Phil Schiller on iPhone’s launch, how it changed Apple, and why it will keep going for 50 years

Backchannel:

Apple is notorious for not looking back. When an anniversary of a big product approaches, the company routinely bounces requests to reminisce. (“I don’t think about that,” was Jobs’s response to me, on the 25th anniversary of Macintosh in 2008). In this case, Apple made an exception: last week I sat down with its senior vp of world wide marketing, Phil Schiller, who joined the company’s leadership team in April 1997, coincident with Steve Jobs’s return. Schiller had been deeply involved in the iPhone’s development and launch.

There are a lot of articles you can read today about the launch of the iPhone ten years ago but very few of them will be with one of the principals involved.