And Then Steve Said, ‘Let There Be an iPhone’

Interesting article.

> Apple considered buying Motorola in 2003, but executives quickly concluded it would be too big an acquisition for the company then. (The two companies collaborated unsuccessfully a couple of years later.)

Apple should have bought Motorola. Google reaped a lot of benefit when they bought Motorola, took the IP, and sold the rest to Lenovo.

I can remember back in 2000 attended a recruiting event at Motorola. They were happily showing everyone their smartphone running Linux and saying it would be for sale in a couple of years. It could even do phone calls over IP at the time, and they let you play with it to try out.

I remember the failed phone collaboration with Apple. Most people at Motorola felt that Apple intentionally crippled it; a lot of features were either cut back or removed at Apple's request. And the music storage capacity was intentionally small, again at Apple's request. When the iPhone came out, there were a lot of bitter Motorola folks that felt that they got duped into teaching Apple how to build a cell phone.

Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6495835