Most people imagine the iPhone keyboard was born from pure genius — a single spark. But in 2005 Apple had no keyboard that worked. If the team couldn’t solve typing on glass, the iPhone would be canceled. Steve Jobs paused nearly every UI effort and forced one rule: show your work — near-daily public demonstrations of prototypes.

This episode shows how transparency didn’t kill creativity — it accelerated it. And that story goes back not just to Steve Jobs… but to Galileo.

Key Takeaways

• Transparency accelerates innovation — when work is demonstrated regularly, feedback becomes fuel instead of judgment.
• Rhythm matters — Apple used near-daily demos (“The Keyboard Derby”) to make knowledge work audible.
• Constraints focus genius — the whole UI org became “keyboard engineers” for 30 days.
• Iteration beats inspiration — Ken Kocienda’s winning keyboard was his seventh try, not his first.
• Process is not the enemy of creativity — it’s the channel that turns imagination into something real.

TL;DR

Creativity doesn’t die in process — it dies in secrecy.

Resources Mentioned

• Ken Kocienda — Creative Selection (book)
• Julian Dorra — Blob Keyboard Simulator (GitHub demo)
• Ken Kocienda’s BlueSky post with early keyboard insights
• Apollo 15 — Hammer & Feather drop demonstration 
• Brian Cox - feathers and bowling ball vacuum chamber drop video 
• Early iPhone keyboard patents (2006)

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