Tony Fadell on Apple’s Pre-iPhone Devices
Jeremy White (via MacRumors):
The touchscreen Macbook project was basically trying to get touchscreen technology into a Mac to try to compete with Microsoft tablets. Steve was pissed off, and wanted to show them how to do it right. Well, that might have been the project to show Microsoft how to do it right, but they quickly realised there was so much software and there were so many new apps needed, and that everything had to be changed that it was very difficult. Plus the multitouch itself, we didn't know we could scale it that large to a full-screen display. Those were the challenges over on Mac.
[…]
It was very clear, after the Rokr, and after everything we had learned in what it was going to take, that the worry was about the 'celestial jukebox' - people wouldn't have to buy large capacity iPods, 150GB or so, because they were soon going to be able to download. So we had an existential problem, people were not going to have to buy larger and larger iPods. The high-capacity iPods were where we were making all our money, and if they could download at any time - and we could see the time when the networks were going to get faster because of 3G - we were like 'oh my God, we're going to lose this business' to this music jukebox in the sky, which is basically what Spotify is.
Previously: Scott Forstall Discusses the iPhone’s Creation.
