Apple engineer briefly discusses early iPhone work, hardware development security
Ex-Apple engineer Terry Lambert responsible for a large portion of the OS X kernel took to Quora to answer a question about the genesis of the iPhone, and surrounding secrecy.
In the Quora post asking about the original iPhone, Lambert claims that he wrote 6% of the MacOS Kernel as measured by lines of code, or about 100,000 lines a year, much of which was repurposed for the iOS kernel.
Calling the original effort "Project Purple," Lambert said that he was brought in "late in the game" and mostly for debugging purposes. The engineer discussed not even seeing the product he was working on initially.
"I got taken into areas where there were black cloths everywhere," said Lambert. "I only got to see the machine doing the remote debugging, not the target -- but it was obviously an ARM based system."
Lambert confirmed the suspicion that Apple uses multiple names for the same project, probably as an effort to suss out leakers.
"Another thing that Apple does is they give different code names to different groups," recalled Lambert. "In other words you may be working on the same project as someone else, and not actually know it. Or be allowed to discuss it."
Apple CEO Steve Jobs famously had tiers of access to the building that the iPhone was being developed in. In a form of compartmentalized security, engineers working on the least secret aspects of the program were limited to just that aspect, with workers involved on the core of the hardware, including the material design, had many tiers of security to pass thorough.
"You may have access to the regular lab, but not the 'secret lab,'" said Lambert. "You didn't really get to see the form factor, because when you are doing the initial work, it's all prototypes on plexiglass."
Lambert worked for IBM for several years in the '90s before joining Apple in 2003. The coder left Apple in Oct. 2010 to spend about two years at Google.
In the Quora post asking about the original iPhone, Lambert claims that he wrote 6% of the MacOS Kernel as measured by lines of code, or about 100,000 lines a year, much of which was repurposed for the iOS kernel.
Calling the original effort "Project Purple," Lambert said that he was brought in "late in the game" and mostly for debugging purposes. The engineer discussed not even seeing the product he was working on initially.
"I got taken into areas where there were black cloths everywhere," said Lambert. "I only got to see the machine doing the remote debugging, not the target -- but it was obviously an ARM based system."
Lambert confirmed the suspicion that Apple uses multiple names for the same project, probably as an effort to suss out leakers.
"Another thing that Apple does is they give different code names to different groups," recalled Lambert. "In other words you may be working on the same project as someone else, and not actually know it. Or be allowed to discuss it."
Apple CEO Steve Jobs famously had tiers of access to the building that the iPhone was being developed in. In a form of compartmentalized security, engineers working on the least secret aspects of the program were limited to just that aspect, with workers involved on the core of the hardware, including the material design, had many tiers of security to pass thorough.
"You may have access to the regular lab, but not the 'secret lab,'" said Lambert. "You didn't really get to see the form factor, because when you are doing the initial work, it's all prototypes on plexiglass."
Lambert worked for IBM for several years in the '90s before joining Apple in 2003. The coder left Apple in Oct. 2010 to spend about two years at Google.
Comments
Anyway regarding the veil of secrecy and the efforts put into sealing leaks did anyone note that another big tech is being sued over similar efforts to keep product leaks to a minimum? According to the complaint and California law and labor codes much of the secrecy that's expected of employees is illegal.
cali said:
OEM's definitely and without question mimicked the iPhone. But Schmidt stole iPhone secrets and took them back to Google so they could copy it? Obviously untrue if Google was surprised when they saw it. Common sense.
1) This was NOT about him or anything he had done. It was about the product and what it would do for US! Total humility.
But more relevant to today:
2) It ported OSX (MacOS) to the IPhone
3) It put "Desktop Class" power on the IPhone.
So obviously Steve Jobs saw the connection between what would become MacOS and IOS -- that they were just different versions of the same thing.
So, Why does today's Apple insist that they will forever remain separate and different? That they will never be merged -- even though IOS started as a variation of MacOS?
Have they lost the vision and common sense that Jobs nutured?
p.s. Watch the video starting at the 29 minute mark where Jobs equates the mouse and touch as just different UI's -- variations on a theme. Then he introduces that OSX was ported to the IPhone and provides it with "Desktop Class" applications.
Forking branches of code from one source doesnt suddenly mandate their implementations and UI be identical. The kernel is the power underneath, but the UI is widely dependent on the interface and form factor. Example -- watchOS is derived from iOS which is derived from OS X. Should the watchOS UI look like OS X with a desktop, folders metaphor, dock, etc? No, that would be absurd, the screen is way too small. For these same reason iOS devices needn't look like OS X devices. UI is dependent on form factor and use cases, not what's under the hood.
If an engineer working on the code didn't even see the iPhone or have access to many R&D areas, then I doubt Schmidt (or other board members) did. However, it's ridiculous to think Schmidt didn't know ANYTHING about the iPhone. Jobs reaction to Google and Android pretty much sums things up - he felt betrayed by Schmidt, Brin and Page.
Google acting "surprised" doesn't mean a damn thing and it's certainly not common sense. It's what people do when they know inside information about a product, but aren't allowed to talk about it. You pretend that it's something new you haven't seen before. Did you also forget that Google Maps was on the original iPhone and demonstrated at the keynote? Or that Eric Schmidt was invited on stage by Jobs?
Schmidt didn't steal everything from the iPhone, but to pretend he didn't have a good idea about the iPhone is asinine.
Let's remember that they didn't put macOS onto the iPhone or iPad. They also didn't put iOS on the Watch. They took core elements and then created and entirely new OS for that HW and UI. It should be clear that a smartphone OS will NEVER be the same OS as on a 27" iMac.
Regardless, my point was that George's suggestion that Jobs had a vision of merging full-fledged OS X and touch devices is bunk. The same people who sat next to him then say the same thing today -- a touch-based OS on a vertical screen that is designed for mice pointers is not pleasant to use.