amazing it is amazing I mean you you sat there I yeah you you you could have I sure they had a web browser on that platform but you wouldn't you would just be I'll go pick up a newspaper before I go deal with all of this stuff because I think one of the main things actually was was previous to the iPhone it was it was data cost money and they charge you a lot for it and really unlimited it was like well I'm paying for anyway I can do anything I want and so a a real application platform that would you wrote real code for was big enough you could write pop proper big engineered programs not just like how like can I make this thing to fit into the RAM you had great graphics you had memory you had a fast processor for the time but a big screen to drive but you had unlimited data and I think that was absolutely crucial you mean to Wi-Fi another like not even on me was in the early the early bones were like I think I know I think like I will still have it over 2g which yeah okay let me ask a couple couple more questions we're drawing it near the end of our first hour what were early disagreements about design that Steve Jobs wade into okay well pass the other weren't any probably went great okay that's a more general one I'm so glad I have a front row seat for when Scott hahahaha all right here's tandem questions if you have to add one feature to the current version of iOS what would it be if you have to remove one feature from the current version of iOS what would it be I want better text selection yeah I want better I feel like a big word people seem to be chasing sort of this proneness and I feel like what's what's missing is just doing sort of fiddly delicate things I don't know what that looks like I don't have an answer but it's like I feel like if you made it easier to do some of that stuff that would be pretty great Scott talked about interactions with Steve Jobs to either of you remember interactions particular interactions with Steve the the one that sticks out in my mind that some similar to Scott's story was so we were in this lockdown area and we had this couch that was right outside of my office and because we were in this lockdown area it was pretty easy to just talk freely and you know and it wasn't a you know you people were eating or complaining about some bug or talking about how to fix something or what have you and it wasn't uncommon for people to be sitting there and just chatting while I was in my office and you know I poked back out and talked go back in do a little bit of work you know kind of do this thing back and forth one night so we're doing this they're there two or three people sitting on that on that sofa and we're just shooting shooting the breeze like we like we normally do and all of a sudden it got really quiet but I heard I heard you know some guys on my team were sitting on the sofa but they were talking very quietly and they were and and the way that they were talking was it was as if they were telling somebody where somebody else was sitting and to me at all it all just struck me is very odd you know I was I had been beavering away on my computer and but I was listening to this and a couple times I said who is that they shouldn't be anybody who's in this area should know everybody who's ever been this area like this doesn't make any sense why would somebody be asking worse if you're in the lockdown you should already know where you're going right was kind of my thinking and so I turn around to come out and say like who the who the hell is what's going on here and of course Steve job is standing there and so it and I think I did that you know out I think I you know actually did say whoa you know before I answering what you know the men who are you asleep before walking him down the hall to the person's office who he was looking for so you have an aide Steve memory I didn't have been directing direction at me I had there was one request that came through my manager was was on the first one we were they were thinking they loved the board that was pretty prickly they wanted maybe they were never in there they were to show the PCB which is the first time ever the show and there was a request by moving the CPU a couple of millimeters to the left to make it symmetrical but but it was pretty was with provides well this is not going to happen really because I'm sure it's there for a real reason I'm like the p.m. you took the other review but but there was a tiny bit of that and we had a bit of this wasn't ASCII Joseph it on the honor on the iPhone for when they had the pretty picture we get that they did show the PCB and they had the a4 processor except they labeled the PMU because the processors on the other side of it it's like it's much bigger than that and but you know we engineer's for laughing about it there's a beautiful beautifully done photo though it's a very nice market always does an awesome job of that stuff where it's like you work on something and then they'll come up with some just amazing beautiful animation for I remember the original website that had like four hour sensors work I was like that just looks like the goddamn future like what is going on up there you know so a final question it's a little bit of a softball but it's at the time did you and I'll say did you think we'd still be using iPhones today at the time of launch how confident you were you were creating a platform that was going to be one of the major platforms of Mars it was I thought it was pretty cool I guess the thing that I've noticed is it just it feels like that the pace of these things is getting faster and faster and faster so it's like I don't know we you know classic kind of lasted this chunk of time and then Mac os10 and it seems like we the next thing kind of comes like faster and faster and faster and I don't know yeah I'm excited I don't know what it is I'm excited for whatever you know replaces this thing you know I wasn't I wasn't sure of the iPhones future at you know even even despite this big splash and and and and the great reception it received that there are so many stories in technology about either great technology or a really cool product that's just killed for some other reason you know it's either priced too high or it's you know it doesn't solve some critical problem that you know some customer base needs or it's too early to market or it's too late or you know usually it's too early you know those types of things that that it wasn't even though we we had what something that I was just so proud of and and was just something that I personally wanted to use in the worst way it still wasn't you know clear to me that this was going to be a commercial success I still hadn't completely bought off on it probably not until the iPhone for probably not until the Verizon deal that that was sort of the first time that it felt like okay this thing actually people people still wanted it's not just the hardcore Apple you know that the Apple fans who are going to buy this and then nobody else right that was at that point it sort of it started to feel more like okay this is really this is going to going to be around in ten years and then you know just just seeing people use it when you had got the first warning when you could actually give it to people really good yeah seeing the look on the faces and how the interacts were that it was just like well this is the future I was just hoping that Apple wasn't going to be the niche Vidor of it you know with the stuff for the people who really like good stuff right you know and it still them it's not the majority of phones out there but it's so I you know I think it it did inspire a lot of stuff okay at this point we're going to have a short video intermission but please join me in giving a hand to Hugo and Nita [Applause]

Channel: Computer History Museum

Views: 27,294

Rating: 4.8390093 out of 5

Keywords: Hugo Fiennes, Nitin Ganatra, Scott Herz, Scott Forstall, John Markoff, Apple, iPhone, Computer History Museum, CHM, CHM Live, Tecnology, Original iPhone innovators, original iPhone, engineers, software, silicon valley, Steve Jobs, decade, iPhone development team, exponential center, secret iPhone project, device

Id: N8Vz1BeymHE

Length: 61min 51sec (3711 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 28 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I was there! Great discussion, learned a lot. The Computer History Museum does a fantastic job of getting first-hand information out where the public can see it.

Here's Scott Forstall's interview from the same evening.

[u/Pattel]

I originally read Scott forstall and I was confused and I didn’t see him in the video