Scott Forstall On The Genesis Of iPhone

We went to the design team, and they made a simple demo.

It was a simple list of names. With your finger you would drag along. It probably had rubber banding, everything. You’d tap on a name, and it would slide across and reveal the card. You’d tap on a name or a phone number, and it would say it was calling.

The second you saw this demo you knew this was it. There was no question. This is the way a phone had to behave.

Steve saw it, said put the tablet on hold. Let’s build a phone, let’s build a phone based on multitouch.

Scott was interviewed at the Computer History Museum on June 20th. The video is here. Scott’s interview begins about 1 hour 5 minutes in.

This the first time (I can recall) that Scott has talked publicly about iPhone since he left Apple in 2012. In Keynotes, Scott was always one of my favorite presenters, he was clearly cut from the same cloth as Steve.

Great interview.

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