Steve Jobs

A couple of members of the team argued for having a keyboard as well, given the popularity of the BlackBerry, but Jobs vetoed the idea. A physical keyboard would take away space from the screen, and it would not be as flexible and adaptable as a touchscreen keyboard. “A hardware keyboard seems like an easy solution, but it’s constraining,” he said. “Think of all the innovations we’d be able to adapt if we did the keyboard onscreen with software. Let’s bet on it, and then we’ll find a way to make it work.” The result was a device that displays a numerical pad when you want to dial a phone number, a typewriter keyboard when you want to write, and whatever buttons you might need for each particular activity. And then they all disappear when you’re watching a video. By having software replace hardware, the interface became fluid and flexible.

Jobs spent part of every day for six months helping to refine the display. “It was the most complex fun I’ve ever had,” he recalled. “It was like being the one evolving the variations on ‘Sgt. Pepper.’” A lot of features that seem simple now were the result of creative brainstorms. For example, the team worried about how to prevent the device from playing music or making a call accidentally when it was jangling in your pocket. Jobs was congenitally averse to having on-off switches, which he deemed “inelegant.” The solution was “Swipe to Open,” the simple and fun on-screen slider that activated the device when it had gone dormant. Another breakthrough was the sensor that figured out when you put the phone to your ear, so that your lobes didn’t accidentally activate some function. And of course the icons came in his favorite shape, the primitive he made Bill Atkinson design into the software of the first Macintosh: rounded rectangles. In session after session, with Jobs immersed in every detail, the team members figured out ways to simplify what other phones made complicated. They added a big bar to guide you in putting calls on hold or making conference calls, found easy ways to navigate through email, and created icons you could scroll through horizontally to get to different apps—all of which were easier because they could be used visually on the screen rather than by using a keyboard built into the hardware.

Gorilla Glass

Jobs became infatuated with different materials the way he did with certain foods. When he went back to Apple in 1997 and started work on the iMac, he had embraced what could be done with translucent and colored plastic. The next phase was metal. He and Ive replaced the curvy plastic PowerBook G3 with the sleek titanium PowerBook G4, which they redesigned two years later in aluminum, as if just to demonstrate how much they liked different metals. Then they did an iMac and an iPod Nano in anodized aluminum, which meant that the metal had been put in an acid bath and electrified so that its surface oxidized. Jobs was told it could not be done in the quantities they needed, so he had a factory built in China to handle it. Ive went there, during the SARS epidemic, to oversee the process. “I stayed for three months in a dormitory to work on the process,” he recalled. “Ruby and others said it would be impossible, but I wanted to do it because Steve and I felt that the anodized aluminum had a real integrity to it.”

Next was glass. “After we did metal, I looked at Jony and said that we had to master glass,” said Jobs. For the Apple stores, they had created huge windowpanes and glass stairs. For the iPhone, the original plan was for it to have a plastic screen, like the iPod. But Jobs decided it would feel much more elegant and substantive if the screens were glass. So he set about finding a glass that would be strong and resistant to scratches.

The natural place to look was Asia, where the glass for the stores was being made. But Jobs’s friend John Seeley Brown, who was on the board of Corning Glass in Upstate New York, told him that he should talk to that company’s young and dynamic CEO, Wendell Weeks. So he dialed the main Corning switchboard number and asked to be put through to Weeks. He got an assistant, who offered to pass along the message. “No, I’m Steve Jobs,” he replied. “Put me through.” The assistant refused. Jobs called Brown and complained that he had been subjected to “typical East Coast bullshit.” When Weeks heard that, he called the main Apple switchboard and asked to speak to Jobs. He was told to put his request in writing and send it in by fax. When Jobs was told what happened, he took a liking to Weeks and invited him to Cupertino.

Jobs described the type of glass Apple wanted for the iPhone, and Weeks told him that Corning had developed a chemical exchange process in the 1960s that led to what they dubbed “gorilla glass.” It was incredibly strong, but it had never found a market, so Corning quit making it. Jobs said he doubted it was good enough, and he started explaining to Weeks how glass was made. This amused Weeks, who of course knew more than Jobs about that topic. “Can you shut up,” Weeks interjected, “and let me teach you some science?” Jobs was taken aback and fell silent. Weeks went to the whiteboard and gave a tutorial on the chemistry, which involved an ion-exchange process that produced a compression layer on the surface of the glass. This turned Jobs around, and he said he wanted as much gorilla glass as Corning could make within six months. “We don’t have the capacity,” Weeks replied. “None of our plants make the glass now.”

“Don’t be afraid,” Jobs replied. This stunned Weeks, who was good-humored and confident but not used to Jobs’s reality distortion field. He tried to explain that a false sense of confidence would not overcome engineering challenges, but that was a premise that Jobs had repeatedly shown he didn’t accept. He stared at Weeks unblinking. “Yes, you can do it,” he said. “Get your mind around it. You can do it.”

As Weeks retold this story, he shook his head in astonishment. “We did it in under six months,” he said. “We produced a glass that had never been made.” Corning’s facility in Harrisburg, Kentucky, which had been making LCD displays, was converted almost overnight to make gorilla glass full-time. “We put our best scientists and engineers on it, and we just made it work.” In his airy office, Weeks has just one framed memento on display. It’s a message Jobs sent the day the iPhone came out: “We couldn’t have done it without you.”

The Design

On many of his major projects, such as the first Toy Story and the Apple store, Jobs pressed “pause” as they neared completion and decided to make major revisions. That happened with the design of the iPhone as well. The initial design had the glass screen set into an aluminum case. One Monday morning Jobs went over to see Ive. “I didn’t sleep last night,” he said, “because I realized that I just don’t love it.” It was the most important product he had made since the first Macintosh, and it just didn’t look right to him. Ive, to his dismay, instantly realized that Jobs was right. “I remember feeling absolutely embarrassed that he had to make the observation.”