Speaking of #iPhone 4 and FaceTime, I was a newbie who just joined #Apple in 2009. At that time almost the whole apps & frameworks team were entirely in one end of IL2, 2nd floor. A few higher-level engineering managers (I think it was TP, and HL, but I forget exactly who) were wandering the hallway outside my office with an iPhone 4 prototype playing with FaceTime. I was curious enough to poke my head out, and they let me try it out. “This is great!” I said, “but the front-facing camera focal length is too long. If we put in a wider-angle lens, this would be so much better, because people are going to hold the phone at less than arm’s length.” The managers just…stopped, looked at each other, took the phone back, and walked away.
Anyway, the next iPhone 4 prototype came with a wider-angle front camera, and it shipped with it. I’m not going to take credit for that choice, but maybe I was one of the voices that made that change.
@drahardja That’s fascinating. I wish there was more “inside baseball development” stories from Apple like this. Stuff like this intrigues me to no end.
@drahardja This would never have happened if you had been working from home, and the iPhone would’ve shipped with a shitty FaceTime camera, dooming the feature and the entire product line.
I think working on secret hardware prototypes in general is hard to do from home. But if they somehow solved the problem of shipping prototype hardware, maybe more people would be playing with FaceTime from home, and the issue would have been discovered sooner?
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