Pop quiz: What do the original Mac, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, supersonic airplane Concorde, the Sony Walkman, and the Braun ET66 calculator have in common?
Give up? The answer is that they’re all cited as inspirations for designing the original iPhone back in 2007. The full list was recently shared by Imran Chaudhri, one of the software designers who helped create Apple’s breakthrough smartphone.
One day in early 2005, interface designer Bas Ording was sitting in a secret, windowless lab at Apple HQ when the phone rang. It was Steve Jobs.
The first thing Jobs says is that the conversation is super-secret, and must not be repeated to anyone. Ording promises not to.
“He’s like, ‘Yeah, Bas, we’re going to do a phone,'” Ording told Cult of Mac, recalling that momentous call from long ago. “‘It’s not going to have any buttons and things on it, it’s just a screen. Can you build a demo that you can scroll through a list of names, so you could choose someone to call?’ That was the assignment I got, like pretty much directly from Steve.”
The world had never seen anything like the iPhone when Apple launched the device on June 29, 2007. But the touchscreen device that blew everyone’s minds immediately didn’t come about so easily.
The iPhone was the result of years of arduous work by Apple’s industrial designers. They labored over a long string of prototypes and CAD designs in their quest to produce the ultimate smartphone.
This excerpt from my book Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products offers an inside account of the iPhone’s birth.
Since it made its debut in 2007, the iPhone has relied on just one physical button for returning to the Home screen. But if Steve Jobs had his way, it would have had two.
The Apple co-founder and former CEO tried to convince other executives that the iPhone also needed an Android-style back button for navigation.
The design team behind the original iPhone’s software reunited to celebrate its 10th anniversary this week.
Imran Chaudhri, who still works at Apple, posted the photo above on Instagram. He’s pictured alongside Freddy Anzures, Bas Ording, Marcel Van Os, Steve Lemay and Mike Matas.
