A look at an original iPhone prototype | Hacker News Reader

A look at an original iPhone prototype

theverge.com

184 pointsAssossa56 comments

Seeing what looks like a full iPhone attached to it (I know it's just the screen, but the inclusion of a taped-over home button is interesting) gives me kind of a "Thinking quickly, Dave constructed an iPhone using a circuit board, some tape, and an iPhone" vibe.

That's likely a ex post facto hack, as a production iPhone's front piece was likely attached to make this prototyping board more complete.

The engineers back then certainly wouldn't have seen the iPhone-shaped screen assembly, they would either use the video out to a regular monitor (sufficient for most hardware testing and kernel development) while the developers responsible for making the touch screen work might have gotten a screen unit that wasn't iPhone-shaped.

(This particular board might have been assigned to someone who was only ever expected to use the video output ports.)

These dev boards were modular, so that engineers without a need-to-know for e.g. the screen or radio didn’t get one. But this is not a retrofit; if you needed a display or touch then this is what you got.

The video out ports were only used for the 30-pin video out, the main display never ran on them (could not run on them).

iPhoneOS kernel developers could hardly care less about the display; everything was done with the serial port and JTAG (I don’t recall whether Ethernet debug was ever supported).

There are a bunch of other errors / misconceptions in the article sadly. These boards were pretty cool & highly functional and it’s sad not to see justice done to them.

I'm not saying you're wrong—I'm just some random person on the internet. But I find it surprising that they'd even have that many pieces of iPhone shaped glass attached to working touchscreens early on in the process.

Of course people working on developing the UX would want to see and touch a contextualised screen so I suppose the configuration we see here would make sense for them.

This board’s not from “early on in the process”. Making touch work well was once of the major undertakings, and there had been various iterations of display around for literally years at this point. By the time this board was made, the display / touch was largely a done deal and they were being built in respectable volume.

Likewise the UX development started years before, some of the earliest hardware was just a handheld display & touch tethered to an old G3 PowerPC Mac (to get the performance constraints about right). The purpose here was to get representative displays into the hands of relatively large numbers of engineers.

That's how most prototype boards are. The idea being you can do develop / do bring up and see the graphics / boot etc.

I was also curious about that. In other stories I've read, I've heard it referred to as a big ugly box with a touch screen embedded on top of it, which is what I imagined most people worked on. But this just looks like a normal iPhone with a large breadboard connected.

Since the iPad display is much larger than the phone display, sitting it on the board like this wasn’t practical. There was an iPad dev board that looked a lot like this, but there were also ‘acrylics’ - chassis made from cnc’d Acrylic sheeting - that supported the screen connected to the board by a flex.

Most engineers wanted nothing to do with the display units; they were bulky and relatively fragile and desk space is always at a premium.

I always imagined that the iPad came about because some engineer had a Retina iPhone prototype on a standard 72dpi screen and figured it might work to replace a laptop.

Take the old eMac software, and bam, iPad.

(100% speculation)

I believe “iPad” was actually being developed prior to iPhone and was put on pause while multitouch and other technology was lifted from the project to support iPhone.

That's how Steve Jobs tells it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5f8bqYYwps&t=2233

The iPad was actually conceptualized before the desktop workstation was common:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook

The iPad was conceptualized as a thin touch screen no-keyboard slate since at least 1992 in Star Trek TNG [0]

[0] https://i1.wp.com/www.techdigest.tv/star-trek-tablet.jpg?res...

The iPad was also conceptualized in 1988 as "Tablet", the winning entry in the Apple Computer "Design the Computer of the Year 2000" contest.

https://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/academic/tablet-...

One of the members of the winning team was Stephen Wolfram.

How about 1960s, with 2001: A Space Odyssey.

https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/did-st...

DynaBook was long, long before STtNG.

That’s this (earlier) development system.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/03/exclusive-super-earl...

If anything a big board like this is one way to ensure it's not easy to steal.

The on-board (pun intended) documentation - "Do not connect battery without removing J49", etc - is pretty neat too. Is this something that's fairly standard in the industry?

Yes. Such notes are standard for development hardware.

Items 6.14.* on http://pcbchecklist.com gives an overview of what is typical.

It's pretty common. If you have the time and space on a board, it's a good idea to fill the silkscreen with useful or important information.

I love when the info makes it to the shipped version. My bass amp has a miniature schematic drawing etched into itself, it's been incredibly useful. Here's my favorite PCB etching though: http://i.imgur.com/28cYobo.jpg

The "M68" name is interesting, given that Apple has a long history with the M68K processor, which isn't involved here. I wonder if it's a nod to the first Mac or the Lisa.

Probably named that way to throw people off the scent if the project name got leaked

That's really interesting. Whose job is it to actually design and develop the prototype board? It seems like that team would have to know quite a bit, if not nearly everything, about the device.

Usually the design engineer that handles the production board goes through the EVT boards.

Basically the purpose of EVT to a) ensure all the components identified in the initial survey/design review actually work together b) enable software development early in the process c) iron out any showstoppers and kinks that could jeopardize the project later on.

The next few design stages usually get rid of all the super-debug stuff (such as the ethernet port on the iphone; also maybe get the form factor down) while still retaining the regular debug stuff (JTAG etc). This usually when mechanical can jump in and preliminary compliance stuff can take place (EMC etc)

Why the anonymous source? 10 year old secrets in a rapid-development technology seem like non-secrets, so who's willing to "leak" but not be identifiable at this point?

Maybe Apple has strict secrecy rules that are only partially enforced? I don't quite get it.

Apple had police raid a Gizmodo editor's home searching for a lost iPhone prototype they had obtained -

https://www.pcworld.com/article/195053/gizmodo_iphone_police...

Same company that once optimized negative publicity just by making an official guideline warning iOS developers not to talk to the press...

     "If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps."

https://web.archive.org/web/20141226094343/https://developer...

If that person is still connected to Apple they may not want to sabotage the relationship.

Apple has an extreme focus on secrecy.

Apple probably considers this board their property.

It is their property. They paid for it, and it was never sold or otherwise transferred.

Thanks for the helpful clarification. Clearly someone has this dev board or has access to it in such a way that they were able to share it. My point was simply that they might have something they shouldn't, and that fact helps explain some quirks of the article that seemed confusing to the GP.

I'm ex-Apple, BTW.

> "many of the engineers working on the original handset didn’t even know what it would eventually look like"

This is a stretch. Guaranteed that if you are working on just chips then you might be living in just your own silo.

Is it me or does it look like the top layer has reaaaaally thick copper? Look at how it differs between areas with those squares contra area without. Looks like it's very very thick. Perhaps the solder mask.

Nothing out of the ordinary for prototypes. Much easier to solder fixes to without accidentally stripping a trace and better RF properties, which will help with an oversized board like this one.

Is the checkerboard pattern on the top layer for aesthetics, or is it functional for EMI reduction.

I suspect this is to avoid warping on a large board. They probably used hatching to match the amount of copper on the top and bottom of the board.

Does it connect to my airpods though? :)

The new AirPods supposedly require "an iCloud account and macOS 10.14.4, iOS 12.2, or watchOS 5.2", so it doesn't look like it :P

What a nonsense. As if earbuds would require the cloud to function somehow. This 'I'm forcing my cloud down your throat' stuff has to stop.

It would help if you actually looked at what it is before trashing it.

Perhaps ironically the board seems to have 2 aux ports :P

Reply on news.ycombinator.com