Over the past few weeks, former Apple executives that originally led the team behind the iPhone's creation have been reminiscing about the time before the smartphone's debut, which will see its tenth birthday tomorrow, June 29. The latest interview has been posted by Wired, with "father of the iPod" Tony Fadell discussing the multiple prototypes of the original iPhone, Apple's attempt to create a touchscreen MacBook, the poorly received collaboration between Apple and Motorola in the Rokr, and more. 

Addressing the "many different origin stories for the iPhone," Fadell pointed out that such stories were the result of Apple's multiple running projects and prototypes that it had for the iPhone. These included four big brands: "a large screen iPod" with a touch interface, an "iPod phone" that was about the size of an iPod mini and used a click wheel interface, the Motorola Rokr, and even an ongoing attempt to get a touchscreen onto a MacBook Pro to further prove the feasibility of the technology that would eventually end up in the iPhone, and never in a MacBook. 

At the time before the launch of the iPhone, the iPod was Apple's most popular product, and Fadell remembered the company's yearly pressure to continue to grow the brand and entice customers "every holiday." Eventually, Apple's collaboration with Motorola was catalyzed by the company's concern over its users asking themselves, "Which one am I going to take, my iPod or my cell phone?" Apple didn't want to lose that argument, so it introduced the first iTunes support in a cell phone in 2005 with the Rokr, which Fadell said "was not deliberately made poor." 

Limitations of the Rokr included a firmware restriction of 100 songs to be loaded at any one time on the cell phone, as well as a slow music transfer process from a computer in comparison to devices at the time specifically dedicated to music playback. Motorolaeventually ditched iTunes in the Rokr line as Apple continued releasing iPods like the 2005 iPod nano and its ability to hold up to 1,000 songs, which Motorola saw as undercutting Rokr. Of course, rumors were also ramping up surrounding Apple's work on a phone of its own.

Fadell said that it changed his life, and "how my kids are growing up compared to how I and my wife grew up," but he hopes iPhone users remember to unplug every now and then: "...it requires all of us to make the proper changes in our lives to make sure we don't lose the analogue portion of our life and we don't just stay digital and mobile all the time."

Source: macrumors