The iPad was not born after the iPhone. In fact, Apple had long before. But when the team saw the potential of its multiple interface, They decided to park everything Launch for something smaller (and urgent). For years, we assumed that the evolution was clear: iPod, iPhone, iPad. As if it were a natural sequence. But real history is much more chaotic. And, precisely because of this, much more interesting.
The background: when Apple already dreamed with tablets
Apple’s obsession for tablets did not start in the 2000s. The first serious attempt came in 1993 With the Newton Messagepad, a personal digital assistant led by John Sculley who promised to revolutionize portable computers.
Newton was an epic disaster. His writing recognition function was so bad that he became the target of jokes in series such as Simpsons. The software has tried to identify the words of the user, but He failed and produced incomprehensible sentences. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1998, one of his first decisions was to cancel Newton. But the lesson was recorded: the tablets had potential, they only needed good technology.
The project that started everything: a mouse or mouse tablet
In 2004, Apple officially started The project with code name K48. In Cupertino's laboratories, something that sounded for science fiction was created: a completely tactile computer, without mouse or keyboard. It was a radical idea for the time, when touch screens barely worked in automatic ticket distributors and the PDA used a plastic stylus.
One of the first iPad prototypes
Steve Jobs had put his best engineers To develop what they called internally a “tablet computer device”. The first prototypes were somewhat rough, but all the revolutions begin. 10 -inch screens mounted on metal structures that weighed several kilos. The multi-touch technology that we have to acquire months of programming required.
Last tests of the final design of the iPad, but with two “docks”: one in the horizontal part and another in the vertical
To get an idea of the level of secret: Prototypes have been kept in safes And only a handful of executives knew the complete project. In May 2004, Apple presented a design brand certificate in Europe for a “laptop”, perhaps referring to the iPad. It was the future of personal computer science, but no one outside Apple knew it.
Patent presented by Apple in Europe in 2004
In 2005, they had to change the priorities
Five years of development and in 2005, Steve Jobs had to rethink the whole strategy. Mobile phones were evolving too quickly: Blackberry email dominated on mobileThe first smartphones played music and sailed online. Jobs realized that Apple remained in a market that did not stop growing.
The decision was frank, in the purest job style. Jonathan Ive tried to convince him to continue with the tablet, but they reached an agreement: The iPhone was more important and had to be prioritized. Then they paralyzed the development of the iPad and moved all these resources to create a phone.
“There is a natural part of our state which, when you see a powerful and phenomenal technology, you generally want to make it smaller,” said Jonathan Ive for years later on the origins of the iPhone.
The failure that has changed everything: the Motorola Rokr E1
But before arriving at the iPhone, Apple had already tried to play a foot in the world of mobile telephony. And it was an epic disaster which, at the same time, turned out to be one of the best things that happened to the company. In 2005, Apple associated with Motorola to launch the Motorola Rokr E1, the first mobile phone Capable of playing music via iTunes. Steve Jobs described it as “an iPod shuffle in a phone”. The idea was already in his mind.
Jobs presenting the Motorola Rokr E1
The result, however, was something more disappointing. In other words, sAnd I noticed that Apple's hand was not 100%. The Rokr E1 could only store 100 songs, it had an unattractive design and the process of transferring the music of iTunes was slow and heavy. To top it off, during the official presentation at the Moscone Center, the device failed live before Jobs, which tried to demonstrate how the music was interrupted during a call, then resumed. It didn't work.
Canceled collaboration of jobs With Motorola in 2006, just a year after the launch. But this frustrating experience was crucial: he taught him that if Apple wanted a phone that really worked as they imagined, they should make it completely from scratch, without depending on the others.
The problems that almost cancel the iPhone
The miniaturization process was not only an “engineering puzzle”, fWhat a technical nightmare That it was about to have the whole project canceled. Jonathan Ive admitted it for years later in the book becoming Steve Jobs.
There were opportunities when we really thought we could not solve some of the problems. It was so difficult that, honestly, it seemed that we were going to have to leave him.
The first big obstacle was something as basic as making a call. The first iPhone prototypes had problems that we have solved today: like when you put the phone in the ear to speak, and the ear marked figures involuntarily. The touch screen did not know how to distinguish an intentional touch And accidental contact with the skin.
Different iPhone prototypes: the one we know and throw
But it was not the only thing: there were teams in the face of obtaining the best version of the iPhone. They also did not find operators because they did not trust a phone that had no pimples. One or the other stone on the road they knew until they reach day D.
The ugly brother of the iPhone: the “Skankphone”
But technical problems were not the only thing that complicated development. Apple had another just as complex challenge: Keep absolute secret while hundreds of engineers worked on the project. The solution was so ingenious and absurd at the same time: create two completely different versions of the iPhone.
- Version 1: The real iOS interface (only for those chosen by Steve Jobs)
- Version 2: The “skankphone”, with a false and ugly interface for tests
One was the real interface with “glorious pixels that would steal his eyes”, as Steve Jobs described. The other was the “skankphone”, a deliberately horrible interface with square red buttons. Paranoia has reached comics. Engineers worked separated by curtains: Some having access to the Royal iPhone, others only at Skankphone. There were even sarcastic messages on the home screen: “Skank is the new black”, “say hello to the Newton Messagepad 3000” and simply “Skankphone”.
“Skankphone” interface
The day the world has changed
All this was left behind and on January 9, 2007, Jobs presented the iPhone as “three products in one”. But he omitted a detail: he showed the world a miniaturized version of a project that had been developing for five years. The iPhone was not the starting point of the Apple touch revolution, but a stop on the road to something bigger.
The presentation was not easy either. The product was so unstable that Steve Jobs tEnia to follow the “Way Golden Way”. They had several iPhone on the table to replace themselves in front of any failure. And this path was to perform actions in a specific order. If he left him, the iPhone restarted.
But what if Motorola Rokr had been a success? We would probably never have encountered the iPhone. Apple would have continued to collaborate with traditional telephony manufacturers, limited to the supply of software while others controlled hardware. In an alternative universe where Rokr has worked, Apple would have become something similar to Microsoft: a software company that dismiss its products to different manufacturers.
Rokr's failure was the best gift we could all receive. He forced Apple to take total control of the processes, from the design of the chip to the user experience. And this decision Not only has changed, but everyone has changed.
And in 2010, the original project returned
Three years after the iPhone, Apple finally presented the device that had been developing for a decade: the iPad. On January 27, 2010, Steve Jobs took the central scene of Yerba Buena to San Francisco with a provocative question: “There is room for a third category of a device between a smartphone and a laptop? “”
Jobs presented it as “a whole new category of devices” and was technically fair. But the most curious is that Many complained because it was just “a bigger iPhone”. What was unknown was that it was actually the opposite: the iPhone had been a smaller iPad.
This story is not unique in Apple. The company has a history of development Several projects simultaneously And strategically decide when launching everyone. Apple TV has taken years to materialize. Apple Watch was secretly developed for half a decade. And the famous Apple car, after years of development and thousands of millions invested, was finally canceled in 2024.
And now Apple Vision Pro is only the tip of the iceberg. Because who knows if there are much more compact glasses in laboratories, but they preferred to launch a space computer first.
Now that we know the full story, It is logical that the iPad arrived before the iPhone: Large computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones. It is a natural progression to smaller devices. And if we can get all this learning, it is because success does not always come from the follow -up of the original plan, but to know when to change and make a decision, even if it was not planned.
Fuente | Biografía de Steve Jobs, becoming Steve Jobs, The One Device, Creative Selection y Jony IVe: The Genius
In Applesfera | New folding iPhone – Everything we think to know about him
In Applesfera | New iOS 19 / iOS 26 – Everything we think about the new iPhone operating system
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