I imagine they are actually referring to the internal competition Jobs orchestrated leading up to the introduction of the iPhone, which I've never heard describ

I imagine they are actually referring to the internal competition Jobs orchestrated leading up to the introduction of the iPhone, which I've never heard described as "disastrous" though plenty of people's feelings were presumably hurt. https://9to5mac.com/2017/06/28/iphone-creation-click-wheel-tony-fadell/ https://9to5mac.com/2017/06/28/iphone-creation-click-wheel-t... And although we cannot really know how much that internal competition contributed to iPhone's success, I think we can imagine that if Apple had shipped an iPod control interface (wheel and click button) with a phone inside it, it would have been nowhere near as successful as it was.