IP Democracy: Must-Read: The Untold Story of the iPhone

Fred Vogelstein has this feature piece in Wired entitled "The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry." It's a must-read because it's filled with juicy insider tidbits on how the iPhone came into being.

My favorite part of the article: Steve Jobs referred to telephone company executives (presumably not his main man at AT&T Stan Sigman) as "orifices," a slur that you could easily believe was fabricated by Fake Steve Jobs.

Other interesting items:

--The stress was so high at Apple during the three months preceding the launch of the iPhone that engineers quit their jobs simply to have time to sleep and one "product manager slammed the door to her office so hard that the handle bent and locked her in; it took colleagues more than an hour and some well-placed whacks with an aluminum bat to free her."

--Displeased with an early, buggy version of the iPhone, Steve Jobs frightened employees at a meeting by simply staring at them.

--The profitability of the iPhone is huge. Apple nets $80 for every phone sold and generates $240 over every two-year AT&T contract from its revenue split with the carrier. 40% of iPhone buyers are new to AT&T.

--Apple spent millions testing the iPhone internally, constructing elaborate test facilities including one to ensure that the iPhone didn't generate too much radiation. "Apple built models of human heads -- complete with goo to simulate brain density-- and measured the effects."

--Secrecy was so tight that whenever Apple executives visited AT&T (then Cingular), they registered as employees of Infineon, the company Apple used to make the iPhone's transmitter. By the time the iPhone was announced, only 30 people had actually seent it.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on January 10, 2008 9:31 AM to IP Democracy