The history of the development of the first iPhone: Engineers didn’t know what they were building

When Jobs decided that Apple needed its own smartphone, he tasked his crony Scott Forstall with assembling an elite team of Apple’s best and most ambitious engineers to develop iOS, which would become the foundation for the iPhone.

In the early 21st century, Forstall was entrusted by Jobs with the task of recruiting the iPhone development team, but the candidates had to be selected from within the company. This was consistent with Apple's usual style, and the development of the iPhone was extremely mysterious.

In fact, the secret history of the iPhone's development should have been sealed forever, but during the century-long patent war between Apple and Samsung, Forstall was dismissed, and then interesting stories about the iPhone's development were slowly exposed.

The funniest thing is that during the development of the iPhone, Forstall didn't even tell the team members what they were developing. Instead, Forstall just used his "big lie" skills to tell the team members that they were joining the team to create an amazing new product, and the price was that everyone had to "work hard and work overtime, giving up holidays and rest time."

In addition, Forstall also said that the mysterious iPhone project was originally code-named "Project Purple", and the R&D team's office was even "heavily guarded."

"The Purple Project's R&D team directly 'occupied' a building at Apple's headquarters and was blocked inside. In addition, they had to swipe their cards and pass through camera detection to enter the door. Sometimes, even if a team member wanted to enter an office, he had to swipe his card five or six times," Forstall said.

In addition to Forstall's revelations, Lambert, a former Apple engineer, recently talked about his work in the iPhone development team on Quora (the foreign version of Zhihu). Lambert said that when he joined the team, he was responsible for the kernel debugging of the iPhone, and he thought that this experience was unforgettable.

"At that time, I was taken into a mysterious area, which was full of men in black. The kernel debugging was also remote operation. I had no idea what the mysterious device behind the screen was, but years of experience told me that this system was based on ARM chips." Lambert wrote. "Of course, the confidentiality agreement must be signed. After entering the laboratory, you will find that there is also a mysterious small laboratory here, but I have always been doing more basic testing work and cannot touch the iPhone itself (I didn't know it was an iPhone at the time)."

In addition, Lambert said that in order to maintain confidentiality, Apple would give the project two different code names even if two engineers were working on the same project, just like doing espionage work.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.