Tony Fadell, a former senior executive at Apple, has revealed that the reason there are different accounts of how the first iPhone came to be developed is because the device was the fruit of multiple projects and experiments. According to Fadell, at the time when more than half of the revenues at the tech giant were coming from the iPod, a big screen iPod for watching video and which had a touch interface was one of the projects.

Apple was also experimenting with an iPod phone that was a bit larger than the regular iPod but which contained a cellular phone inside. The phone had a small screen and was operated via a wheel. There was also a MacBook Pro with a touchscreen that was being developed. Additionally, various software projects were happening in the period of between 9 and 12 months.

Microsoft tablets

The touchscreen MacBook had been inspired by tablets that had been introduced by Microsoft that the legendary Apple co-founder and former chief executive officer, Steve Jobs, didn’t happen to like. He therefore wanted to show Apple’s tech rival how to get it right. In the end Apple killed the project following realization that new apps and software were needed. With regards to the iPod phone, Apple quickly found out that it wasn’t dialing properly and it was also hard composing messages.

Before even Apple developed its own smartphone, the Cupertino, California-based tech giant had collaborated with Motorola Rokr on a cellphone project. This had been borne out of the fear by Apple that once cellphones developed more storage capacity that could be used to store music, sales of the iPod would fall since users had a choice of carrying only one device at a time. And given a choice they would pick the cellphone and leave the iPod.

Fast internet downloads

Apple was also worried at the time that the ability to download music to their devices as well as the introduction of fast internet even on mobile devices would mean that users would not need the large capacity iPods which was where the tech behemoth was making most of its money.