Apple's iPhone Almost Had A Keyboard, Author Claims -- Don't Believe It

Brian Merchant’s new book, “The One Device: the Secret History of the iPhone”, excerpted by The Verge, claims that Apple exec Phil Schiller, nailed his colors to the idea of a BlackBerry-like keyboard on the iPhone and wouldn’t give up on the idea until he was given an ultimatum by Steve Jobs.

First of all, there’s nothing wrong with thinking a QWERTY is the way to go when you’re dreaming up a phone. Before the iPhone arrived, everyone thought it was the best way of entering text.

And if you have ever met one of the teens who learnt to touch type on their BlackBerry Bold under the desk at school, you’ll know it’s a successful way to go.

Even the latest BlackBerry, the KEYone, has a keyboard on it, and highly effective it is, too. It’s really only the joy of 20-20 hindsight that tells us there were other ways to go.

But 12 years ago, Apple was re-inventing the phone and had an intention to create something that worked as an effective internet surfing device as well as a phone and music player. Since some prototypes were phones that used the iPod clickwheel as the interface (who did they think they were: Nokia?) a keyboard must have seemed a more rational alternative.

Merchant’s book claims that another Apple exec, Tony Fadell, reported Schiller’s championing of the QWERTY, saying he repeatedly demanded a “hard keyboard”. Well, there’s no harder keyboard than the glass one smartphones routinely have, so in that sense he got his way!

But the suggestion is that he accused others of making a big mistake in not choosing the keyboard and that it took Jobs to chew him out before he let go of the idea, or “caved” as Fadell is reported to have said.

I’m sure that a keyboard was discussed. After all, Apple is a details company, and every avenue would have been exhausted.

Except that since the publication of the excerpt both Schiller and now Fadell himself have claimed the story is not true or something they don’t recognise. Fadell subsequently left Apple to set up Nest, now owned by Google. So he is under no obligation to stick to the official Apple line. Merchant is standing by his story, and there may be further developments to come.

I also don’t believe the keyboard story because the iPhone was derived from a then-unreleased large-screen tablet project, which later became the iPad. This had been in development and then put on hold before the iPhone arrived, according to the authorized biography of Steve Jobs by Water Isaacson.

Cladding an iPad with a QWERTY would have been something to see, and if the iPad is your muse, then a smaller keyboard is probably also unlikely – and if it had been considered would have been ditched as soon as the highly intuitive interface that is iOS became real.

The versatility of a touchscreen, where it could show a number pad one minute, a virtual keyboard or a web page the next, and a video game the moment after, was such a big part of the iPhone, it’s hard to imagine a keyboard got extended consideration.

Also in the extract is a quote from another executive, Brett Bilbrey, citing that Schiller “is not a technology guy” and that he “looked at technology like middle America does, like Grandma and Grandpa did.”

I find this surprising. I’ve interviewed Schiller several times and, oh boy, does he know his stuff? Don’t be misled by his job title, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing. I’ve met people who think that means he’s about the sizzle, not the bacon.

But Schiller knows Apple products – all of them, from the iPod to iPad, MacBook to iPhone – in forensic detail. He has talked me at considerable length through elements from the brilliance of the hinge on the latest MacBook Pro to why he didn’t care for the SD card slot.

Maybe the little virtual keyboard was a bit cramped at first, even with the joys of autocorrect. Maybe these limitations have led us to the arrival of text input by dictation (my favourite), word prediction, keyboard emoji and Apple opening its keyboard up to third-party app developers.

This fall, iOS 11 will provide the iPad with a new onscreen keyboard with further sophistications.

To my mind, even without Schiller’s denial, it seems utterly unlikely a senior executive would have stuck his neck out so far about a keyboard.

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