iPhone 14 Launch Today: 10 Things You May Not Know About Apple’s Flagship Product
Steve Jobs’ first phone wasn’t an iPhone. The first-ever iPhone presentation crashed. The first iPhone didn’t even have a glass screen. These, and a lot more fun facts on Apple’s bestseller.
iPhone is the best-known and highest-selling phone in the world. Every new version of it is awaited with bated breath, and even old versions sell like hotcakes. And yet, there is so much about the iPhone that remains unknown to many of us. So as we wait for Apple to release the latest version of what many refer to as the “Godphone”, and as fanboys get ready to queue up and camp outside Apple Stores, here are ten facts that you might not know about the most famous phone of them all:
The OG iPhone had a plastic screen
When Steve Jobs first introduced the iPhone in 2007, the phone that was shown in the presentation was actually different from the phone launched later. The OG iPhone that Steve Jobs revealed in his famous presentation actually had a plastic display.
When it was shipped, however, the iPhone came with a glass display. Just 11 days before the iPhone went on sale, Apple released a press statement in which the brand mentioned that it had switched from a plastic display to a glass one for the iPhone.
This decision was made because Steve Jobs had found scratches on his iPhone’s plastic display when he kept it in his pocket. He then decided that the iPhone should be released with a glass display and not a plastic one, and promptly called up a company called Corning Glass to make glass for the phone.
"You can do this," Jobs is believed to have told Wendell Weeks, the CEO of Corning. He was right. They did. And the iPhone came to the market with a glass display, after having been demoed with a plastic one.
Apple thought of making a phone…in 1983
It might not have been as compact, and fuss-free as the first iPhone but Apple had actually thought of making a phone all the way back in 1983, more than two decades before the actual iPhone was launched.
Unlike the iPhone, this was a full-fledged landline phone. That said it was nothing like the routine phones that used to come at the time.
It was an Apple phone after all. Frogdesigns, Apple’s design firm back then, had created a phone which had a receiver like a normal phone and a curly cord that had to be attached to the wall but the difference was that this Apple phone was equipped with a massive touchscreen.
Even back then it had apps, a touch keyboard, and came with a stylus. If that is not futuristic, we don't know what is.
The first phone launched by Steve Jobs was NOT the iPhone
Most people believe that the first phone that Steve Jobs ever launched was an iPhone but that is actually not quite true. Believe it or not, the first phone Steve Jobs launched was not an iPhone. In fact, it was not even a phone from Apple.
Surprising? It's true. Jobs launched the iPod back in 2001 and it quickly became a very popular Apple product. With the growing iPod popularity, Jobs was worried that it was only a matter of time until other Apple smartphone rivals added music to their phone and made the iPod obsolete.
So, he joined hands with Motorola to launch his first phone, the Moto Rokr E1. As the name suggests, it was a Motorola device, but came with support for iTunes. It was launched as the “iTunes phone”, but the move did not work out well.
The phone could not carry more than 100 songs which was not the iPod promise (1,000 songs in your pocket). It was not efficient either because users had to buy the songs from iTunes and then transfer them with a cable.
The phone was not the greatest either, making it quite a disaster. It was a move Jobs came to regret later.
You can watch him launch the phone below:
The first iPhone presentation actually crashed on stage
While remembering the launch of the first iPhone, everyone remembers just how amazing the presentation was and how smoothly everything went.
But what many might not know is that the iPhone presentation actually crashed. Mid presentation. On stage. In front of a live audience.
This is a nightmare for pretty much all presenters and while it may not have been what Steve Jobs was hoping for, he actually managed to save it without making it too obvious.
Everything was going well and Jobs was discussing how big the telecommunication sector can be and that is when the clicker decided to quit on him. He tried to change the slide of his presentation using the clicker but unfortunately, it did not work.
He tried again and again but it did not work still. While many might have lost their temper at such a mishap, even the old Jobs would have, the new Jobs handled it with wit and humour.
When the clicker stopped working he said, “they will be scrambling backstage right now!”, giving the crowd a good laugh about it, and then went on to tell a story about him and Wozniak till the time the presentation did not start back up again. He then shifted back to his presentation effortlessly.
You can watch the complete presentation below:
The codename of the first iPhone was Purple
The launch of the iPhone pretty much changed the way the world perceived and used smartphones and when something this revolutionary is being created in your office, you have to keep it under blankets and blankets of security. That is exactly what Apple did.
Apart from basic security checks that required cards to get through from one room to another, Apple also used the codename Purple to keep the iPhone a secret. And this was not it. The place where the employees worked on the iPhone was also called the Purple Dorm.
As per former software head Scott Forstall, the place always smelled something like pizza and had a Fight Club sign on the door because the first rule of Fight Club is…(go ahead and Google it!)
The 4,000 lattes prank
While unveiling the iPhone, Steve Jobs made sure the audience understood the abilities that the iPhone came with. To demonstrate one of its USPs — its seamless integration with Google Maps (yes, we get the irony) — Jobs made a call from on the stage itself to Starbucks and ordered a whopping 4,000 lattes to go.
The poor barista on the other end of the phone call did not have a clue that she was being pranked by one of the biggest techies of all time from the launch event of a device that would change the smartphone world and that she would become a small part of history.
It's no surprise that the barista, Hannah Zhang, is still a minor celebrity after receiving that call. Jobs did cancel the order immediately, for the record.
The iPhone that lasted only two months
They say that one of the greatest strong points of the iPhone is that it just goes on and on. Well, one iPhone did not. It disappeared from our lives in just two months.
When the iPhone was first launched, it came in two variants — a 4GB one and an 8GB one. But little more than two months after the launch, Apple took the iPhone 4GB version off the market because most people wanted the 8GB model.
Apple not only took the 4GB variant away in only two months but also slashed the price of the 8GB model of the iPhone.
And the highest-selling iPhone of them all is…
The iPhone series is the highest-selling phone series of all time, selling over a billion units all over the world. But of all the iPhones released, which has sold the most? The answer is the iPhone 6.
Since its launch back in 2014, the phone has sold over 222.4 million units, making it the undisputed king of the iPhone lineup.
Incidentally, it came with a 4.7-inch LCD display, a large fingerprint scanner under the display and a single camera on the front and back…is this the reason why the iPhone SE has such a similar design? Apple might simply be using the design of its most popular iPhone to sell its super affordable iPhone!
Apple almost put a click wheel on the iPhone
Before launching the iPhone, the most popular product that Apple had created was the iPod. What made the iPod special was not just its ability to put a thousand songs (and more) in your pocket, but also its very distinct interface — it came with a click wheel beneath the display for navigation.
So popular was the iPod and so iconic the click wheel, that Apple had briefly considered putting the click wheel on the iPhone as well for navigation. Even while on stage, launching the iPhone, Jobs said "Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone, and here it is."
And on the screen appeared an iPod with a click wheel beneath it, only that the click wheel had numbers on it, like some landline phones did.
Of course, this was just Jobs kidding the audience, but it does show that the click wheel had also clicked for the iPhone. In 2015, Apple is also believed to have played with the idea of adding a joystick on the home button of the iPhone.
The iPhone started out as the iPad
While the iPhone remains one of the greatest tech products of all time, it actually did not start as a phone project. In an interview Jobs explained that he wanted his engineers to design a tablet with a virtual keyboard.
When they came to show him the multi-touch functionality, Jobs shelved the idea of a tablet and instead told his team to start working on a phone.
So, the iPhone started out as an iPad, came out as the iPhone, and then led to the development of the iPad. Funny how things turn out, right? When the iPad was eventually launched, a lot of people called it "just a larger iPhone."
The truth was that the iPhone was actually just a smaller iPad!
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