Joe: The first iPhone demo, that iconic 2007 presentation by Steve Jobs, was a complete illusion. The phone itself barely worked. It could only play a small section of a song or a video, not the whole thing. It would crash if you tried to send an email and then surf the web. Lewis: Wait, really? I remember watching that. It looked flawless, like magic. Joe: It was a magic trick. The engineers had programmed a "golden path," a perfect sequence of tasks that Jobs had to follow exactly. If he deviated, the phone would likely freeze. Backstage, the team was literally drinking Scotch, taking a shot for every segment of the demo that didn't fail. Lewis: Wow. That is an unbelievable amount of pressure. I’m getting anxious just hearing about it. Where does a story like that even come from? Joe: That incredible, high-wire act is one of the many stories from Fred Vogelstein's book, Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution. Lewis: And Vogelstein is the perfect person to tell this story, right? He's a long-time Wired journalist, and what I love is that he didn't just talk to the CEOs. He went to the engineers, the 'unsung heroes,' to get the real, unvarnished story from the trenches. Joe: Exactly. He wanted to tell the story of the people who actually built these world-changing products. And that iPhone demo story perfectly captures the insane, top-down pressure of Apple's 'moon mission' to create the iPhone. But their biggest rival's origin story couldn't be more different.

Lewis: Okay, so if Apple's approach was this high-stakes, meticulously planned performance, what was happening over at Google? Were they even in the phone game at that point? Joe: They were, but in a totally different way. The book paints this amazing picture of the Android team, led by a guy named Andy Rubin. They had been working for years on their own smartphone, code-named "Sooner." But Sooner was basically a super-powered BlackBerry—it had a physical keyboard and a small screen. They thought it was the future. Lewis: I can see that. At the time, BlackBerry was king. A better BlackBerry sounds like a smart bet. Joe: It was, until January 9th, 2007. Andy Rubin was in a car on his way to a meeting in Las Vegas when the iPhone keynote started streaming. He was so stunned by what he saw—this giant, beautiful touchscreen, the fluid software—that he had his driver pull over so he could finish watching it. Lewis: Oh man. I can just imagine his face. Joe: One of his engineers, Chris DeSalvo, had an even more visceral reaction. He watched the demo and said, "As a consumer I was blown away. I wanted one immediately. But as a Google engineer, I thought, ‘We’re going to have to start over.’" Lewis: So it was a genuine 'holy crap' moment. They basically saw the iPhone and panicked? Did they just decide to copy it? Joe: It was more of a pivot born of terror and awe. They knew their Sooner phone looked like a relic overnight. They had to scrap it and go all-in on a touchscreen device, which they code-named "Dream." But this is where the philosophical difference between the companies really shines. Apple's process was secretive, obsessive, and driven by one man's singular vision. The iPhone project was nicknamed "Fight Club" internally because the first rule was you don't talk about it. Jobs would tell engineers directly, "You are fucking up my company," if things weren't perfect. It was a pressure cooker. Lewis: That sounds absolutely terrifying. What was Google's culture like in comparison? Joe: The book highlights Google's culture of embracing risk and even failure. There's a great anecdote about Sheryl Sandberg, who was a VP there at the time. She made a mistake that cost Google several million dollars. She went to Larry Page, the co-founder, expecting to be fired. Lewis: I would be updating my resume on the spot. Joe: But Page's reaction was the opposite. He told her, "I’m so glad you made this mistake because I want to run a company where we are moving too quickly and doing too much, not being too cautious and doing too little. If we don’t have any of these mistakes, we’re just not taking enough risk." Lewis: That is a world away from "You are fucking up my company." So Apple was about top-down perfection, and Google was about bottom-up experimentation, even if it was messy. Joe: Precisely. And that DNA is baked into the products. The iPhone was a perfect, polished object from day one, a singular vision. Android was a reaction, a scramble, a platform designed to be flexible and adaptable, even if the first version was a bit clunky. It was a moon mission versus a brilliant, frantic pivot.

Lewis: Okay, so Google wasn't just copying, they were adapting. But they were also supposed to be Apple's ally, right? I remember Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, was on Apple's board of directors. How did that relationship explode so spectacularly? Joe: That’s the Shakespearean tragedy at the heart of this book. In the mid-2000s, Apple and Google were buddies. They had a common enemy: Microsoft. Microsoft dominated desktop software, and both Apple and Google saw them as the big, evil empire. Schmidt's presence on Apple's board was a symbol of their united front. They were partners. Google even had a team of engineers working closely with Apple to build the original YouTube and Maps apps for the very first iPhone. Lewis: So they were literally helping build the iPhone. That makes the Android situation even more complicated. Joe: Infinitely more. According to Vogelstein's reporting, Steve Jobs knew about Android, but he didn't see it as a threat at first. He thought it was just another clunky phone OS. But then, as Android started to look more and more like the iPhone—with a touchscreen, with similar icons, with features like pinch-to-zoom—Jobs became incandescent with rage. Lewis: I can imagine. He was famously protective of his creations. Joe: It went beyond protective. He saw it as a profound personal betrayal. He had mentored Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the Google founders. He considered Eric Schmidt a friend. And in his eyes, these people he trusted had sat in his boardroom, learned his secrets, and then used them to build a cheap knock-off of his masterpiece. He told his executive team, "These guys are lying to me... This Don’t Be Evil stuff is bullshit." Lewis: But wait a minute. Was it really betrayal, or was it just competition? Jobs was famous for his 'reality distortion field.' Was he just being paranoid? Apple didn't invent the touchscreen. Joe: That's the billion-dollar question, and it’s what the whole legal war was about. From Google's perspective, they were just doing what they had to do. They saw the future was mobile, and they couldn't risk having their core business—search and advertising—locked out by a gatekeeper like Apple or Microsoft. Creating an open platform that any manufacturer could use was a defensive strategy to ensure the mobile web remained open. Lewis: That makes a lot of sense from their point of view. They were protecting their future. Joe: But Jobs didn't see it that way. The book describes a confrontational meeting where Jobs summoned Google's top brass to Apple's headquarters. He was furious, accusing them of wholesale theft. He famously told his biographer, Walter Isaacson, that he was willing to spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank and his last dying breath to "destroy Android." He said, "I’m going to go to thermonuclear war on this." Lewis: Thermonuclear war. That is not standard corporate-speak. That's personal. Joe: Deeply personal. And it set the tone for everything that followed. The lawsuits, the public attacks, the bitter rivalry. The alliance was dead, and the dogfight had begun. Eric Schmidt was eventually forced to resign from Apple's board. The friendship was shattered.

Joe: And that thermonuclear declaration set the stage for the ultimate conflict. It wasn't just about one phone versus another anymore. It became a war of philosophies, a platform war. Lewis: Right, and this is where we get to the core difference in their strategies. You have Apple's approach on one side and Google's on the other. How would you describe them? Joe: I think the best analogy is building a city. Apple decided to build a pristine, beautiful, perfectly managed city-state. Let's call it the "Walled Garden." Everything inside is designed by Apple, controlled by Apple, and works seamlessly together—the hardware, the software, the App Store. It's safe, it's elegant, and it's expensive to live there. You pay a premium for the perfection. Lewis: That’s a great analogy. It’s a luxury experience, but you have to play by the ruler's rules. So what was Google’s approach? Joe: Google's approach was to create a blueprint for a city and give it away for free to anyone who wanted to build. Let's call it the "Open Prairie." They told companies like Samsung, HTC, and Motorola, "Here's the Android operating system. Take it, use it, change it, build whatever kind of city you want." Lewis: So instead of one perfect city, you get a thousand different towns. Some are probably amazing, and some are probably messy and chaotic. Joe: Exactly. And that's the trade-off. Android phones came in all shapes, sizes, and price points. This strategy allowed them to achieve massive scale. The book tells the story of the Motorola Droid, which was launched with Verizon. It was marketed as the anti-iPhone. It was clunky, it was aggressive, and it had a huge marketing campaign behind it that basically screamed, "This is not Apple's pretty little toy." And it sold millions. It was the first time Android really landed a punch. Lewis: Because it gave consumers a choice. If you didn't want to be in Apple's walled garden, or if you couldn't afford the price of admission, there was now a viable alternative. Joe: A huge, sprawling, and sometimes fragmented alternative. That was the downside of the open prairie. Different versions of Android, different manufacturer skins, a less consistent user experience. But the sheer volume was undeniable. Google's goal wasn't to make money selling phones; it was to get its search engine and services in front of as many eyeballs as possible. Lewis: So this brings us to the big question, and I know the book was published in 2013, so it's a snapshot in time, but based on this setup... who won the war? Joe: That's the fascinating part. There's no simple answer, because they were playing two different games. By the time the book was written, Android had already surpassed the iPhone in global market share. They won the numbers game, hands down. They put a smartphone in billions of people's hands. Lewis: But Apple makes almost all the profit in the smartphone industry. Joe: Exactly. Apple won the money game. Their walled garden is incredibly lucrative. So, in a way, both strategies were wildly successful on their own terms. Google ensured the internet remained open and that they would dominate mobile search. Apple created the most profitable product in human history. The dogfight forced both of them to be better, faster, and more innovative than they would have been alone.

Lewis: So when you boil it all down, this 'dogfight' wasn't just about cool gadgets or corporate profits. What's the real, lasting legacy here? Joe: The legacy is that this brutal, personal, and philosophical war between two companies fundamentally rewired society. It wasn't just about phones; it was about who controls the portal to our digital lives. The tension between Apple's beautiful, locked-down cage and Google's chaotic, open frontier forced a level of innovation and accessibility that neither could have achieved alone. The revolution wasn't just the iPhone; it was the war itself that accelerated everything. Lewis: That's a powerful way to put it. It makes you look at the phone in your hand completely differently. It's not just a device; it's a relic of that war, a physical artifact of their conflicting ideas about the future. Joe: And every app you use, every notification you get, is a consequence of that battle. The book really makes you appreciate that the digital world we inhabit wasn't inevitable. It was forged in the fire of this very specific, very personal conflict. Lewis: It really makes me wonder, which side are you on? The walled garden or the open prairie? The perfect, controlled experience or the messy, open-ended freedom? Joe: That's the question, isn't it? And it’s one we all answer every time we choose a device. We'd love to hear what you think. Drop us a line on our socials and let us know your take. Are you Team Apple or Team Android, and why? Lewis: This is Aibrary, signing off.