The morning of January 9, 2007, at Macworld, has been compressed by Time like a zip file. When I unpack it, I get a brief flash of filing into the room at the Moscone Center in San Francisco that was already synonymous with Apple Computer Inc. keynotes. I remember sitting to the left of the stage and watching Steve Jobs walk out to the bass. I put on a game brain that I thought was my game brain, trying to think like a skeptic, not an Apple fan. Reporters knew they had to resist the "reality distortion field" that Jobs was famous for putting around shiny Apple products that wouldn't last long, with a big assist from his keynote cheering section. I would try to see the device if it was called that.
I remember that game brain was defeated.
The phone game had changed completely, and we were witnessing a leap forward as great as that of the original Macintosh, with every innovation Jobs unveiled on this marvelous new "multi-touch" device. In 1984 the question was: would enough people buy this product to make a difference? I made my own purchase decision that day at Macworld. The Cingular network would be the only place where the iPhone would launch. Even if I could get out of the two-year contract on my Palm Treo, I wouldn't be giving up my iPod anytime soon. We used to call phones with tiny physical keyboards.
I watched that keynote again in its entirety on my sixth model of iPhone, and it made me think of how innocent everyone in that room was, including Jobs. Even the great visionary could not predict the future of developer-driven iPhone apps. They were called "widgets" back then, and only one outside developer was present. Not even the CEO of the company that Jobs had just shook his hand knew that the two companies would soon be competing for the same market. It is possible that Jobs anticipated a lawsuit like the one that dragged on for years with SAMSUNG, because he mentioned how much of the iPhone has been patented twice. Nobody foresaw the rise of social media or the circus of misinformation that would soon fill these easy-to-use screens.
That's just the beginning of the iPhone. There are many interesting historical notes that jump out from a rewatch of this famous keynote in 2022, starting with one that has nothing to do with the iPhone at all.
Oh, the rivalry!
It's hard to remember that Apple used to be in opposition to Microsoft. Most of the first 20 minutes of the keynote are filled with stinging jabs at Seattle rival, so much so that you want to grab the popcorn. Jim Allchin, a Microsoft executive, was called out by name for saying he would prefer to buy a Mac if he wasn't at Microsoft. The launch of the Zune, a would-be iPod competitor, is demolished in a single pie chart. A new ad shows a PC going in for major surgery to get Vista installed on it. "If I don't make it, I want you to have all my peripherals," he told the Mac. Is that peripherals? How very 2007.
The humor!
Jobs has a sense of humor. Karl Mondon is a reporter for theContra Costa Times.
Apple doesn't go after rivals by name now that it is on top of the world. The opening parts of Tim Cook's keynotes are dominated by less popular products, rather than the entertaining battle of a tech underdog hungry for relevance. It's refreshing to see that Jobs has a sense of humor that is both funny and ironic, and that he pokes fun at himself.
One of those self-deprecating digs stood out to me. I moved from being a writer at Time, where Jobs would call me to pitch stories, to being an editor at Business 2.0, where Jobs wouldn't allow Apple ads to be placed, despite some of those ads having quotes from my reviews in them. The reason? Business 2.0 was blacklisted by Jobs for speculating on what an Apple product might look like. I found myself laughing harder than most when Jobs put up a fake image of an iPod with a dial on it.
Oh, the name!
It seems odd that Jobs paused before introducing the name of the phone. Didn't we already know what it was going to be called? We knew that another company in Silicon Valley had a trademark on the name. Jobs was being more than a little honey badger-ish (to use an anachronistic meme) by publicly naming his device the iPhone, which would lead to a lawsuit against Apple. In June 2007, a settlement was reached with undisclosed terms, and in February of the following year, another name it owned to Apple would be licensed.
Oh, the operating system?
It's hard to see Jobs say "iPhone runs OS X," 15 years away from when the device was first released. The iPhone OS and Mac OS X are incompatible, despite the fact that they share the same kernel. OS X apps on the iPhone would be very disappointing.
Oh, your daughter.
The iPod was so popular that Jobs' first job was to sell the larger-screen version of the famous music and video machine. He was able to accomplish this with the help of a "favorites" on shuffle. Maybe this was his favorite music, or perhaps the Mac iPhoto app slideshow he claimed to have made himself, it was actually put together for him.
John Meyer, a friend of Jobs and a Macworld veteran who would end the keynote with a live performance, played the first song played in public on the iPhone. Jobs moved away from the song quickly. We can see why he had a complicated relationship with Lisa Brennan-Jobs, the daughter he denied for many years, and why he hid her from the world until his death. "Fathers be good to your daughters" wasn't a line that really stuck in the Jobs household.
Oh, the dinosaurs.
Thanks to the introduction of the iPhone, Apple and Google were going to be on top of the world. The two companies on stage did not do well. Jobs said that you can't think about the internet without thinking about Yahoo. To which many people in the year 2022.
The media brand was purchased by the company for $4.5 billion. After he was on stage with Jobs, he turned down a $44.6 billion offer from Microsoft. Yahoo would struggle to stay relevant after not even offering free email to compete with Gmail in 2007, and not even buying the popular website Tumblr for $1 billion under former Googler Marissa Mayer.
The CEO of Cingular Wireless that day was Stan Sigman, who had just sold the company to AT&T. He would retire later that year and leave the iPhone to AT&T until the Verizon version launched two years later.
The wireless industry's business model was flipped on its head by Apple.
By that time, Apple had changed the wireless industry's business model so that the makers of handsets and software would be in charge of our brave new world, not the providers of networks on which they ran.
We were easy to please.
It's great to see the audience gasp at "pinching" and "zooming" on a screen for the first time. It would seem minuscule today if you heard cheers for a 3.5 inch display size. The smallest phone Apple sells is the SE, which has a 4.7-inch screen and displays larger than the Pro Max. Jobs is happy to show off the New York Times front page on the browser, which is completely un-designed.
It takes a second to remember that Jobs isn't talking about the automatic transcript version in today's iOS, just being able to choose which voicemail to listen to first was enough to wow the inhabitants of 2007. When you leave a voice memo in iMessage, it's similar to when you call someone's number in the phone app, but for some reason you decide to do it after calling their number.
Oh no, one more thing?
At Jobs' keynotes, a surprise at the end became so traditional that he would forever be associated with the phrase "one more thing". He didn't use it in 2007, despite having two mics to drop, because he didn't like the fact that Apple was changing its name. Jobs calls the musician's appearance a really special treat. He didn't know that a decade and a half later, the keynote would become more famous than the beloved singer ever was.
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