Apple Sent Out Pre-Release iPhones in Disguise

Pete Mortensen ()

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Despite the best efforts of folks like me, bonafide iPhones didn’t show up in the wild until a few week prior to release. As it turns out, that’s because Apple was smart enough to hide iPhones inside of other devices. This according to Richard Burns, AT&T’s President of Wireless Networks, in an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal.

So secretive was the project that he didn’t even show the phone to his wife. And when AT&T’s team of testers hit the streets to try the phone in ballparks, subways and skyscrapers, Burns said they used a contraption to cloak the device so nobody would know what the testers were holding.

Burns declined to offer a description of the cloaking device, calling it “something that looked like something else.”

That’s how you know Apple is brilliant: They made it look like “something that looked like something else.” How visionary. Or not.

My best guess is that Apple made the iPhones look like Zunes. Any other guesses?

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Via Digg.
Image from Hideapod.

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About the author

Petemortensen

Pete Mortensen is a design strategist for consulting firm Jump Associates and the co-author of Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, a book and blog that are significantly more interesting than you might initially think. Pete's particular Apple avocations are both around design--interface and industrial. Follow him on Twitter!

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Posted in Hardware Hacks, iPhone |

  • Brandon W.

    How about an Apple Newton?

  • Michael

    >Any other guesses?
    Chihuahuas

  • http://blog.dreyer.ch Chris

    This procedure is well known in car development. The cloaked prototype is called an “Erlkönig”.

  • imajoebob

    An “elf king?” In the States we call it a “mule,” likely a reference to being a beast of burden.

    On their first try AT&T disguised them as Ann Coulter books, figuring that would scare the curious away. Unfortunately it led to 87% of them being set on fire. For their second attempt they attached a Brownback for President sticker to it, and no one even asked to see it. For employees that didn’t want to be associated with Brownback they substituted a Bill Richardson sticker. Same result.