Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
It's January 2007. The world's biggest tech companies are heading to a massive convention in Las Vegas. They're going to schmooze and drink and show off stuff they want to sell. But there's one giant company that's not at the Consumer Electronics Show, Apple. And Apple decides that while CES is going on in Vegas, it's going to throw its own event in San Francisco.
Apple's head of PR starts inviting journalists to a mysterious unveiling. What's it about? She said, I can't tell you, but it's big. It's an important one. Walt Mossberg is the most influential journalist in tech. He tells Apple, nope, he's going to CES instead. Then he gets another call. This time, it's from Steve Jobs. The next thing I know, I get a call from him. And he says to me, Walt, you have to be there.
I said, "I don't have to be there. There are other companies other than Apple." And he said, "I understand that, but you will kill yourself if you're not at this." That's a hard sell from one of the world's best salesmen, and it works. Mossberg leaves Las Vegas and he heads to San Francisco, where Jobs announces he's here to introduce three revolutionary products. The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls.
The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough internet communications device. I mean, the way that he started teasing you into thinking it might be multiple devices. Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device, and we are calling it iPhone. The iPhone changes phones forever.
And it completely reshapes Apple, making it the most valuable company in the world today. But it's even bigger than that. The iPhone changes us. I'm Peter Kofkin. I'm back hosting Land of the Giants, a podcast that dives deep into the biggest tech companies in the world.
This season, we're talking about the company that changed what a computer is and then changed what a phone is. This is a story about a company that made world-changing products and remade itself along the way. That's what Apple offered was a sense of real and deep connection between you and the product.
The iPhone is probably the most successful product in history. You don't get Steve Jobs' passion and perfectionism without this obsessiveness. Tim Cook does not get the credit he deserves for saving Apple, turning it into a modern, you know, 21st century, you know, manufacturing behemoth. All that stuff came, I think, from Tim Cook.
We're going to look closely at the story behind those products, how they're made, who makes them, and the ramifications of Apple's ever-growing power. The darkest side of the iPhone is how it's made. On the other side of the world, it's pretty brazen levels of exploitative labor that are churning these things out. They're a multiple trillion dollars company. Their size and their success creates responsibilities for them, and they're not behaving in a responsible manner.
When part of your brand is that you're better than everybody else, that you're good for the world, you are going to be held responsible. Land of the Giants, the Apple revolution. Recode and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Check it out. Our season begins on Wednesdays, September 22nd. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. Spotify, Audible, and yeah, even Apple Podcasts.