Andy Grignon, the lead engineer on the first iPhone, discusses how the device evolved from iPod technology and early prototypes with a patented rotary scroll approach. He describes working with Tony Fadell, Steve Jobs' initial hesitation about the project, and Apple's strategy as a content-driven company.
Chapters
Was iPhone 1 a solution looking for a problem?
No. iPhone 1— when you look at Apple, so Apple's an interesting company, right? What does Apple exist for? They had a breakout success with the iPod, right? That turned into a thing only after we moved it out to the Windows ecosystem. And what do people do? They do music. They consume content. Ultimately, what was the thing that's, you sold as iPhone when we launched it. It was a music player, right? It was a web, revolutionary internet communicator. And there was the phone thing. But really, it was a way to consume content.
Mm-hmm.
Apple's a content company. You hear rumors about Apple starting a car, right? Creating a new car. Why would Apple get into the car business? I would argue it's to consume content or to push content. Because now you've got a driverless thing. What are you gonna do in there? You're gonna sit there and consume content. So I think Apple is very smart, and when we started iPhone, this was a new way to move content. Now, when you look at the way we started, we started kind of approaching the problem. I actually have a patent, I think, on one of the very first attempts that we made, which was exactly what everybody expected us to do. We took an iPod with the little click wheel, like the actual— like, it was solid state. We'd already, you know, kind of moved past that. The physical wheel that rotated. And we bolted a phone onto it. That was it. It was, you know, it was kind of— it was fatter, you know, a little taller, better restrained. But we had kind of a double-shot, you know, LED lighting on it so that when it was in iPod mode, it had play, you know, pause, forward, reverse. And then when you put it into phone mode, it kind of turned into these orange backlit LEDs. Kind of cool looking. But it was a rotary thing.
Yeah.
0 through 9, A, B, C, D, E, F, and you text and you dial in the rotary mode. And it was as awful to use as it is probably to hear it. But that was our first attempt at it, right? We were building the iPhone, which was an iPod phone. But around—
Tell us about maybe some sort of background stories about— was it the same team that came from iPod designing iPhone and from Steve Jobs?
How did it all come together?
It was.
So it took a long time. You know, I had already been previously Before I joined Apple, I was at Apple 2 times, right? So I did QuickTime and all that stuff. And then I came back. But before I came back to Apple the second time, I joined this startup called Pixo and we were building a mobile operating system. And one day, we'd done stuff for Nokia and all these other things. One day, we were actually given, some friends at Apple gave us, you know those video jog wheels? You know, like those circular USB things? They gave us one of those and they said, make your shit. work with this. We're like, all right, great. So yeah, we made our shit work with that. And then they said, okay, as an example, could you write us a reference MP3 player app? So we're like, yeah, sure, we can do that. We wrote a little thing. And the source code, it's TMP3ExampleApp is the name of the class name in the source code. To this day, of course, we didn't know what the fuck we were building. We were given boxes and things like that. To this day, every single iPod, the app that launches is TMP3ExampleApp. Because they never bothered changing it. But That's what got me to come back to Apple the second time. I was like, oh, this place is kinda cool and interesting. I see Steve up on stage showing off this thing that I'd helped build as a third-party company. I was like, oh, that's kinda cool. But Apple, you know how cool they were at the time? My options were priced at $8 and change.
Not so cool, huh?
Not so cool.
It was great for the options.
Michael Dell, who's now in the news, of course, was basically telling Steve to fold the fucker up and give all the money back to the shareholders.
Good thing he didn't listen.
Exactly, right? But that was one of those things, I was like, I wanna go back to building cool products.
Yeah.
I didn't go to Apple to get rich. I went to Apple because I wanted to build really cool new products. And that's kind of where it started. So then I did iChat and Dashboard and shit like that. And then the guy that brought us on, the person that gave us the USB jog wheel, this guy named Tony Fadell. Tony started Nest with Matt. Sometimes I give this talk to audiences that don't really know the background. You guys seem to be pretty smart and in tune. with all this. But Tony had started iPod and he, you know, we'd started talking. We're like, let's do something together. Like, it was fun building that first thing. He and I collaborated on iSight. There was a camera called iSight, which is how you did video conferencing back before it was built into the actual machines. And so I helped his organization out with that. And it's like, let's do something again. He goes, I got something cooking. Can't quite tell you what it is yet, but come on board. So I actually joined. That's what caused me to go back I didn't realize Tony recruited you.
What was it like working with Tony's very colorful personality in Silicon Valley? You know what?
We're all colorful personalities. It takes a lot of assholes to build a product like an iPhone or an iPod. And actually, the funny thing is, Apple is littered with really powerful, strong personalities. It's probably one of the most political companies And this is coming from a guy who's now been at HP, Palm, and I've seen very political organizations. Apple is extraordinarily good. I don't mean that in a positive way, at having a political organization. What does that mean?
You mean the interpersonal relationship between your coworkers? Yeah, it's complicated, right?
Yeah, your Facebook status is permanently complicated, right? You never, you've got frenemies, you've got enemies, not really many friends. It's just politics. It's big company corporate politics.
But I would have thought if you're those brilliant technologists, you'd just be so focused on the design.
As engineers, that is absolutely correct. You start to go again higher up in the organization, it becomes— we didn't know that the phone was going to be what it is today. We just knew that we had to get on this. It seemed like a fun project to be on. We didn't know that Apple would change its course You know, because of it. But it just seemed like a cool thing to do and it felt right more than it was. And Steve had really— Steve wasn't sold on the idea of building a phone, right?
He was not.
He was not. No, it actually took a long time.
Who was it that— was it Tony that wanted to build this?
A bunch of people. A bunch of people. Eddy Cue, Tony, Scott Forstall. I mean, like a lot of people. Eddy— I'm sorry, Phil Schiller. Everybody had this idea. It's like, Oh, this would be kind of good. We dipped our toes into it when we worked with Motorola on the— what was that stupid thing called?
RAZR?
Was it the RAZR? Nah, it was another one. Maybe it's the RAZR, I forget.
It's a brutal business. It's low gross margin.
Totally is, yeah. Again, it's a very tough time.
It was very counterintuitive.
Yeah, and phones at the time, that's a race to zero. I mean, this was again, just like we have today in laptops, it's a race to zero. So why would we get into this business? Well, to move content, 'cause that's a high-margin business.
Yeah.
Why did Apple buy Dre and iVine and iVine? Did they buy it for those awesome headphones?
Nope.
They bought it for those 2 dudes because they can actually move much more content. Look where Apple's investing. That's where the car's gonna come. That's where the iPod, the phone, I think it's all gonna go that way.
