【轉貼】iPhone 幕後不為人所知的故事

[Imperfect Information]

Wired Magazine - The Untold Story: How the iPhone Blew Up the Wireless Industry (英文）

英文程度不錯的網友請千萬不要錯過這篇文章！

[edison75]

我的英文並不是很好，只能大略讀出意思；
但iPhone的上市還真的是段辛酸的血淚史。

[shininglee]

........He'd also wrangled a unique revenue-sharing arrangement, garnering roughly $10 a month from every iPhone customer's AT&T bill......

看起來不太辛酸

[Imperfect Information]

........He'd also wrangled a unique revenue-sharing arrangement, garnering roughly $10 a month from every iPhone customer's AT&T bill......

看起來不太辛酸

假如你只看到投資報酬的成果，當然不覺得辛酸，但是光文章前幾段就讓人心驚膽跳：

The demo was not going well.

Again.

It was a late morning in the fall of 2006. Almost a year earlier, Steve Jobs had tasked about 200 of Apple's top engineers with creating the iPhone. Yet here, in Apple's boardroom, it was clear that the prototype was still a disaster. It wasn't just buggy, it flat-out didn't work. The phone dropped calls constantly, the battery stopped charging before it was full, data and applications routinely became corrupted and unusable. The list of problems seemed endless. At the end of the demo, Jobs fixed the dozen or so people in the room with a level stare and said, "We don't have a product yet."

The effect was even more terrifying than one of Jobs' trademark tantrums. When the Apple chief screamed at his staff, it was scary but familiar. This time, his relative calm was unnerving. "It was one of the few times at Apple when I got a chill," says someone who was in the meeting.

基本上，他們在產品要發表的前一季，東西根本還沒做出來，而且做不做的出來都還不知道，Jobs 的異常冷淡的一句話只讓公司研發部門的人員感到如同寒冰刺骨一樣。大公司的某個部門，尤其像是有 Jobs 這種很嚴格的執行者，做不出來，或是做的不夠好，面對的就是被炒魷魚的結果…而這個部門有兩百人…

One insider estimates that Apple spent roughly $150 million building the iPhone.

內部人員估計 Apple 在 iPhone 研發上投資了十五億美金！這是個多麼龐大的數字啊？這不是花在做一系列產品的投資金額，而是光在一個產品上的…這對一個並非是做電話，甚至說沒有做電話經驗的公司，是一個多大的豪賭啊？這是個只能成功，不能失敗的產品啊！

我並非是以 Apple 這個公司的角度來看待，而是以工程師的觀點來看，光以上這幾點，我只能說我非常的佩服 Apple 工程師的努力跟心血。