• Steve Jobs faked full signal strength and swapped devices during the first iPhone demo due to fragile prototypes and bug-riddled software.
• Engineers got drunk during the presentation to calm their nerves.
• Despite the challenges, Jobs successfully completed the 90-minute demonstration without any noticeable issues.
Every tech demo ever is fake, with the possible exception of the original Cybertruck demo, but I suspect even that one just wasn’t faked very well.
I think it is normal since the software wasnt ready for production yet; at work we also have forks and forks of forks just to demo new features for people. At the end he did deliver a working product unlike many game devs these days.
Still more honest than some game trailers. 😂
“You’ll cum within 40 seconds by using this iPhone.”
This is how all demos used to be. If the author/publisher of the ai prompt wasnt born less than 20 years ago they would know this
I have a hard time even figuring out what the issue here is? it’d be one thing if the first iPhone shipped and was riddled with bugs and promised/demoed features weren’t there, but that wasn’t the case. Launched more or less rock solid, and iPhoneOS 1.0 (as it was called then) was far from the buggiest wide release.
Okay, how are we all seeing some moral downfall of Steve Jobs here? I mean… Perhaps we should just see what’s shown at such events realistically. I mean, who wouldn’t show their product from the best side possible? So they faked some reception. Of course they want younto see the “optimal case”, right? Same goes for swapping Devices in case of some failure. When they show their device, they want to show what it will be like, so they will not let you see a ton of bugs that are about to be fixed for the release anyway.
Besides: they cannot deceptively, promise you fake stuff and people will be lead into erroneous decisions by them. Quite the opposite. Think about it: anyone who actually watches those presentations is not your standard customer, right? They’ll be invested or knowledgeable anyway. So if they promise you utter bullshit, people will notice your lies immediately. Tests will chide you for it, people will distrust you, sales will go down. So don’t assume that any beautification of the product at such presentations will lead poor, uninformed customers to buy the thing. Quite the opposite. They will more likely not hear too much about the presentation until the “they lied!” Cries start.
no downfall for sj, pretty standard behavior from him. it was absolutely normal for him to deceive people. as for all billionaires. how do you think they make those riches?
Considering I was present at several Microsoft and other vendor events where they laughed their way through blue screens and other crashes, I’m perfectly OK saying Apple did something bad.
People laughed their assess off at Bill Gates’s epic failed demo of usb on windows 95. Live on stage he plugged in a peripheral and the machine blue screened. No way in hell would Jobs have taken that risk.
Calling the stage units prototypes is being nice. The reality was that at that point the iPhone had barely gotten to a proof of concept stage. Months before this event, the developers were still using a giant desktop tower to simulate the phone’s hardware.
That the photos of the phone were real and not concept art, that the stage units weren’t just unusable rubber dummies was a magic trick itself.
When the developers revealed years later that the iPhone presentation (just the presentation, not even the actual launch) was a make or break moment for the company, they absolutely were not kidding.
And then they went from “should not even be working” test units to fully functional production units in six months!
Whatever your opinion of Jobs or Apple, credit where credit is due.
To the engineers.
You got to say he was a master bullshitter, but he had some miracle workers engineers that made it happen.
In my career, I’ve learnt the hard way that every crowning achievement starts with a bullshitter being cursed by a bunch of engineers - the very same engineers who years later laud the bullshitter as the person with the tenacity to drive them to achieve greatness.
so it was like every demo ever? k
I didn’t like him either but not for such shenanigans. Any entrepreneur with half a brain would do the same in this situation and then nevertheless try to deliver a sound product after the presentation.
This is old news, and perfectly normal for stage work.
Hey… at least the ruse worked…
That was on him for going out the script. He could have made a cult like Apple.
Instead he did whatever the hell this is
Somehow it still has a cult like Apple
Well that’s where I’ve been going wrong in my career. I have worked for 2 startup companies, who faked product demos, in software.
I’d come from corporate background, where it was all fairly standard off the shelf software we sold and implemented. Not above the odd white lie, but the products could do what they claimed.
In the startups, the first occasion I did a presentation on a laptop. I was new to the company, had a couple of days training. The demo went great, the client loved it. Since I would also be managing the systems integration, I asked the devs how exactly x talked to y - and they said it didn’t yet, I’d just shown a simulation. Looking back I was naive, but I quit at the end of the week . I had no idea it was not uncommon.
I think people outside tech have no idea how common place this is.
And look where he is now. Dead. Lesson learned.
That’s where all of us are headed. What’s the lesson?
A fruitarian diet won’t help you against pancreatic cancer.
Or, in other words, you can’t fight P.C. with apples.
So basically that scammer woman that wanted to be Steve jobs did a better job at it that we had been led to believe?
