Version History: iPhone 4

Hey, it's your friend David Pierce here. This week we're bringing you another episode from season two of Version History. Like I mentioned last week, if you want to get these episodes as soon as they arrive, follow the Version History podcast feed wherever you get podcasts.

You can find it ad free if you're a Verge subscriber. This is a really fun episode though, and we wanted to make sure you heard it too. Let's do it. It's early twenty ten and in a few months we're probably gonna get a new iPhone. We get a new iPhone in the spring. But there's something. Maybe you've already From the Verge and Vox Media this year. And on this episode we are talking about. That lived before it lived.

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All right. It's time for the iPhone 4. Maybe maybe the best iPhone, maybe the most interesting iPhone. We have a lot to talk about. Neil Ipsella is here. Hey bunny. It's the best iPhone. Stop getting ahead of me, Patel, all right? Walt Mossberg is here. Hi, Walt. Hi, David. This reminds me of the old days, except back then I was getting paid to do this.

I like it better this way personally. Yeah, I'm sure you do. Yeah. This is new media, Walt. Everyone's doing it for brand deals now. I'm just uh I'm just a poor pensioner and I'm here I am. You're just here to say wild things that make for good TikToks. That's that's your job on this show, Paul.

Um, so the the reason I asked you both to be here, I would say is is going to become very obvious very quickly here. Um, not only is the story of the iPhone sort of intersecting with a lot of work that you were both doing at a time, You both actually figure into this story in personally in some really interesting ways. Um we picked this phone to do. This is the first iPhone we've done on the show. And we picked this one to do, Because there is so much story both about and kind of around

this iPhone. And and it it it features many more characters, including both of you, than it normally does. Um all of this is gonna come up. But first, like Neela, are you serious? You think this is the best iPhone ever? This is the best iPhone ever. Why? Easily the best iPhone ever. It's the one that changed phones forever. Like the the mobile phone is a design object.

started with the iPhone four in a in a real way. Uh it introduced the retina display, which is maybe the single biggest innovation in in display technology. the outside of like very core innovations, but increasing in pixel density to make it look great was just a huge step forward. Um and then all the stuff you're talking about, it was a cultural moment.

It the f the phone was being covered on the local news in c in the context of like scandal and true crime and that had just never happened before. And I there's just something about this phone. that really captures r not only where the iPhone had been going, but where it went. Uh in the actually the the specific line when when Steve Jobs introduced it, he said it's a beautiful Leica camera. And then he he talks about the camera on the back. Right. And there's n nothing more important.

uh I think in smartphone history than the fact that they are incredible cameras. It is the thing that has made the smartphone era, I think, what it has become and made the social media era what it has become. And the iPhone four is the one where Steve Jobs said this The comparison I'm making in its design is to a Leica camera. And I think that was just it was a v there was a clear vision of what was to come. Walt, do you agree?

I'm not sure I agree it was the best iPhone, but I think it was probably the most seminal iPhone. And the reason for that is if you look, this is the I think this is the 3GS. I have trouble telling it from the original. But it's bulbous. I mean look, we were all uh uh incredibly excited about it and amazed because it was so different than other phones. But the iPhone four set in terms of design s and in some some respects features

set the template, I think, for the rest of not only uh iPhones but Android phones and and so forth. It was it it introduced the kind of shape and thinness, even though Phones got thinner, it introduced the kind of um what you expect to see when you see uh a mobile phone, a smartphone. And uh in addition to the screen, which I agree with Neilai was an enormous breakthrough, it had uh uh

FaceTime. It was the first thing with FaceTime. And FaceTime is used I don't know, a billion times a week now or something. Uh and I remember uh I was I was there uh at the announcement and I remember Jobs, Steve Jobs, um placing a FaceTime call to, I believe, Phil Schiller, who was the at that time the head of marketing and who was in the room. It wasn't a dramatic test, but um but it was it it just it just uh blew everyone's mind.

I do remember I had forgotten how big a deal FaceTime was. Yeah. tha at that point. Like now video calling is so Like it it's it's so commonplace that it's like deeply uninteresting to think about. But at that point the the existence of FaceTime was Incredible. Like it it seemed nuts that this was like a possible thing to do in that story after story over whether ATT was gonna let FaceTime run over the cell network.

Um and like I mean i the iPhone four was still on three G, right? It wasn't LTE yet. So the idea that the three G network could carry this volume of video calls I mean, I have probably a a dozen blog posts from NGadget. where, you know, tired ATT representatives are like we are working on the project with Steve J like they didn't know they weren't aware of it, but faced they knew what the promise would be. And then, well, I'm sure you remember this, the carriers wanted all that for themselves.

Because that's that was their dynamic with all of the cell phone companies at the time. Yeah. And the idea that Apple would make its own video calling service. and not cut ATT or whatever other carrier into it. was like very controversial. Again, looking back, this all seems bananas. Yeah. I will say ATT is gonna catch a lot of strays in this episode. So if you're if you're that's what I came for. Tough day for ATT in this in this version history.

Back up to the beginning of the story and and kind of walk through the the I would say first six months of twenty ten, which turned out to be pretty eventful for Apple. Um It's it's early twenty ten. The iPhone, like you're saying, is is off and running. The three G S, the one you have with you, we think, well, shipped in the spring of two thousand nine.

It's not like the most exciting iPhone in the history of the universe. Uh, but that's fine. They can't all be. Well I I would like to read you from your own review of the three G S to just to see if you'd if you'd like to amend anything. Uh you said I regard these changes as more evolutionary than revolutionary, and I don't think this latest iPhone is as compelling an upgrade for the average user as the three G model was last year for owners of the original two thousand seven iPhone.

Feel good about that in retrospect? Feels right. I I I'll stick with it. Um and at this point the the Uh iOS and iPhone momentum is super strong. iOS 3.0 had just come out, it did copy and paste.

Which was like a huge deal. Again, I feel like I feel like part of the job of this show is to remind you of things that don't seem like a big deal but were a big deal. By the way, they hadn't even named it iOS yet. It was still iPhone OS too. That's right. Yeah. And it was hilarious that it that the original one didn't do copy and paste, but

Yeah, we were we were still early in this whole making good smartphones game. Um the but the the app store is off to a good start, the iPod touch is still a hit. It's like thing things are going well. So this is this is where we are. And the the story of the iPhone for star Kind of in, I would say, January of this year, when uh one Neh Patel publishes a post. On ngadget.com saying, is this the Apple tablet? So the other thing that's happening right now is Apple is gearing up to launch the iPad.

Uh and and you got somehow got a got a leak or some images of this is in my life as a gadget leaker. Yeah. I've had many lives. One of them was leaked gadgets. So It again, the context of this is so funny. Ngadget and Gizmoto were the gadget blogs. This is gonna come up in I think in this episode to the highest level. Like the Engadget and Gizmodo

were we were ferocious competitors. I worked at NGadget. A lot of the people who started the Verge worked at NGadget. We had great competitors at Gizmod. They're then now they're friends, although I pretended to hate them for years and years. And every single day was a ferocious fight to break new gadgets.

And sometimes that gadget news was as small as like there's a new SD card. Right. It holds more than last year's SD card. Uh and sometimes that news was we would leak gadgets. Uh I think in gadget leaked the first Xbox. We leaked uh m dozens of Android phones over the years. And so we would get these tips.

And a lot of them would be fake. A lot of them would be mock-ups or photoshops. They were much easier to tell when things were bad photoshops back then. But I got this picture right before the iPad came out, like the morning the iPad was coming out. I think in the post it says thirteen hours before the keynote was supposed to start. And it was a picture of a development table with an iPad.

Just sitting there with like this screen. And I remember I had this conversation with Josh Topolski and the rest of our team. I was like, I think I have a picture of the iPad. And you know, it's like thirteen hours. The stakes are very low. It's like we're gonna run it. Like this is just exciting. Like we think it's real, here it is. And then over time it got confirmed. Gizmodo matched it. But like this is like hot stuff, right? And then later that same year around the iPhone four time.

Someone pinged and was like, You know, you've had a picture of the iPhone four this entire time. You just didn't notice. You're so focused on the iPad. You didn't notice it in the background is the iPhone four. And Apple never said anything. They never demanded the picture come down. Because no one noticed and I think they realized it's better to not call attention.

Absolutely crazy. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, so this one kinda comes and goes. The iPhone four is just live on the internet and no one notices. Uh and then April nineteenth, twenty ten. Gizmoto out of nowhere. publishes a story. Uh, and it's by Jason Chen and Jesus Diaz.

And it says the the lead of it is you are looking at Apple's next iPhone. It was found lost in a bar in Redwood City, camouflaged to look like an iPhone 3GS. We got it, we disassembled it, it's the real thing, and here are all the details.

So they they showed off a bunch of new features that this thing would have. It was gonna have a front facing camera, it was gonna have a larger lens on the back, it was gonna have a camera flash, a better display. It was gonna split the buttons for volume, which I remember people being really excited about instead of the rocker. Right. But the big thing was

This thing was a big design change. It had a flat back, it had the aluminum border around the outside. It was just like squarer and sharper and nicer. And it was the design in particular. that made everybody both in and out of Gizmodo wonder if this was the real thing. Yeah. And so immediately this thing like causes like a crazy firestorm all over the

Right. Do you do you like do you remember the day these stories came out? What was this like? Oh, it was crazy. Because first of all, again, we're in ferocious competition with Gizmo. So we lost. So what are we gonna do? We're just gonna talk shit about their story. Like I don't know how else to explain that. Like a losing newsroom does nothing but except throw cold water on the scoop that someone else got. So like, is this real? Could this be real?

Like how will the antennas work was a big conversation. And then, you know, we've got to cover it. So then we write post after post. There's like social media fighting going on about all of this, like you would do. And then it The th the turn and you mentioned this in the leadout story, they had disassembled the fun.

And whatever weird code of gadget blogger honor existed, we we knew that they had gone too far. We absolutely knew that they had gone too far. And then we also started hearing that Apple was Furious about it. Absolutely furious. And then we're going back through our emails.

uh and just seeing like, did we miss this? How do we lose? And we realized that we'd been offered the phone and we we just missed it. Uh and then we'd heard later that Steve Jobs had called the COVAOL where we worked and said, You are not gonna touch Oh wow. And so there was just some in the background, it became very evident that Apple was furious about this. Yeah, it it was it got

Publicly confirmed that this was real very quickly. Uh John Gruber at Daring Fireball posted something like right afterwards being like, Yes, I I have heard that there is a phone missing that they are trying desperately to get back. And it's like, well, two and two and two. Uh what what was your day like that day? Well, it wasn't something I was gonna write about, to be honest. I think the Wall Street Journal where I worked at the time had a had a beat reporter covering Apple.

uh, who might have it might have w might have written about it. I haven't gone back and checked. But um As I recall it, the first stories or or at least rumors were that Gizmoto had stolen this phone uh in this bar and Eventually it turned out that the Apple employee had left it there and the Gizmodo person had picked it up. And I think that's an ethical issue, a journalism ethical issue.

So you're right. Steve Jobs was utterly furious about it for A few reasons, one of which was his insane devotion to secrecy, and the other was uh they wanted to control the timing of revealing things. They always did. So he was he I get a call from him uh during this uh one day and I think we spent about an hour on the phone arguing. He w I I tr he said, I'm gonna sue these bastards. I'm you know, I've reported it to the police, but I'm gonna

I'm going to pursue criminal charges, blah, blah, blah. And I said Look, I sympathize with your situation, but that would be a terrible idea. That would be a terrible idea in terms of uh, you know, freedom of the press and I went through all the stuff about how freedom of the press covers even things you find repulsive and you don't like and if you don't adhere to it in those cases, you can't adhere to it in the more noble cases. And um

You know, he would he during the hour he wavered a little back and forth and but I failed. I mean, I I I failed to convince him. He was just Rip shit about it. And um I don't think I knew that you'd gone to Tibat for the gadget blogs during this time, Walt. This is like amazing to hear. Yeah, well I mean I I uh read the gadget blogs. I didn't Always trust the gadget blogs, to be honest.

I mean you've met Neely, that was the right call. Well, I hadn't met Neh, I don't think, back then, but Neh is a is a different I mean, you know, he's an excellent journalist. He does not Yeah. David S his job is not le But the but the point is I felt strongly that uh You had to go to bet for them.

Even though I I said to jobs and I believe this, I think I said it to you a few minutes ago, this was not good journalistic ethics. Yeah. Gizmoto should have given the phone back. This is I think the most interesting piece of this puzzle, right? The the how they acquired the phone and then what they did with it are two separate problems. And, you know, looking back on it

the culture of Gizmodo was the culture of Gawker, which is maybe a whole other episode of a whole different show. Yes. But they were definitely the faster, looser, more aggressive Gawker as a company styled itself is much less ethical.

So let me just run through what actually did happen here. And I think o over time we figured out what seems to be more or less the correct sequence of events here. So it it starts almost a month before this story comes out in March. when a a software engineer at Apple who's working on the phone call capabilities of the phone uh is at a bar in Redwood City, uh it was his birthday, we learned later. Um, he leaves the phone on a bar stool and the person next to him

picks up the phone, waits a while to see if he's gonna come back looking for it, tries to get the phone to work, it crashes a bunch, uh, ends up just like taking the phone with him and going home. Um, the next morning, Wakes up, sees that this phone uh ha is is actually not a 3GS, it's something else.

disguised to look like a three G S and discovers it's a it's a completely different phone. So this this person then what what they say is that they then called Apple and tried to get a support person to understand what had happened and tried to give the phone back and Couldn't like couldn't get someone to tell them what to do with this phone. Um and then in a strange turn from that decision starts emailing

Tech bloggers asking for money. Um and so what ends up happening is Gizmoto pays five thousand dollars in cash for the phone. Which is another thing we would have never done. Like this is what I mean. Like I don't wanna do journalism ethics too much here, but like there are choices they made that

As competitors, we were sometimes jealous. Yeah. Like we don't pay for tips is just a thing we we would won't don't do. And Gawker as a company did. Right. And so so yeah, so Gizmoto ends up paying cash for it and this ends up being a part of the story, right? Because it's it's the the buying of something changes the nature of the something, right? And uh Giz said at the time they weren't even sure it was the real thing. They it was like it it seemed plausible that this was an actual leak.

unannounced iPhone, but they weren't sure. Um, which is why they did things like disassemble it. And one of the things that convinced them it was the real thing was that there was, I forget which part, but there was a part in it stamped with Apple's logo.

And that's the sort of thing that it's like, no one who is faking this thing is going to go to the lengths of of stamping Apple's logo onto the internals of the device, which is famously a thing that Apple did, right? This is the like paint both sides of the fence. company that cared deeply about the way the internals were organized.

Those are the things that are like, okay, this is it's it's it's now clear to us that this is real. And they post the thing. Um and it came with a a very short and very 2010 era video. Can I just play this video for you very quickly? Yes. Uh it's it's a it's a delight. This can't comes out when Giz first leaks the iPhone. Hey, I'm Jason Chen. This is the new iPhone. Here are some of the new features. You have the front camera, which is finally there. The two volume buttons are now separate.

The hole outside is metallic instead of uh plastic. Bottom dock connector is the same. The sim slot has moved from the top. to the side and when you pop it out it's a microsim. The back is flush. So this is like again, I just I I play this to reiterate the point that this was like every single detail of this was a huge deal. Yeah. Because this phone was brand new and also nothing like this had ever happened.

Like Apple was Apple was famous for its secrecy. Apple stuff didn't leak. This was this was like a a completely new experience. I want to say your boy leaked the iPad.

Sure. You had a picture of it. That's true. That's cudos. You're you you did leak the iPad. Uh but this was just like I had forgotten until I went back and reread all these stories how big a deal this was. Like huge deal. Gizmoto ends up running a a separate story, just debunking everybody's conspiracy theories about it. One was that it was an apple plant.

that Apple was like strategically leaking its own iPhone, which is like Oh, we got we got this all the time. Straight for most common accusation of insane. I no. Let's that's very simple. Um there was uh there's a line from Joel Johnson wrote the story for Gizmoto and he said There had been some that questioned why we ran our story on the same day the HTC Incredible reviews hit the street. Yeah, yeah, that's the one. So this is the conspiracy theories. Apple is doing this.

To take away from the shine of the HTC Incredible. HTC Incredible. Amazing. Um and he says Which was incredible. Yeah. Incredibly bad. Well that's the thing. He says here's why, because it was a Monday. Good news day. If you really think Apple cares so much about mucking with the release of yet another Android phone that they'd screw up an iPhone launch, you've got an out of kilter conception of Apple Sphere of Google. Uh I think that is largely correct. Um

So this this becomes a huge thing. People start writing stories like, is this the end of an app of an Apple era? Is Apple gonna be a whole different company after this? This just becomes a whole thing. And then it it turns into a whole long investigation that I don't really want to get into. But uh Jason Chen's home eventually gets raided. The the San Mateo County police gets involved. This becomes a a sort of long and messy legal battle.

That sort of largely recedes from the purposes of this episode, but goes on for a very long time. And while to your point, uh Steve and Apple decided to. go after this thing. Like this was not given the choice to just kind of live and let live, they they chose very deliberately not. Despite my genius arguments. Wait, can I can I say just like one thing about that? Again, over time, my two great competitors at Gizmodel, like on the we're gonna write about SD cards.

faster than than the next guy were Matt Buchanan and John Herman. I've I'm fr friends with them. Brian Lamb was the editor of Gizmoto at that time. He is living his best life in Hawaii woodworking. He founded the wire cutter after all of this. Brian made the choice, and I'm saying I'm just saying this out of love. Like these are all people I I care about and respect and I'm very friendly with. Brian made the choice to try to bribe Steve Jarts.

And it was just such a mistake. Like from the outside, even in real time, we're like, what are you doing, man? He wrote a a blog post, basically. Uh he was like, here's the letter I sent to Steve Jobs. And he is like, Hey, we'll give you your phone back.

But you've been so testy and aggressive to us that we'll only do it if you're nice to us and invite us to your events again. And there was one other condition. Jobs had to acknowledge that it was Apple's phone. Yeah. He he like he needed to give the last the win. Yeah.

And it was like, you know, the other way to have played this was to publish the pictures of the phone, say you have it, make your video, and then give the thing back, which would have absolutely confirmed that it was Apple's phone, right? I think this would have come to nothing. But the aggression to not only disassemble it, but then to say, We're only giving you this back. Upon all these conditions, including the last one. Which is U cave and say it was real?

Man, I was like, you're you're all going to jail. Like I'd like Steve Jobs is gonna build you a beautiful white and glass jail and put you in it because he's never going to agree to that. I mean maybe it would have worked with some other tech executives, but Steve Jobs was pugnacious and he had a hot temper. He was already furious and uh It was crazy for them to think they could do that. It was just crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And so I think

credit. He he wound up writing a story about a year later where he said basically exactly what You said, Neil. He said, the scoop was big, people loved it. If I could do it again, I'd do the first story about the phone again. But I probably would have given the phone back without asking for the letter, and I would have done the story about the engineer who lost it with more compassion and without naming him. Yep. I think that is the the correct

outcome. And I think we all sort of like learn that lesson together. I mean this is a class of people that was coming up together, it was competing, you know, to to whatever extent Walt wants to pretend I'm a good journalist now, it's like, oh, these are the less like these are the scars. Right. Right. Like an entire industry sort of like gained these scars together and the boundaries of what you should and shouldn't do, I think, changed because of the FN four. Yeah. I I agree. Okay. And then

Walt, before we get off this story entirely, I do I want to go back to the D conference that you you were talking about uh a few minutes ago, because you you interviewed Steve Jobs at the D conference that year and you talked a bunch about this. Um and I have I have a I have a just a short clip I want to play because I think I think it's relevant to kind of the piece of this that we're talking about. Um and then I want to know just how you remember this whole ordeal.

Uh but here let me just play this bit for you first. When this whole thing with Gizmodo happened. I got a lot of advice from people that said, you've got to just let it slide. And I thought deeply about this. And I ended up concluding that the worst thing that could possibly happen as we get big and we get a little more influence in the world is if we change our core values and start letting it slide.

I can't do that. I'd rather quit. Well, what do you what do you remember about how this interview felt? I remember thinking that I was quite surprised um at least at the moment, not so much after I thought about it, that he identified the core values of Apple really is being secrecy and protection of IP. Um Really, that's what he was doing. Yeah. And when he started talking about core values, I wasn't sure where he was going. I had had this conversation with him, but um So I so I knew uh

you know, the freedom of the press thing wasn't gonna work, particularly with a blog. But um I I was surprised that he c that he said he would rather quit than, you know, lose essentially the element of surprise. Yeah. Because really he wasn't going to lose I P from this and I mean it was just a question of timing and uh uh Taking away his opportunity to um uh be the one to announce it. Yeah. You could tell he just felt burned in a bunch of different ways by the whole Yes.

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All right, we're back. It is june twenty fourth, twenty ten. And Steve Jobs gets to finally launch the phone on his own terms. Uh he he did a thing that in retrospect actually surprises me, which is he kind of like sideways acknowledged That people had seen this before, that it had leaked Uh it was a rare sort of out of the out of the reality distortion field moment. Um, but it also it it played big. Let me play you this very short clip from the actual intro.

That I just very much enjoy. This is he starts out by saying, you know, it's the best iPhone in the history of iPhones, whatever, and then he says this. Now Stop me if you've already seen this. Believe me. You ain't seen it. You've gotta see this thing in person. It is one of the most beautiful designs you've ever seen. So Steve Jobs is very good at this in general, and that was one of the I think Steve Jobs best. The stop me if you've seen this.

trust me, you ain't seen it. It's just like it's it's very good. It's good. We've lost this. Yes. As a culture, as a society. Truly. And it humanized him uh And he did a lot of things to humanize himself. But I mean, you could see that the audience took it as a joke and laughed and clapped. Yeah. At the same time the FBI is breaking down Br Jason Chen's story. By the way, the conceit of that structure Is it's not real until I show it to you. Yeah. Which is pu like v only Steve Jobs and the

in this universe gets to pull that off. Like if Mark Zuckerberg is like, you haven't seen the new Instagram until I'm going to be a little bit more. Okay, Mark or whatever. I don't is it is it more goggles? Did you make more VR goggles, Mark? Good job, buddy. Like does it have legs yet?

But jobs got to pull it off'cause he had he had the history. He'd he'd done it enough times right that he could deliver that and just watching it pack, it's it it is hard to imagine a character who can do that today. Yes, I totally agree. No, there is no buddy. No, I I think I think that's right. So he he shows off the iPhone four. Uh this was fun fact, the last time an iPhone was launched at the June event.

It's only a slightly fun fact, but there it is. They moved to the fall release schedule right after this one. Uh this is also when they started calling it iOS. This was iOS four. So like Kind of a new idea about how we're gonna do iPhone stuff here. Uh we actually have the iPhone for it right here. The most beautiful phone. If you'd like to hold it and have feelings about it. we're gonna talk about holding it soon i'm sureoh sure

Uh. Easily the most beautiful Although this is running iOS seven, so It's not quite quite the same experience. But so the the iPhone four was, just to refresh your memory a little bit about it, the the new design was the thing, as we talked about, but there was actually like a lot of new stuff about this. It was the thinnest smartphone in the world at the time. It had the A four chip, which was the first

Custom Apple Silicon in the iPhone. Look at this. Look at what I'm saying. This is my 17 Pro Max. Look look at this. It's like two iPhone 4. Nonsense. Yeah. It's it's outrageous. It's smaller than the like cell window on the back of my seventeen Pro Mac. No, that's great. So this was the first time custom Apple Silicon had shown up in an iPhone. It had shown up in the iPad earlier in the same year, but this was

like a big chip move for Apple to make this phone. The A four. The A four. Uh it had the retina display. It had a front facing camera and it could do FaceTime. It had a five megapixel rear camera that was a big improvement over what it had before.

Battery life was still measured in talk time, which is a fact that I just find adorable. That's true. But this one had forty percent more than the previous one. So you could talk on the phone,'cause that's apparently what people did. Uh, even though ironically, Walt, as you point out in your review of this phone,

Uh the single worst thing about the iPhone was making phone calls with it. Um But anyway, it also this was the first iPhone that um foreshadowing for a thing to come here in a little bit, worked on CDMA networks. So this is like this is actually Whether you like this phone the most or not, kind of a like Step change in a bunch of directions.

for Apple in terms of like how it makes the iPhone and what the iPhone is. Well that's what I meant about how it set the template. I think seminal is exactly the right word for it. And it was seminal. Part of it was the design. which despite that size difference Neelai just showed, and I remember saying the screen was the same size and but it was uh

considerably thinner. It was actually not lighter than the three G S. Right. It's a pretty serious piece of equipment. Yeah. Yeah, they put a bigger battery in than the three G S had and I think that Uh they could have made it lighter, but they they took the opportunity to put a bigger battery in. They sold one point seven million of them in the first three days. Jobs called it the most successful product launch in Apple's history. Um the reviews were like universally great.

Except for one thing. Like i this is about as as as consistent a set of reviews for a product as I can ever remember. Everybody said, like Walt, I'll quote you to you. Um you said I'd say that Apple has built a beautiful smartphone that works well, adds impressive new features, and is still overall the best device in its class. And then you wrote like three paragraphs about how much you hated ATT. And this this is a theme. Like uh David Pogue, who was then reviewing stuff for the New York Times.

Uh also Love the Phone also had network issues. Ed Big, who was writing for USA Today, uh also Love the Phone also had network issues. Uh Josh Tapolski writing for Angadget also loved the phone, also had network issues. Like this this was the thing. It was very clear that this was a great phone. completely hamstrung by the network that it was working on. I also in that column and in a a number of subsequent columns or previous columns

uh said you definitely want this, but you should not buy it unless you're certain that you have reasonable ATT coverage. Because otherwise Forget it. Yeah. Yeah. It was a brick without good ATT coverage in a in a very real way. Um and so so again, this is this thing is like doing super well. People are really excited about it. ATT is a disaster. Uh and then

Drama number two hits almost immediately, like with within within a few days of this phone starting to ship to people, um, a bunch of people start to notice the same thing, which is that if you hold the phone in your hand, with your hand covering the bottom left corner of it. So basically if you sort of put nestle it into the palm of your left hand is generally what people were doing, uh, your reception starts. And it like you you can sort of watch it tick down bar by bar by bar. Um

This be this becomes a thing people start making videos about. People start talking about on nascent social media platforms. Uh here's just one video that I enjoyed very much uh that I think. is like again a very uh on brand and of the moment YouTube video that actually did pretty well. Pick it up. I'm gonna hold it in the same direction. Just slightly elevated, but my hands are wrapped around the sides of the iPhone. And as I do that, you can see the bars.

begin to decrease one after another. Oh my god, I have like a physical memory of this video. Yeah, right? Like it l and it and you can see up in the it's it's got the the reception in the top left corner, it just ticks down. Yep. Bar after bar after bar. So This if if memory serves, like almost immediately goes from A thing a couple of people have noticed to like full blown fiasco. So the gadgetogs, which again was my universe at the time, we're gonna cover every inch of this.

Right. The iPhone four is out. It's the thing that everyone's talking about. We're gonna publish every video of everyone trying to make the signal drop when you hold it. We're gonna test holding it ourselves. We're you know, our comments are all lit up. Um, you know, the design of the phone was new. The antenna was incorporated into that outer band.

There's a million stories about how Apple's sense of design has gotten over, you know, traditional wireless engineering. You got your Nokia fanboys and Motorola fanboys in the comments being like, the real cell phone companies would never let this happen. I mean this was, at least in our corner of the universe, as big a story as could exist. The thing that really surprised me is that it broke out.

Yes. It broke out into the mainstream. And this is a thing I always think about is when does a gadget story hit the local news? And I lived in Chicago at the time. And like when does ABC seven in Chicago start covering gadgets? Like, you know something is gonna go sideways. Right. You know something else has happened and the story will take on a different shape. And it's always that's the

That's the symbol to me, right? When does the local news decide this is important enough? And the iPhone four antenna hit the local news in like two hours. I I've I don't I don't think there's been a gadget story like it ever since, where it immediately went to Steve Jobs' baby has a problem.

No, that's I think that's exactly right. Um one thing I very much enjoyed about this is I think one of the the moment that helped it break out was somebody sent Steve Jobs an email, basically being like, This is a problem. Are you aware of it? And Jobs replied

And he says, uh, not you're holding it wrong, which is how everybody remembers. This is like a weird Mandela effect thing. He doesn't say you're he never says, as far as I can tell, you're holding it wrong. What he says is just avoid holding it that way. And this is the becomes like a an admission of guilt. Right,'cause he's saying it it happens. Yeah, it is broken, just don't don't hold it like that. And and so everybody takes this and this pours so much more

fuel on the fire, that all of a sudden it's like, okay, this is not an isolated incident. You've you've now acknowledged the problem. And this is when it becomes antenna gate. And once it has the name, it's all over. It's a great w as soon as it becomes a gate, like what do you what are you gonna it's it's it's out of your it's out of hand. I do feel like this like slightly diminishes both the actual events and the history and legacy of Watergate.

But it was intended. Yes. And it got the name because he sent that email. So there Steve Jobs, uh basically like three weeks after the phone launches, ends up giving a press conference to address this. Which is like unheard of. He flew back from a vacation in Hawaii and this was one year before he died. He was very sick. Interesting. He was very sick. Uh in fact The first time I saw the iPad, which Neil I leaked, but the first time I saw it I I had to go to his house.

and seat in his living room because he was so sick ས གས གས གས གས གས uh consistently going into the office. And he still had it covered by the way in a in a grey cloth on his coffee table and he just pulled it out. But anyway. So he was sick Yeah. He was in Hawaii, presumably to try to get better, I don't know. And he flew back and did that press conference. And he was

I can't describe this press conference as anything other than just like a twenty minute exercise in passive aggression. Like I was there. It was it was aggression, aggression. That's fair. I was just I agree with you. You're right. I I was in that room. Josh Chapolsky and I were in that room together. Yeah. I Walt, I bet you were there. And he was just like You idiots. Yeah. All the phones do this.

And then he showed us all the phones from all of his competitors attenuating their signal when you held it anywhere near the antenna. Yeah. And he was like, Did you even check? I checked. Here's all the phones. All the phones are doing this. And by the way, they they ran that video or they made a more cohesive video showing all the other major phones doing this, which They somehow I don't think it was a T V ad, but they

put it out into the world for about two days and then it went away. Forgot about that. That's really funny Yeah,'cause they wanted everybody to see it. They wanted this. But it was an incredibly convincing It didn't let them off the hook totally'cause none of these other phones had external antennas where, you know, you could You could block it. You couldn't attenuate it, but you were attenuating an internal antenna.

by by pressing on the outside. Well here let me just play you a short clip from it just so you can get the vibes. We started getting some reports of people having issues with the antenna system, which is a very advanced new antenna system. And uh the problems they were saying, uh obviously Gizmodo put their video on the web, people were touching. X marks the spot here, and uh they were seeing uh a large drop in bars. And this has been since dubbed antenna gate. So

We heard about this not long after we started shipping, just 22 days ago from today. And so we've been working our butts off. for the last twenty two days to understand what the real issues are here. Once again I would just like to say to every tech executive out there who they listen to our show, they pay attention to us. They certainly listen to Walt Walt, if you could underline this message for me, that'd be great. If they could start talking like regular people

and say we've been working our butts off a little more often, I think we'd all be better off. Yeah. Yeah. But so Jobs ends up that he I think I I agree with you, Walt, that he ends up making a very convincing case that this is like a normal thing that happens to a lot of funds. And then he offers two actual reasons that this is happening maybe more to Apple than to most other phones. One is we've sold a lot of phones and nobody else cares.

Which is a very funny and iphony way to think about the I think they said like point one percent of the calls to Apple support we're about this. Yeah. But then he offers two things about the device that I thought were really interesting. One, and he said he says in that clip, X marks the spot. The thing that Apple did is show you where the antenna is.

in a way that a lot of phones didn't. And it is it's like a it's a phone you touch and move around and it like it it they both put it in the wrong place and showed you where it was for it to be in your wrong place. I think it was the scene between two antennas. I don't know if it was the Wi Fi antenna and the and the

phone antenna, but it was a seam between them. Yeah. And then he also blamed, as you were just talking about, well, the the algorithm that determines how many bars Apple shows at any given That in that clip you played, he said people have been noticing that the bars are increasing. He did not say people have been noticing that the calls are dropping more. Right. But I I went back and reread my column just as you did and

Uh in my tests I did find the bars dropping more on the new phone in certain places, the usual dead spots I knew about around m my area. And But it was the bars. I mean it w it it wasn't necessarily the call. Right.

I I yeah, it it was very funny going back to this because I I find myself basically completely thinking Steve Jobs was right. Because they issue the software change to change the bars and they offer these free bumper cases to everybody. Because if you had a case on your phone it it didn't like conduct electricity on your hand the same way and it it more or less solved the problem.

So they're like, We'll give you he very passive aggressively says, We'll give you a refund if you want it. Yeah. Uh knowing full well nobody was gonna take Apple up on this. Uh, but then offers free bumper cases to everybody who has an iPhone four. Um But is clearly just so enraged that this is a scandal at all. So at the back end of this presentation, he does a presentation, he uh makes this offer, he then took the press. into Apple's wireless testing rooms.

At Apple at the Apple office at Infinite Loop. So a really interesting thing about that video you just showed is the spaceship had not yet been built. Right. And that room that he was in was tiny. That theater at Infinite Loop, I don't know if you remember this. It was Teeny tiny. It was called Town Hall. Town Hall. It was teeny tiny. It was tiny. And there was an even tinier one called the Piano Bar, like right down the hall. Um and they would do events in these tiny rooms.

And so he was talking to a room of, I don't know, maybe two hundred people that were right on top of him. Like we were we were right there. There was no distance the way there is at Apple Park or in the big in the big theater or on the internet now. Um

And then we all were taken to like look at the wireless testing facility'cause they're like, Look, we tried hard. Yeah, we're better working our buttons off. Um, and what they came up with was the bars are confusing you and here's a bumper, shut up. And I think they added a bar. I think they went from four bars to five or three bars to four or something. Yeah. And and he even said We've been doing this wrong the whole time. Yeah. Yeah. We have screwed up the bar thing. But now we're fixing.

But what I wanna highlight is the extent to which this wasn't like a presentation the way people perceive Apple events to be presentations now. It wasn't like Tim Cook swooping around in CGI uh being like, you will have a new iPad to millions of people. It was Steve Jobs basically like this far away from you being like, shut up. Like he was like just telling this group of people that they were gonna get over it. Yeah. And here's how we were gonna get over it. And it's that does not happen.

It also worked super well. Yeah, it worked it worked it worked perfectly. The scandal just immediately went away. Yeah. Like immediately went away. It's crazy. Uh but anyway, so yeah, so they they offer the bumper cases, they issue the software change, and it just absolutely antenna gate just just disappears. And my memory of it had been that this was like an actual.

Scandal and it just wasn't. It was like it was like ten days of everybody being like, Oh my god, and then Steve Jobs was like, Shut up, and everybody just did. And this goes down unreal. You know, in the the various biographies and the oral histories of all the Steve Jobs moments. This I think is in among the people who n who knew him, who talked about it,

This is one of his finest moments that he was like, I'm gonna come back. I think he brought his son with him to all the meetings. His son was very young. He's like, I want us him to see how I do this. And he's like, I'm gonna shut this down. And then he he his ability to tell a story and make good,'cause he did make good.

Right, he did offer the refunds as passive aggressively as he offered the refunds, he offered the refunds, said we're gonna do the bumper, but he told the story of what the problem was, how Apple was gonna solve it, and uh why you were stupid. And everyone was like, Yep, master storyteller Steve Jobs has done it again in a way that I think no other company, no other tech executive has ever really been able to do. He did. And I was surprised. I I know there was a lot of news covered.

even on the local station in Chicago, but and other local stations. But when I went back and and read not only my own review, but the gadget review and the Times review and all those other reviews People hardly ever mentioned having any Lesser bar I I mentioned it. Mine was one graph uh much less Than what I wrote about FaceTime, for instance. Yeah. And I said it's a bug. Apple couldn't explain it, but they say they're gonna fix it. And

The bug was the bars, not the calls. As it turned out, it was like even it was very funny going back and watching this press conference because it sounds

like shenanigans to just be like, No, it's not a real problem. We're just gonna fix how many bars it shows, that'll make it go away. Yeah. But it turns out that is that did in fact make it go away. Um, but the the Verizon piece is the last turn of this story because Antenna gate blows over, the phone keeps selling super well. It's it's this winds up being a huge success. Like after all of this chaos, the iPhone 4 was a wildly successful iPhone.

Um, but the biggest last turn was in January of the next year. So we're into we're into twenty eleven, um, when Verizon starts selling the iPhone for the first time. And They they Verizon ran a Super Bowl ad advertising that it was getting the iPhone and and I have that ad for you and I'm gonna I'm gonna play it because it's hilarious. But does your network? Work. Yes, I can hear you now. This is America. This is just an attack out against ATT. That's all this is.

Fabulous. And they use that guy. Who was it the symbol of their other ads? Yep. So that even before they said the word Verizon, you immediately knew this was a Verizon ad. Yep. It worked super well. Uh as it turns out, the Verizon and Apple had been negotiating to do something since two thousand and eight. So it's like the the w it Apple was desperately ready to get out of this exclusivity deal and jumped it as far as I can tell, the first moment it was able to.

Well, because Verizon was the other biggest company. There's a sequence of events that happen starting around this time where every quarter Apple sells more iPhones than had ever been previously considered. And it's because they were just lighting up new carriers in new countries. Yep. And eventually Like some smart analysts is like they're running out of countries. Right. Like this growth will stop because

There's not just another China Mobile. Yeah. They're like where uh they're gonna have to go to Mars. But at this point there was a long way to go. There's a long way to go. And this is the beginning of the just sharp upward turn in iPhone sets. Yeah. Totally. And so the other part I like about this is the the Verizon iPhone also shipped with the personal hotspot feature.

for the first time, which is just another flex on ATT. Like, not only can you come do things, come come do more data on our network. Let's do this. Um do you remember where they announced the I uh Verizon iPhone? I don't. It was at C E S Of course. So Apple loves to upstage CES. Yeah. And so in the middle of CS, we're all in Vegas, we're covering whatever Palm Pre two is happening, whatever nonsense is going on. And we get Apple invites.

And so everyone in Vegas gets on a plane and flies to San Francisco to I believe it was the Moscone Center. We go to a big press conference and Steve Jobs is like, Yes, same phone on a different network. Also also comes in white now. And everyone's like, That's it. And that this is the biggest story on all of our traffic trots. Everything in CS is like down here. White iPhone four on Verizon is way up here. The white iPhone four was sick though. It never shipped.

It looked so good. It looked really good, but the w the the the white iPhone four on Verizon did not ship. It took until the iPhone four S. They couldn't figure it out. Yeah, they w they had some uh they they actually ended up giving a statement on the white one because it was such a thing. I wrote this down. It says White models of Apple's new iPhone four have proven more challenging to manufacture than expected and as a result they will not be available until the second half of July.

The availability of the more popular iPhone for black models is not affected. I love Shut up. I love them saying the the iPhone four in black is more popular than the non existent iPhone four in white. Don't look too hard at that. Very good. Um also before it died, uh the iPhone four became the first iPhone to sell on sprint. Yeah. Uh like this was this was this was Apple opening up in a big way and this was like

Yet again, th this is a seminal iPhone, right? Like this is the one. It it escapes the confines. So all right, so this is basically where the iPhone four story ends. It ends up being it's the most popular phone in the world until it's replaced by the iPhone four S, which becomes the most popular phone in the world. Because they lit up more carriers. This is this is the beginning of that sequence. Apple is at the a a like truly like legendary run of phone.

Uh we need to take a break and then we're gonna go back and we're The eight version history questions, including whether this thing gets into the Hall of Fame. Everyone's heard of a midlife crisis, but what about a mid-career crisis? Turns out countless people are going through one right now. For some, they're starting to feel they've hit a wall, that there's no room for growth, no new opportunities, promotions pass them by, raises are few and far between.

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All right, we're back. It's time for the version history questions. We asked the same eight questions about every product to see where it lands. The first question is where does this thing belong on the time matrix? Ha is idea versus time. It belongs in one of four quadrants. Was it the right idea at the right time? Wrong idea at the wrong time.

Where does this one belong? This is the easiest one. This is just the top right. Right idea, right time. There's no Yeah, I a hundred percent agree. The only argument here is that ATT was not. ATT was not ready for sure. Uh but yeah, I think the things this phone was doing, it did it did correctly and at the right time. We have not even talked about FaceTime, which Apple promised to open source and never did.

I I'm fully shocked that Apple didn't open source a hugely successful piece of software. All right. I think this one's easy. I think you're right. I think it's right, right idea, right time.

Yeah. This phone just it it hit the way that it was supposed to hit iPhone ever. Okay, so Question number two, was this peak anything? And the the first version of this was this peak iPhone? For as much as Apple wants to pretend that it changes the design of the iPhone every so often, they haven't.

They still look exactly like this. It's just much bigger now. That's it. Yeah, they still make glass and metal sandwiches. This one also had a headphone jack, which makes it better than everyone that didn't have a headphone jack. You know, I I don't want to say it. Uh but it does it did have a headphone jack. Um

This was a design object. When you look at uh John Gruber says this a lot, when you look at the icons of phones out in the world, they look like iPhone force. Yes. That's this is what phones look like. You know, until folding phones Hit some whatever cultural moment I'll hit next. Uh this is a phone. This is what a phone is. I actually prefer the size. Like I think if phones never got big, like maybe democracy would be safer.

You know, like it's we might live in a different world. I would like that to be a crazier theory than it actually is. Uh yeah, I think this is peak fun. This is this is that moment. Wait, peak. Peak phone shape is what you're saying. Peak phone design. Peak phone everyone everyone who's no way this is peak phone. It no. Well okay, let me define f peak phone. And I'm I'm curious for Walt's perspective on this too. If you were in it at that moment

You knew it was happening. Like you could tell. Like, oh, things are changing now. People care about these phones in a way that they didn't before. And this one is beautiful and it's the one to have. And it is a it is culturally important that this phone exists. In a way that a new iPhone event does not feel like I agree. Well, what do you think about all this? Peak phone? Um I

hate to agree with Neila again, but I do. But I mean I I think we we need to explain and and I hope this is we agree on this. Peak means not necessarily the best it means a moment where Nothing that has come since has fundamentally changed the idea of the product. That's right. It's it's the spikiest spike in the chart, I think. Yeah. Is the is the question. And uh uh I just everything uh Neeli said i is right. I mean, I'll re m just to remind you. This changed the world.

i in a way that the four didn't because nothing like this existed before, but you don't see any bulbous uh phones anymore. Uh you just you know, compared to the iPhone four Which I I agree with Neil, all the phone Except the foldable ones, which as far as I'm concerned, might as well not exist uh in terms of people's

a use of them, they look like the iPhone four. Yeah. They're they're they have glas I mean, Apple certainly they has glass on both sides. The the Flap phone, the corners, the whole thing, tiny changes, but really this is this is if you looked at this today, if they brought out this out today with All the current specs, but they Design a bit. Uh and the fact that it had FaceTime and

Front camera. And a headphone jack. And the headphone. The headphone track. If Apple brought out a phone table with a headphone jack, instant. There are a bunch of iPhone Mini fans out there who are just screaming with joy at this idea. Uh and I would just tell you that the sales of the iPhone Mini may put put a damper on on that theory, Walt, but but I I I like where your head is. My wife still has an iPhone S E. That's what she liked. Fair enough.

I do feel I should say out loud once before this episode ends that the iPhone five was a better phone. I just I need to be on record having said that the iPhone five was a better phone. There's a lot of people who write the iPhone five was the ultimate iPhone because it was the one with ultimate.

made. All right, question number three. If knowing everything we know now, if you could time travel back and be the person in charge of the iPhone team around the iPhone 4 launch, is there anything you would change to make the product more successful? One I will offer you is move the antenna.

Would it would it have mattered? Which they did with the F and four S. Yeah. They did redesign the antennas. And there is some history that Johnny Ives and Steve Jobs wanted the antennas to look like this and the the wireless engineers at Apple told them this would be a problem. in the the design one over the engineers, which is a very common Apple phase. So that th I think that's the one. Okay.

Well, I would have open source FaceTime. Open source FaceTime? Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah, I could shut up. I wouldn't have open source FaceTime. Neither would Apple. Well look, if I was the head of the uh the iPhone team uh at any point in history, it would have been a disaster. So just to clear that up. Sure. But uh yeah, the one thing I would have done was listen to the engineers, if Neh is right.

uh about their objections and I wouldn't have dis no matter how beautiful it was, and I've already said I considered it part of the beauty of the thing, uh I would have I would have uh put it inside or done something different. Maybe I would have had one of the antennas as the outside bar so there wouldn't have been that seam and the other antenna inside. Whatever whatever would have spared them

This uh issue, which I agree with you turned out to be basically a blip. The only other one I could think of is w would I have tried to find a way to sell it like day and date on Verizon and have this be all one launch like we have We have this new iPhone and it is available now to everybody on, you know, Verizon, Sprint, and ATT. I don't know if that makes a difference. That's a business decision, not a an engineering or a design decision. That's true. And um

They obviously were working with Veriz Verizon had already caved on who gets to control the phone because this was only what six months. But um uh In a way it gave them another opportunity To surprise everyone and and jack up iPhone sales. Yeah, they got to upstage CES. Yeah, cool. That's a that's a victory. That's probably also I think they had some like

Timing with the ATT contract that they had to overcome. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. So question number four. Um, will the youth ever make it cool again? Could the iPhone four have a retro nostalgia moment? I do love this phone. I'm not gonna lie, like everyone in the office who has picked up this phone since we got it is immediately like phones should be like this again. Yeah. Bring this back. Um

I mean, this is one of those things where the revealed preferences of people say much more than the things they actually say. Yes. Everyone says they want this phone and then everyone has the big ass phone. Big ass phones. Yeah. Not me. There you go. What do you have, Walt? What's the daily drink? I've always I have never bought the big ass phone. I always have a standard phone. And uh I just like the feel of it better. It fits in my pockets better. Uh so I have uh

a 16 Pro right now because I no longer upgrade every year because I'm a uh poor pensioner and uh It's cause we're not paying you. I get it. Yeah. I'm using a theme here.

Question number five. Uh what feature I fear this one's going to be very easy as we all look at this phone for two seconds. What feature of this device would you lift off of it and put onto current version? The answer's the headphone, Jack. The answer's the headphones' the headphones.

Hit font jack. What's funny is there aren't all that many options because this actually originated so many things that are still in so many modern smartphones. Yeah. That like you I think the only two you could plausibly choose

are the screen size and the headphone jack. And to me the headphone jack is like the clear choice. Yeah. It's obviously a headphone jack. 100%. Okay. Yep. All right. So now now we have the three I do want to point out that I'm I have been over time extraordinarily vindicated about the headphone jack.

You have. You've been annoying about it, but you've been right. Which is the Neelaya Patel special, I would say. Uh Did you know I was right? It's nice to meet you here. Now we have the the three version history hall of fame questions. And and Walt, just so you know. We we decide at the end of every episode whether something makes it into the Virgin History Hall of Fame. And in order to get in, it has to satisfy three criteria. Criteria number one, did this product do something truly new? Yes.

It it created the phone as a a cultural object in this specific way. And FaceTime. I don't think you can you can look aside FaceTime. I think FaceTime is the more credible argument of the two. Like the the one is kind of squishy. Mm-hmm. It made FaceTime is m more plausible. But like something truly n the first iPhone did something truly new. Sure. This is mostly in that Linux. To me. Well, what do you think? Is there something truly new here for you? Two things, uh uh both of which

we've all mentioned or I've mentioned at least one of them, which is uh uh FaceTime obviously. And I devoted a big chunk of my review to that. And uh then the template idea. This is this is belongs in your Hall of Fame because this set the template. In order to be Hall of Fame worthy, this would have to be

Yeah, the uh the only one the first one and this one. I actually don't think you can make a case for any others. Really? Yep. Well, do you agree with that? If we're talking Hall of Fame, yeah. I mean I can make I can make a case that newer iPhones are better. I think they are better. But Hall of Fame, because of that template thing and because of FaceTime.

Hall of Fame. Okay. All right. Well that's criteria number one. Criteria number two was it either remarkably good or remarkably bad? I I so and this one I actually think is interesting. I think you can make a case that it is neither one. Yeah. And that actually, in fact, this thing is going to miss out on the Hall of Fame because its networking was bad. Like ATT might kill this phone from the Hall of Fame.

But it was on Verizon. Eventually. But it's still it was the iPhone 4. No, it was. You're you're right. But like but even then it it only had 3G. But you can't I'm kidding. But I think being like the HCC incredible keeps the iPhone 4 out of the home. This phone was is brutal. This phone was very good. There's no question about that. But was it Was it remarkable in that sense even at the time? Yes, I'm gonna say remarkably good. I think the design of this phone.

The idea that a tech product could be this beautiful, could connect to the lineage of other extraordinarily high design, expensive devices like Leica cameras, but be mass market. That had never existed before. That's all Steve Jobs. Like you whatever legacy he had, that's the real legacy, right? Is you're gonna care about design because I'm gonna make you and I'm gonna do it in the most mass market way possible. That's the iPhone, really.

There's not th nothing else ca c nothing else was in the ballpark for years. All right. And then uh Hall of Fame criteria number three is did it have a lasting impact? Yeah. I mean that's that's the whole episode is probably it's last impact. What I wonder in the f in the frame of impact is this was clearly the first of lots of things.

But did it did it like change the curve of anything because of its existence? Do you know what I mean? I think if Apple had put out an iPhone 4 that looked like the iPhone 3GS. No other manufacturer ever steps up its game to make aluminum and glass phones. It just simply does not happen. Right. If Apple doesn't push forward, we're gonna really care about the camera.

And they really cared about the camera. I remember Phil Schiller talking about the camera on this phone and the four S. Yeah. This is when they really started to care about the camera and by the time they got to the six is when they started doing shot on iPhone. Like this is a very compressed period of time to Apple go from oh we threw a camera on the first iPhone and it looks like a potato to we really care about this camera, right? Um Instagram launches a few months ago.

After this phone does. Yeah. Like there's just a moment in time where Apple, you know, we keep calling it the template, but it the template is defined by how much Apple Right. They care about the way this phone looks. They care about how it's built. They unfortunately care about how the antenna works to its own detriment. Uh they care about the camera, which I think is the lasting impact of the smartphone is is cameras.

I just don't think the wrestling industry does that without Apple pushing. I agree. I was surprised to see this in my review when I went back of the iPhone four. I noted that, you know, there's this and that about the photos, but The cam the the videos are way better than anyone else's. And to this day their videos are better than anyone else's, I think. And so um Yeah. Uh i it's a hall of fame. I'm not gonna lie, this feels bad.

To me. Like all of your points are right, but inducting just the iPhone four feels insane. But I have no I have no successful counter arguments. I think it was remarkably good. What I'm realizing is going forward on version history, we're gonna have to start doing many worse gadgets just so not as many things get in. We gotta stop doing bangers here on version history. Yeah. But I think we need some garbage. I think I'm I think I'm okay. I think this one gets in.

All right. In the Walter Isaacson book. The Steve Jobs biography, the authorized biography. The the title of the chapter about Intenegate is called Design versus Engineering. I didn't just pull this out of a hat. Oh it makes perfect sense. Completely. I'm a good reader of other available journalism. All right. We are done here. Thank you. Thank you, Walt, and thank you, Neilie. This has been a

Tremendous amount of fun. Thank you to everybody for watching and listening. Uh, if you want to support all of this that we're doing so that we can pay Walt for this next time, for the love of God, uh, subscribe to the Virch. Uh it's it's a good website. We're out here. We we just need to buy more iPhones. We will be back soon with much more version history. We'll see you then.

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