Original Apple iPhone Lied Behind-The-Scenes For Success!
In the early years of Apples iPhone development, the Original Apple iPhone actually barely made it to the consumer! There were many problems with the iPhone that plagued it’s existence in the first place. Not only did these problems nearly snuff out the very existence of the iPhone, but it also caused the company to lie to consumers to save face.
New York Times recently posted a in-depth article on the original iPhone and its beginning launch. They described in detail the difficulties that Apple faced in the beginning before the launch of the first original 1st generation iPhone.
The pre-launch of the first original iPhone was one of the most difficult times for all of the Apple team. In fact when the iPhone was scheduled to be presented, they didn’t even have all the problems worked out. Many of these problems involved signal strength, baseband errors with the iOS, and other functionality problems that made it very hard.
In fact its crazy to hear this, but Steve Jobs introduced it during Macworld 2007. At this time, the original iPhone was still in beta. Many of the problems described above were still current in the iPhone. In other words, they didn’t have all the bugs worked out at all! These weren’t just bugs, these involved inconsistent service and much more! But they still had to make the launch on the date agreed. However you will find that they had to essentially lie to save their product’s face of perfection.
“The iPhone could play a section of a song or a video, but it couldn’t play an entire clip reliably without crashing. It worked fine if you sent an email and then surfed the web. If you did those things in reverse, however, it might not. Hours of trial and error had helped the iPhone team develop what engineers called “the golden path,” a specific set of tasks, performed in a specific way and order, that made the phone look as if it worked.
But even when Jobs stayed on the golden path, all manner of last-minute workarounds were required to make the iPhone functional. On announcement day, the software that ran Grignon’s radios still had bugs. So, too, did the software that managed the iPhone’s memory. And no one knew whether the extra electronics Jobs demanded the demo phones include would make these problems worse.”
The iPhone’s service bars would cut in and out. They didn’t have a solution, but then they came up with something! They decided to hard code the signal bars to show 5-bars at all times. Of coarse they changed this later, but in the first preview of the original iPhone was shown with false signal bars. These signal bars essentially lied to save face of the company during the pre launch and official launch. The launch of the original iPhone was one of the most monumental launches of technology that every occurred in the history of technology. It’s just sad that the service bars were hard-coded to show 5-bars at all times. Its obviously a lie in its finest tense.
“Then, with Jobs’ approval, they preprogrammed the phone’s display to always show five bars of signal strength regardless of its true strength. The chances of the radio’s crashing during the few minutes that Jobs would use it to make a call were small, but the chances of its crashing at some point during the 90-minute presentation were high. “If the radio crashed and restarted, as we suspected it might, we didn’t want people in the audience to see that,” Grignon says. “So we just hard-coded it to always show five bars.”
Although Apple launched its first iPhone and made one of the most successful tech launch to date, it does bring to question the honesty. It obviously lied and manipulated the iPhone to make it work and act right at first. It would have really been a flop had Apple’s engineers failed to fix the bug that plagued its first beta iPhone and iOS. I wonder what would have happened if they had to make a recall and public apology? There’s a chance that the original iPhone may have never been a launched product. We’re all glad that Apple’s team pushed through to give us what many of us use today; the Apple iPhone.
The article presented by the New York Times, is lengthily, but a good read if you have any interest with Apple’s past history. It goes through in detail of Apple’s first iPhone launch. It was a crazy time indeed for Apple and their engineers.
If you want to visit memory lane and relive the original iPhone launch, you can watch the original iPhone launch on the HD Youtube video seen below:
(via: TUAW)
What do you think? Did Apple make the right choice to lie in its product for the launch? Do you think there would have been any other way to make a successful original iPhone launch? Leave your comments below.
