I think Wired wrote
this piece for me. "Apple spent rough $150 million building the
iPhone" and this article tells some of
that story.
I don't love it because it's about the iPhone: truth be told, I
don't like the iPhone. I really, really want to like it.
It really is beautiful. Completely stunning. And some of its tricks
are amazing: visual voicemail & web browsing looks interesting
(I haven't tried its web browsing and I'm not sure if it really
will work). But it can't do Flash or Java (read: allow developers
to program in a 2 common ways) or record video. And it's camera is
low megapixel (I've redefined my minimum bar for camera mega-pixels
since meeting a few people from Telefónica Spain who
have 5 MP cameras on their mobile phone).
I do love
the story of how the innovation happened. The iPhone is an
amazing device and it's amazing how a company gets something that
innovative built. From page 3:
"To ensure the iPhone's tiny antenna could do its job
effectively, Apple spent millions buying and assembling special
robot-equipped testing rooms. To make sure the iPhone didn't
generate too much radiation, Apple built models of human heads -
complete with goo to simulate brain density - and measured the
effects. To predict the iPhone's performance on a network, Apple
engineers bought nearly a dozen server-sized radio-frequency
simulators for millions of dollars apiece. Even Apple's experience
designing screens for iPods didn't help the company design the
iPhone screen, as Jobs discovered while toting a prototype in his
pocket: To minimize scratching, the touchscreen needed to be made
of glass, not hard plastic like on the iPod."
They did what it took to get it done. Wow.