Jony Ive will be on BBC Radio 4’s ‘Desert Island Discs’ today, Sunday 23 February 2025. Press reports quote him saying that he feels responsible for the ‘not so positive consequences’ of the iPhone, but that he is still proud of his work.
Speaking to Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Sir Jony said: “I celebrate and am encouraged by the very positive contribution (of the iPhone), the empowerment, the liberty that is provided to so many people in so many ways.
“Just because the not so positive consequences, I mean they weren’t intended, but that doesn’t matter relative to how I feel responsible, and that weighs, and is a contributor to decisions that I have made since, and decisions that I’m making in the future.”
Listen on the BBC Sounds web page or app from 10.00 London time, and the programme will be archived there to listen again for the next 28 days. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00289vf
Apart from hearing what he has to say about his work and about technology, it will also be interesting to hear which selection of records he would chose to have if he were marooned on a desert island.
The multitouch-only UI was the big thing that made the iPhone stand out from Blackberry and Windows Mobile. Palm was already on the decline. Android was intended to lean heavily on physical controls at the time, but was well on the way to release.
Several companies were already working on multitouch UIs, including Microsoft, Samsung, Mitsubishi, and startups like JazzMutant and Fingerworks; Apple bought Fingerworks. If Apple hadn’t, Microsoft probably would have been the first to add it to a phone OS, perhaps with Samsung as a hardware partner.
Other factors that contributed to the smartphone as we know it today include good enough cameras, 3G (enough bandwidth for the web), 4G (enough bandwidth for video), and falling prices on all of it.
A multitouch phone with native third-party apps, a decent browser, good camera, and fast networking was absolutely on the horizon by 2007. The iPhone certainly accelerated things, but there’s a reason Apple rushed to demo barely functional prototypes and released it without 3G.