For the kangaroo and coconut, he would most probably infer a natural origin, due to their clear resemblance to other animals and plant products which are part of his natural world. As for the pyrite crystal, depending on its shape and purity, I guess it is possible that he might infer design.
But back to the iPhone example, what is your take? Would he infer design?
And yet you think he’d be wrong and they were designed.
And we know they’re natural too. Perhaps our imaginary caveman’s instincts aren’t all that when it comes to what we should infer about the origin of things.
Perhaps it really is the case that such intuitions are based on our own desires, and on similarities and resemblances to known objects, and these can therefore easily mislead us.
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Why would its shape and purity have any influence on inferring its origin?
How do you think humans recognize designed objects?
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Have you not just admitted the defeat of ID there?
This OP topic brings to mind the ancient Chinese proverb: “He who takes the pathway of flying pigs had best use an umbrella and watch his steps.”
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No, I haven’t. Why would I ?
And you didn’t answer my question. Would the Stone Age guy infer design in front of an iPhone, or for that matter, a Maserati or a mountain bike?
By ruling out chance or natural processes (necessity).
Do you first have to rule out chance or natural processes every time you see something that is a human made object?
For example if you saw a book or a car, you wouldn’t immediately just recognize them as human made objects?
Happy to explain. But first, your question. I hope you will eventually answer some of mine too.
I have no idea. He might be completely mystified by the phone. I’d say he would have some greater chance of comprehending the mountain bike as an artifact. But it’s hard to say.
Still, since he’s for some reason your chosen expert on ID, and you have already said he wouldn’t recognize a kangaroo or a coconut as designed, are you not agreeing that life isn’t designed? Your word, I recall, was “natural”.
Anyway, look above at my various questions that you have so far ignored.
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Speaking for myself, I think he would infer design. I still don’t understand why this has any relevance to the question if living things are designed. Iphones and living things differ fundamentally in the crucial properties that might drive a design inference: procreation and assembly/development. Why do you ignore this?
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This seems relevant to the original question:
Positive
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An iPhone that could self replicate would strengthen the design inference as this would be evidence of an increase in its useful functional complexity.
What is the quantifiable metric by which one measures “useful functional complexity”?
(I’m going to go out on a limb and predict there is no quantifiable metric and this is just the usual ID gibberish.)
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A simple metric is how many unique useful complex functions it performs. I would say that the ability to self manufacture is a new function, requires additional complexity and is quite useful.
How does one determine a “unique useful complex function”? You’ve literally stacked four different possibly qualifiers which you now need individual means of determining and measuring.
This is one thing I find so frustrating about ID claims. It’s easy to combine a bunch of random adjectives together and claim it somehow represents “design”. It’s an entirely different thing to demonstrate it in practice in an objective, quantifiable manner.
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Um…it’s useful 
I’ll take that to mean you don’t have an objective measurable means of determining any of these things.
ID gibberish confirmed.
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Strong rebuttal
I’ve engaged with so many ID proponents over the years, I’ve seen so many variations of these sorts of claims. It’s common to see ID proponents string together words like “function”, “complex”, “information”, “specified”, “useful”, etc., and then claim this combination of words somehow relates to an object’s origin.
Yet when you start to go beneath the surface, there is no actual metric involved in any of this. It’s just… a bunch of words.
Just take complexity for example. You included “complex” as a qualifier, but there are umpteen ways of defining and measuring complexity. How are you defining and measuring it? Have you even thought about that?
How are you defining and measuring uniqueness? Or defining and measuring function?
You need to do more that just string words together. If you haven’t thought about this, then you’re saying words that ultimately have no real meaning and therefore don’t support anything you are claiming.
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This is simply a bald assertion and you trying to impose your own criteria on how to make a design inference. Humans have a strong ability to recognise design because we contain minds that are very good at this. This ability can be measured for accuracy using known designs.
Useful and functionally complex are just some of the criterial we use to recognise design. Humans also have the ability to deny the design inference when they don’t like its ideological implications.