“Steve just walks out casually, [hides] the phone behind his back, signs the package, and the FedEx dude marches off”

Feb 9, 2015 12:26 GMT  ·  By
Too close: Jobs was actually one of the first people to risk leaking the iPhone's existence to the world
   Too close: Jobs was actually one of the first people to risk leaking the iPhone's existence to the world

Steve Jobs is the last person you’d think would have been so careless as to risk exposing the original iPhone before unveiling it at Macworld. As it turns out, he was really close to doing that at some point.

The story about Jobs almost leaking the iPhone to a FedEx employee is not exactly fresh, but it hasn’t been reported too often either. Many readers will probably hear it for the first time today.

Walking up to delivery guy with iPhone in his hand

As the story goes, Jobs was at his home in Palo Alto, California, waiting for some engineers to arrive so they could debug the iPhone’s WiFi. The phone’s wireless functions were still unreliable, and Macworld - the event where Jobs was to unveil the phone - was just around the corner.

The full story, as told by a former Apple staffer who was at Jobs’ house when the incident almost occurred, can be found below. Just hit that nice rectangular button with the bold text on it. But here’s the gist of it for everyone too lazy to read:

“Up walks the happiest FedEx guy you have ever seen, coming up to the door. It's not Steve's normal guy, which is why he was surprised. So Steve goes out to meet him because he has to sign for this package, but he's got the iPhone in one of his hands.”

As reported by Business Insider, all the FedEx staffer had to do was tilt his dead a little and he would have caught a glimpse of the device Jobs was hiding behind his back. Luckily, he didn’t. We’ll leave the rest for you to discover below.

Had one of his employees done the same, Jobs wouldn’t have reacted well, we’re sure. This is one of those stories that shows how Jobs didn’t have a problem breaking his own rules. Basically it stands as evidence that he trusted his own actions infinitely more than he did everybody else’s.

Full Apple Employee Story