Apple Secretly Tore Apart Hundreds of Devices to Create the iPhone

During the development stages of the first iPhone, Apple engineers apparently tore apart hundreds of competitor devices to figure out their secrets, former Apple Senior Vice President Tony Fadell revealed in a recent interview.

The first iPhone turns 10-years-old this week, and to commemorate the anniversary, Wired sat down with Fadell to get some insight on the revolutionary device’s development. While Fadell eventually left Cupertino to found Nest, while at Apple, he was in charge of the company’s iPod Division, and is largely considered to be one of the “fathers” of the iPhone.

One of the more interesting questions that the publication asked Fadell was whether or not they were aware of the existence of the LG Prada, a touchscreen phone that had come out in 2006. “Yes, I knew about it,” Fadell responded. “I had probably 100 different cell phones, 100 different competitor music players, consumer electronics of all sorts ripped apart and looked at. We looked at everything. They were all over my office in various pieces, just to look at them, to understand what they were, see how they were built and what their competitive value was.” Notably, one of the LG Prada’s creators claimed in 2006 that Apple stole their idea with the iPhone.

Fadell also spoke about some of the conflicting stories regarding the iPhone’s origins, attributing the confusion to the wide variety of projects Apple had going on at the time and the challenges each project faced. There was, for example, an “iPod phone,” which basically added cellular capabilities to a device with no text-entry system. And there was a multi-touch, touchscreen Mac system that Steve Jobs himself fostered because he was “pissed off” about Microsoft tablets. These projects, along with a few others, all contributed in some way to the final iPhone design.

Wired also addressed the ROKR, a phone that Apple collaborated with Motorola on. It was, notably, the first phone to feature iTunes — but it was, for all intents and purposes, a failure. Fadell elaborated on the project, saying that “it was not deliberately made poor” because the iPhone was on the horizon. In fact, Fadell said, the ROKR lineup died off long before the iPhone was even finalized as a concept. “This was us trying to dip our toe in the water,” he added.

Fadell also expanded on how the iPhone’s development — and the device itself — has changed his life. “It has made me incredibly productive and has changed the world, from how I shop, how I travel, how I message people and communicate — every single aspect of my life has changed because of it.” More than that, it’s changing how children are growing up, which could be a good thing or a bad thing, he added. “It requires all of us to make the proper changes in our lives to make sure we don’t lose the analogue portion of our life and we don’t just stay digital and mobile all the time.”

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