The untold story of the birth of the iPhone

The invention that turned Apple into a world-beating, billion-selling, society-changing colossus it wasn’t a laptop or a music player; it was an iPhone. It’s like it arrived in 2007, fully formed, beautifully conceived, confident and conceptually self-evident.

But behind the scenes, the iPhone we know today was made possible by more than bold bets, fanatical attention to detail, brilliant design and a vision for the future; there were also false starts, last-minute redesigns and a few lucky breaks.

For starters, the product Apple intends to build first isn’t a phone. It was a tablet.

Interdisciplinary teams at Apple is always experimenting with new technologies. « There are hundreds of small startups that are just poking around and making stuff, » says Sensors VP Mira Haggerty. « Sometimes someone says, ‘Hey, come see what we’re working on!’ Then you go to a random lab somewhere and they make this really cool thing. « What can we do about it? »

Take Duncan Kerr’s projector demo for example.

In 1999, Kerr, a British designer with a background in design – engineering, technology, industrial design, interface prototyping – joined the studio of industrial design chief Jony Ive.

In early 2003, he began holding Tuesday meetings with interface designers and input engineers to explore new ways of interacting with computers; after all, the old « point the mouse, click the button » routine was 25 years old. Kerr’s team is experimenting with technologies such as camera-driven systems, spatial audio, haptics (vibrating feedback) and 3D screens. « We would invite researchers or companies that had some curious technology. We did a lot of demos, tried things out, » he says.

Kerr was particularly intrigued by the idea of ​​manipulating screen objects with fingers. But miming ideas on paper can only take the team so far. He, along with interface designers Bas Ording and Imran Chaudhri, wanted to build a real multi-touch display to further their research. Enter: the iGesture NumPad mouse/touchpad.

It was a flat, black trackpad, 6.25 x 5 inches, made by a Delaware company called FingerWorks. Wayne Westerman was a pianist and suffered from repetitive stress; with his professor John Elias, he invented a set of keyboards that required only the touch of a quill. Because they can detect and track multiple finger touches simultaneously, they can also interpret gestures that you drew on the surface, replacing the actions of the mouse. For Open, for example, you can roll your fingertips across the surface as if you were opening a jar.

In late 2003, Apple commissioned FingerWorks to build a larger version of their multi-touch pad: 12 x 9.5 inches, a better approximation of computer screen size. Kerr’s team set up test equipment in Infinite Loop 2’s design studio. They mounted an LCD projector on a tripod that shone directly onto the trackpad. They taped a sheet of white paper over it so that the projector image generated by the nearby Power Mac would be bright and clear. Then the fun began: developing ways to interact with the elements on the screen. You can drag your finger to move an icon in the projected image. You can spread two fingers apart to zoom in on a map or photo. Using both hands, you can tap, move, and stretch objects. It was magical.

In November 2003, Kerr’s team showed the demo to Ive, who showed it to Steve Jobs. everyone who saw the multi-touch demo, loved it and swore it was the future. For what, they weren’t sure yet.

At the end of 2005 Jobs attended the 50th birthday party of a Microsoft engineer, the husband of his wife Lauren’s friend. During dinner, the man lectured Jobs about how Microsoft had decided the future of computers by inventing a tablet with a stylus: portable, powerful, untethered.

« But he was doing the device all wrong, » Jobs later said, according to Walter Isaacson’s book Steve Jobs. « That dinner was like the 10th time he talked to me about it, and I was so sick of it that I went home and said, ‘Screw it. Let’s show him what a tablet can really be.' »