Recently leaked video of a prototype of the very first iPhone shows that it was a VERY good decision for the company keep on tweaking Apple’s first phone until they got it right.
When it was released back in 2007, the iPhone was pretty revolutionary, as Steve Jobs explained when he presented it for the very first time in the video above.
But it almost wasn’t. If the folks at Apple had gone with the phone shown in some recently released video of a prototype we all might still be using Blackberries.
New footage shared recently by Apple expert Sonny Dickson shows that the phone’s interface was almost going to be similar to the early iPods and utilize a click-wheel.
Instead of the modern touch-driven interface we now call iOS, it featured an operating system dubbed “Acorn OS” (this was an internal code name, and it unclear if it would have kept that name if it had been released), which is derived from the acorn shown on boot. It presents an on-screen click wheel, which took up the bottom portion of the screen, and on the other half of the screen, a UI identical to the one found on the beloved iPod, with options such as “Dial”, “SMS”, “Music”, “Contacts” and “Recents”, however lacking a browser option. The interface is interacted with in the same way an iPod would be operated.
Not much else is known about the device, apart from the fact that it differs heavily from the iPhone we know today, and that very few units running “Acorn OS” exist, with most of them likely being destroyed by Apple, a company in which there is a specific job role in relation to the destruction of prototypes.
And before you say, “How do we know this is real?” Dickson explains…
While many could attempt to doubt the authenticity of such a device, there is clear proof its existence found in one of Apple’s patents, International Application No:PCT/US2006/008349. Filed in 2006, after the iPod, and before the iPhone, the drawings referenced in the patent, show a “multi touch device”, which features a click wheel…
Check it out in the video below and be thankful that the folks over at Apple didn’t stop working on the first iPhone at this point in the process.
H/T FHM