This is just a great read, especially if you are interested in the history of the iPhone and of Apple in general. One tiny highlight:
I was in the audience on that January day [that the iPhone was launched] in early 2007 and when I walked in that morning I didn’t know what the product would be called. We called it “Purple,” which was the code name for the phone, and it was a surprise.
The fact that the team was able to keep the iPhone name a secret until the reveal is amazing to me. Certainly, that name would have been a reasonable guess, given that the iPod existed and this was a phone extension of the iPod. But it would have been speculation, not a leak, and it was known at the time that the iPhone name was owned by another company.
I remember the run-up to the debut. Pretty much everyone I was following assumed the name of the product would be “iPhone,” even during Apple’s disagreement with Cisco over use of the name.
Yeah, the only other contender was ApplePhone (wth an Apple logo) and it was about 10:1 in favour of iPhone.