[Shooti]

You can very well minimize it when you look at the actual timeframe between appointment and announcement:

Schmidt joined the Apple board August 29th 2006: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2006/08/29Google-CEO-Dr-Eric...

Public iPhone announcement was January 9th 2007: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/01/09Apple-Reinvents-th...

Also, the book that article is sourced from hashes out how the Google mobile software team working on iOS which was lead by Gundotra was a different body all together from Rubin's Android unit (who were actually gunning for Android to be shut down since they couldn't see the point of it). It's worth a read.