Apple’s Project Purple: The Origin of the iPhone

Andy McNally
3 min readMar 26, 2024
a sketchnote about Apple’s Project Purple
sketchnote by Andy McNally

Project Purple was Apple’s code name for the internal project that led to the development of the iPhone. The project was started due to a combination of factors. Steve Jobs was interested in tablet computing, and the mobile phones on the market were starting to threaten the iPod’s dominance. Mobile phones were beginning to incorporate music players. Project Purple began in 2004 with a request from CEO Steve Jobs to Tony Fadell, Scott Forstall, and Jonathan Ive.

Development

Project Purple centered around the creation of two competing phone models. One was based on the iPod nano, codenamed P1, and the other was a multitouch device, codenamed P2, which eventually became the iPhone.

The Project Players

an illustration of Steve Jobs
illustration by Andy McNally

Steve Jobs: the CEO of Apple, was the driving force behind Project Purple. — Read more about Steve Jobs in Walter Isaacson’s biography, Steve Jobs.

an illustration of Scott Forstall
illustration by Andy McNally

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Andy McNally

Freelance Illustrator, Writer, & Cartoonist. Writing and drawing about technology, pop culture, sketchnotes, creative tech, and making a living as a creative.