
And Then Steve Said, ‘Let There Be an iPhone’ - t4h4
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/and-then-steve-said-let-there-be-an-iphone.html
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OldHand2018
Interesting article.

> Apple considered buying Motorola in 2003, but executives quickly concluded
> it would be too big an acquisition for the company then. (The two companies
> collaborated unsuccessfully a couple of years later.)

Apple should have bought Motorola. Google reaped a lot of benefit when they
bought Motorola, took the IP, and sold the rest to Lenovo.

I can remember back in 2000 attended a recruiting event at Motorola. They were
happily showing everyone their smartphone running Linux and saying it would be
for sale in a couple of years. It could even do phone calls over IP at the
time, and they let you play with it to try out.

I remember the failed phone collaboration with Apple. Most people at Motorola
felt that Apple intentionally crippled it; a lot of features were either cut
back or removed at Apple's request. And the music storage capacity was
intentionally small, again at Apple's request. When the iPhone came out, there
were a lot of bitter Motorola folks that felt that they got duped into
teaching Apple how to build a cell phone.

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kuharich
Past comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6495835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6495835)

