Translated material
"We said:" Steve, quit, it will not work ""
The first iPhone could be with a wheel - like in the iPode: The Verge
In January, a video appeared on Yetube, which shows an iPhone with an interface that looks like an IPOD Classic interface - there is even a virtual wheel on the screen! The Verge was asked by Tony Falela, under whose leadership the first Apple phone came out, to tell what kind of strange iPhones, why did the wheel need and how the presentation of Steve Jobs about what the perfect phone should be.
January 9, 2017 has turned 10 years since the announcement of the first iPhone. In honor of the anniversary, the Australian user of Utuub Sonny Dixon posted the videos on which the experimental interface of the first Apple phone is demonstrated. Here is one of them:
On the left on the left, you can see the menu that is very similar to the iPod Classic menu, but with additional items - contacts, calls and SMS. The iPod uses a touch wheel for control. In the video, such a wheel is drawn right on the iPhone screen (there are several more buttons above it).
The phone, located on the video on the right, has a more classic touch interface: you can see the prototype menu and sensory buttons placed on the screen.
Tony Falel, the former head of the Ipoda development department, who subsequently headed the first iPhone, called in The Verge and confirmed that both interface prototypes really existed - they were painted in parallel (but together) two groups of designers. True, he does not know who and why portended software developments on the later iPhones.
Of greatest interest is the device on the left: an iPhone with a virtual wheel! But in fact, everything is a little more complicated: they wanted to make such an interface for the next iPod Video model, versions of the player with a color screen.
The corporation thought how to increase the screen area, but to leave the traditional control element - and the virtual wheel solved this problem. It was assumed that the video and photo can be deployed throughout the screen, hiding the wheel.
And the “iPod-telephone”, which eventually turned the iPhone, was supposed to work with an ordinary, physical wheel. Apple wanted him to have a small screen, like Nokia's phones. With the wheel, everything turned out well, except for the set of the room - I had to rotate a finger, as in a disk phone.
Falel recalls that some Apple employees from the first days understood that the wheel did not fit into the phone. But Steve Jobs insisted on it: “No, I want you to do it. Go and do. You must try. Try it. "
Around this time, Nokia released a model in which the buttons are located in a circle. Jobs forced his employees to try this approach - this is how a prototype with a wheel appeared on which physical buttons are located. He also did not fit.
“We said:“ Steve, quit, it will be too difficult. It doesn't work, ”recalls the former top manager Apple. Despite the awareness of the meaninglessness of their actions, the Falela team spent more than two months, trying to realize what Jobs wanted.
As a result, they got a regular phone with buttons. Then Jobs said: "No, we will make this keyboard to work on the glass." So Apple decided to completely process the interface and came to the idea with tiles.
It was extremely tiring to do [iPhone], but its design was very good. And the general idea and the vision of what we are trying to do. So no one had questions. There was only a feeling: “Gori all with fire, but we will do it” (English.).