IEEE Spectrum September, 2008 - 44

Palm's Pilot
Continued from page 50

"I kept telling Steve that it wasn't time
yet," he recalls. Jobs trusted Rubinstein's
instincts and, uncharacteristically, didn't
push too hard.
In February of 2001 Rubinstein went
to Japan on an annual trip to visit hard‑
ware suppliers and look at technologies
under development. It was a whirlwind-
about four days and seven companies. It
was at the end of his otherwise routine
meeting with Toshiba executives that
they showed him the tiny disk drive.
Rubinstein's mind was churning, even
as he tried not to let his expression
change. He immediately recognized the
minuscule marvel as the missing piece
of the music‑player puzzle. Almost all
of the other disk drives available then
were a comparatively clunky 2.5 inches
in diameter. The 1.8‑inch drive offered
up to 5 gigabytes, compared with 25 for
the larger units, but 5 GB was enough to
hold about 1000 songs in the MP3 for‑
mat. And the diminutive drive sucked
down roughly half the power of the
2.5‑inch drives then standard in note‑

book computers: when active, the drive
Jobs, coincidentally, was in Tokyo for
drew 1.3 watts compared with the 2.3 of the Macworld conference, so Rubinstein
its 2.5‑inch brethren; while asleep, it didn't have to wait for morning in
needed only 0.05 W compared with the California to call him with the news. He
0.10 of a typical 2.5‑inch drive. With some met Jobs at the hotel and uttered eight
smart engineering, that lower consump‑ words that would set in motion one of the
tion meant approximately 10 hours of great revolutions in consumer‑product
playing time.
history. "I said, 'Hey, I know how to do
"It clicked right away," Rubinstein this now.' He goes, 'Great, I'll write you a
recalls. "I had visited lithium‑ion bat‑ check.' That's what he always would say
tery manufacturers. I instantly knew when we kicked off a project." It meant
exactly what batter y we'd need to that Rubinstein now had authorization to
use. I'd been to display vendors, and pull together a development team and start
the capability, size, and costs of dis‑ them working full‑out on the project.
plays that were coming would make
The full‑time development team was
this extremely feasible." The prices of small, between six and eight people
small LCDs had plunged, thanks to the during much of the project. Rubinstein
demands of the cellphone industry.
brought on Tony Fadell as a consultant to
But "the key element was the drive," he help figure out the details; he later hired
insists. "Before that, we had two choices- Fadell to run the group. Jonathan Ive,
do a big clunky device or do a device that Apple's senior vice president of industrial
held a dozen songs. Neither made sense. design, made prototype after prototype.
But once I saw the 1.8‑inch drive I said, Phil Schiller, then Apple's head of prod‑
'Okay, now I know how to do it.' "
uct marketing, jumped onto the idea of
T a l k a b o ut g o o d t i m i n g . H a d the scroll wheel; he had the insight that it
Rubinstein made that routine trip to should scroll more quickly the longer it's
Japanese suppliers a month earlier, turned, an innovation that has been end‑
the drive might not have been ready lessly imitated. Jeff Robbin led a team that
to show; a little later, and a competitor worked closely with Jobs on the iconic
might have seen it first.
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Spectrum September, 2008
