Development of iPhone OS 1.0 and the first generation of iPhone hardware was a combined effort. Only employees from within Apple were allowed to be a part of the iPhone development team. It was a completely secret project and at the time when the team was selected, even they weren't told what they were going to be working on. There were two teams inside Apple that worked on creating the iPhone: one worked on converting the iPod into a phone and the other worked on compressing the Mac OS X operating system to make it work on smaller devices like phones.[1] A team led by Jon Rubinstein worked on developing a lightweight Linux-based version, commonly referred to as Acorn, while another team led by Scott Forstall worked on developing a more compressed and streamlined version of Mac OS X, codenamed purple, to run on the ARM chipset. Tony Fadell, who then led the iPhone team said "It was a competing set of ideas, not teams, and we were all working on it". There were 16 to 17 different concepts. Many people on the team were still hung up on the idea that everyone would want to type on a hardware keyboard, not glass. The idea of introducing a complete touch screen was very novel to everyone.[1] Many user interfaces were prototyped, including the multi-touch click-wheel. Although many thought it was a waste of time, Apple CEO Steve Jobs insisted on prototyping all concepts/ideas before the Mac OS X-based version of the operating system was selected.
The iPhone OS 1.1.3 update cost $19.95 for iPod Touch users.[6]
Apps
iPhone OS 1 did not have any App Store or a Software Development Kit (SDK) for third-party developers to create native applications. Instead, Apple directed developers to create web apps which could be accessed from Safari.[7]