3 secrets behind the scenes of its design

The iPhone turns 17 today. It was in fact put on sale on June 29, 2007. Find for the occasion 3 relatively little-known points of its development.

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The feat of a well-kept secret

The development of the iPhone, or at least the most sensitive phase of its design, lasted 30 months. During all this time, Apple managed, as perhaps never before, to keep the project completely secret. And it was not for lack of being the target of very curious observers. It is common knowledge that the Hewlett-Packard company tried everything at the time to find out more about what was going on in the Cupertino laboratories: Apple employees’ phones were tapped, email accounts hacked, engineers were spied on, well-placed informants were sought and even office trash was searched…

The Californian firm, however, clearly held firm until the presentation of its iPhone in January 2007.

Working on the iPhone: for better and for worse

Steve Jobs, with the iPhone project, had such ambition that he took with him, in the whirlwind of his perfectionist visions, a good number of Apple employees. As reported by The Verge, several witnesses who were able to work on the iPhone have very bad experience.

The iPhone is the cause of my divorce

Often the workload was so great that there was no room for anything else. More family life, more leisure and even more time to go home or simply keep other interests in mind…

Some will say that we came close to torture (mental, at least). Was this an essential condition to arrive at designing the iPhone as we knew it? The question remains unanswered.

Steve Jobs didn’t want Apple to develop a phone

Originally, Steve Jobs did not plan to design a telephone device. He found American mobile operators far too harsh and therefore did not want to have to make them collaborators.

In fact, the idea of ​​the iPhone was built against nature in some way and initiated by the creativity of Apple employees. CBC Canada reports that originally, it all came from a small team of engineers who wanted to present to the CEO their project of the time which had just come to fruition: thetouch screenIt was Jony Ive who apparently mentioned the invention to the former boss, although the latter did not get carried away from the outset.

It took a while before Steve Jobs wanted to know more about it. And it was only from this renewed interest that he realized the potential of the technology. Especially since in the meantime, its teams had succeeded in developing touchscreen thanks to an astonishing new aspect: multi-touch. To this is added the success of the iPod at the time, which will constitute the other cornerstone of the iPhone project.