There's a pretty good analysis of Apple's miraculous ability to keep the iPhone secretright up until its release by Peter Lewis from Fortune. How did Apple do it? Keeping secrets from spouses and children, threats of dismissal and prosecution and, my favorite, showing fake prototypes to employees and, yes, even strategic partners.
Cingular worked with Apple software developer on breakthrough features like visual voicemail - the ability to see a list of voicemail messages in a list and choose to listen to them in any order, instead of sequentially, as most carriers require today - while Apple focused on what it does best, the close integration of elegant hardware design with powerful but simple-to-use software. Even so, Apple didn't show Cingular the final iPhone prototype until just weeks before this week's debut. In some cases, Apple crafted bogus handset prototypes to show not just to Cingular executives, but also to Apple's own workers.
That's the only possible way to keep a secret in business. Don't tell many people about it in the first place, threaten those who know, lie to those you don't trust. That's how you build hype and get your surprise.
How Apple Kept its iPhone Secrets [Fortune]
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