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A review by swetzel9
The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone by Brian Merchant
4.0
This is a great overall look at what goes into making your iPhone, and really any high tech consumer device that gets made today. The author goes as far as visiting the mines where the rare earth elements that go into the phone are mined. You're left with being both amazed at everything that goes into your miracle-device-phone and kind of wondering if its worth it.
The other aspect of this book is how exactly the iPhone was conceived and built by Apple from 2005-2007. The author does a good job of cutting through the mythos of Steve Jobs as singular visionary and showing how the team that put it together came together and worked. He also traces the core technologies (multi-touch screens, wireless internet, tiny cameras, etc) that existed individually but came together so elegantly for the first time in the iPhone. If you're a fan of Apple or technology in general some of this won't be new (Turns out Steve Jobs was kind of a dick? Who knew?) but it was interesting to have it laid out so you could see the interlocking parts across base technologies, design and integration, and manufacturing.
The other aspect of this book is how exactly the iPhone was conceived and built by Apple from 2005-2007. The author does a good job of cutting through the mythos of Steve Jobs as singular visionary and showing how the team that put it together came together and worked. He also traces the core technologies (multi-touch screens, wireless internet, tiny cameras, etc) that existed individually but came together so elegantly for the first time in the iPhone. If you're a fan of Apple or technology in general some of this won't be new (Turns out Steve Jobs was kind of a dick? Who knew?) but it was interesting to have it laid out so you could see the interlocking parts across base technologies, design and integration, and manufacturing.