I don't know how deep you want to go into the history of how the iPhone came about, but Steve Jobs literally had nothing to do with it.

He made important product calls, I guess, but he wasn't inventing much.

Hello. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us.

I'm your host, Paris Marks.

And this episode is probably the longest episode I have ever done.

But I think that you will really enjoy it because this is a fantastic conversation with

friend of the show, an returning guest, Brian Merchant.

Brian is the author of the One Device, The Secret History of the iPhone, and the forthcoming

book coming next year, Blood in the Machine about the History of Worker's Struggles Against

Automation. He's also the founder of Vicer's speculative

fiction outlet Terraform. Now, as you might be able to guess from the title of this episode and,

you know, the time that it is coming out, Brian and I are talking about Apple and in particular

the history of the iPhone and a lot of the details of that history and its development,

as well as, you know, its creation

that was hidden in how it was presented to the public,

and that continues to be hidden today in many cases,

as we think about what actually goes into making an iPhone.

I've wanted to have this conversation for a while because it has long

annoyed me that when Apple makes these big announcements about the new iPhone or the new Mac or whatever

big product it's putting out there, you'll hear about the specs, you'll hear about the new

design, you'll hear about whether, you know, the camera is

better than last year. But very rarely, if ever, does any mention of the people who actually

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