They date from the spring of 2007, and these are the first images of the production lines of what will become a few months later, the iPhone. The very first Apple-branded phone does not yet exist, yet it is crammed by the dozen in these factories. Presented a few months earlier by Steve Jobs, it will not be marketed until early summer.
Photos from the iPhone factory, spring 2007. pic.twitter.com/MTsPaHoD66
— Bob Burrough (@bob_burrough) December 24, 2020
These photos seem to come from a Foxconn factory, one of the very first subcontractors of the apple brand, which is still a strong ally in the construction of iPhones today. On these images, it is possible to see the last stages of the manufacture of the phone. Those where it is put to the test in a battery of tests, in order to verify if it functions correctly. The third photo indeed shows an iPhone of the very first generation going through a test software to find the slightest anomaly.
13 years of iPhone and evolution
Bob Burrough, the man behind these four photos and a former Apple engineer who has stood out in the past for his speeches against the Apple brand. He had indeed described as “Wild West” the organization of the firm during the early years of the iPhone. A period when employees did not have a specific role, juggling project after project. But since the arrival of Tim Cook at the helm of Apple, the structure of the company had changed dramatically according to Burrough. La Pomme would have emphasized the hierarchy of tasks and intermediate roles, in order to better structure its organization. A method that seems to have borne fruit when we see the results of Apple, almost 14 years after the announcement of their first phone.
The iPhone, a revolution
These images take us back to a time when the iPhone was a project, 3G was in its infancy, and Apple was a brand of computers. When in January 2007, Steve Jobs presents to the world what the iPhone will be, he actually presents the future of an entire sector, which today weighs hundreds of billions of dollars. The iPhone was a turning point for Apple, but it was an even bigger change for the rest of the cell phone market. The Apple phone completely redesigned the way it was used. Its function has been completely redesigned, the iPhone was perhaps the first phone that was not only used for telephoning. The multiplication of actions possible with the iPhone will be all the more visible in 2008, with the release of the iPhone 3G, which incorporates cutting-edge technologies (for the time) such as internet navigation or GPS.
