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I think it's weird that Apple's first few products - which were definitely world-changing - have so many stories around them, but the iPhone, which is arguably

I think it's weird that Apple's first few products - which were definitely world-changing - have so many stories around them, but the iPhone, which is arguably a waaaay more influential device, has none that I've seen.

VRay 5y ago
Are you sure about that? There must be some stories out there.. There are some great books about the Xbox written by Dean Takahashi a few years back, in the same general tech era. Also, if you like folklore.org, you should check out Alex St. John's stories about Windows 95. He's a bit of an unreliable narrator, but his stories are really interesting https://web.archive.org/web/20160305165801/http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160305165801/http://www.alexst...
logbiscuitswave 5y ago
There have been plenty of articles and stories from insiders about the creation of the iPhone, iPod, and other important Apple products. I’ve seen many in Wired and other tech publications. They may not have the same candor and charm of a folklore.org posting, but they are fascinating all the same. It’s wonderful that Hertzfeld et al are willing share so much great technical and personal information about their time in that Apple era. This is the kind of stuff that people like us who read sites like this love. I fear that similar stories of the modern era will be forever buried under the threat of lawsuits from violating NDAs and that’s a real shame. Stories like this need to be told.
robterrell 5y ago
Check out Ken Kocienda's "Creative Selection".
mywittyname 5y ago
Fewer people worked on these early products, and they were involved basically end-to-end, so the people involved collected a fair bit of interesting stories. iPhone development probably has tons of interesting stories associated with them, but those stories are spread out across so many people that you're unlikely to find a single person like Andy who knows many of them first hand.
pjlegato 5y ago
The engineering work was far simpler then. A single person can reasonably understand the whole of how an Apple II computer is designed and works, end to end. A small team of such people interacted in highly productive ways to iterate that innovation, yielding many interesting tales. The iPhone is many orders of magnitude more complex. It took thousands of engineers to design and build it, each working on a tiny piece. Entire subsystems (e.g. the modem chip) are wholly outsourced to other companies. There are no people who understand fully how more than a small piece of it works. The yield is a series of sprint planning meetings. Apple was also a much smaller company then, steeped in the (unthinkable today) openness of 70s/80s compute culture. Apple itself grew out of the Homebrew Computer Club, a hobbyist meetup where people swapped designs and technical information freely. "Doing interesting engineering things with computer designs" was perceived as a very small niche of purely technical interest to a few geeks and nerds. The culture around the engineering wasn't at all locked down with NDAs and battallions of lawyers - why bother, the economic value of the technical information was seen as marginal and not worth bothering over. How times change!
sneak 5y ago
I have heard some of the funny BTS stories around some of the iPhone versions from Apple people, but they are not published anywhere for obvious reasons. Many of those people still work there, and those product lines are still being sold.

VRay 5y ago

Are you sure about that? There must be some stories out there.. There are some great books about the Xbox written by Dean Takahashi a few years back, in the same general tech era. Also, if you like folklore.org, you should check out Alex St. John's stories about Windows 95. He's a bit of an unreliable narrator, but his stories are really interesting https://web.archive.org/web/20160305165801/http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160305165801/http://www.alexst...

logbiscuitswave 5y ago

There have been plenty of articles and stories from insiders about the creation of the iPhone, iPod, and other important Apple products. I’ve seen many in Wired and other tech publications. They may not have the same candor and charm of a folklore.org posting, but they are fascinating all the same. It’s wonderful that Hertzfeld et al are willing share so much great technical and personal information about their time in that Apple era. This is the kind of stuff that people like us who read sites like this love. I fear that similar stories of the modern era will be forever buried under the threat of lawsuits from violating NDAs and that’s a real shame. Stories like this need to be told.

robterrell 5y ago

Check out Ken Kocienda's "Creative Selection".

mywittyname 5y ago

Fewer people worked on these early products, and they were involved basically end-to-end, so the people involved collected a fair bit of interesting stories. iPhone development probably has tons of interesting stories associated with them, but those stories are spread out across so many people that you're unlikely to find a single person like Andy who knows many of them first hand.

pjlegato 5y ago

The engineering work was far simpler then. A single person can reasonably understand the whole of how an Apple II computer is designed and works, end to end. A small team of such people interacted in highly productive ways to iterate that innovation, yielding many interesting tales. The iPhone is many orders of magnitude more complex. It took thousands of engineers to design and build it, each working on a tiny piece. Entire subsystems (e.g. the modem chip) are wholly outsourced to other companies. There are no people who understand fully how more than a small piece of it works. The yield is a series of sprint planning meetings. Apple was also a much smaller company then, steeped in the (unthinkable today) openness of 70s/80s compute culture. Apple itself grew out of the Homebrew Computer Club, a hobbyist meetup where people swapped designs and technical information freely. "Doing interesting engineering things with computer designs" was perceived as a very small niche of purely technical interest to a few geeks and nerds. The culture around the engineering wasn't at all locked down with NDAs and battallions of lawyers - why bother, the economic value of the technical information was seen as marginal and not worth bothering over. How times change!

sneak 5y ago

I have heard some of the funny BTS stories around some of the iPhone versions from Apple people, but they are not published anywhere for obvious reasons. Many of those people still work there, and those product lines are still being sold.