Recodes award-winning series Land of the Giants is Back.

In the past, the show has explored the history and impact of big tech companies like Amazon,

Netflix and Google.

This season, it's Apple.

And of course, you can't tell the story of Apple without talking about the iPhone.

So here's a bit of the first episode with our friend, Peter Kafka.

January 2007, the world's biggest tech companies were off to a massive convention in Las Vegas

to schmooze and drink and show off stuff they wanted to sell.

But one giant company was not at the consumer electronics show.

Apple.

Apple's absence at CES wasn't unusual.

What was unusual was that Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, was holding his own show at the same time

400 miles away.

He set an unspecified special event at one of the convention centers in San Francisco.

Walt Mossberg was the Wall Street Journalist tech reviewer and he had more influence on

tech than any other journalist.

If you had a new computer or gadget or software you wanted the world to know about, you brought

it to Mossberg first and you prayed he liked it.

Steve Jobs had cultivated a relationship with Mossberg for years.

He called them up routinely off the record to shoot the ship.

Now Jobs wanted Mossberg at his event.

And like others, I was invited and I said to Katie Cotton, his head PR woman who called

...