Steve Jobs Once Tossed the Original iPhone Across a Room to Impress Journalists

[Analog Kid]

While I don't completely disagree with this, I think it disregards the importance of just how revolutionary the software stack/multitouch interface were at the time. Looking at the Japanese market, Apple demonstrated that you can have all the features in the world, but if you're UI/software stack is poor, you're likely to have the rug pulled out by a competitor that can create a device people actually want to use. Steve may have initially been wrong about a few things (the App Store most prominently,) but he got the most important parts of the initial release right and was willing to have his mind changed on the rest. Oh, and he was also a master salesman, the reality distortion field was real.

Multitouch would have given the iPhone an advantage for a generation or two, until other manufacturers integrated it into their devices. The launch of the AppStore made it much more versatile and fun, and was a much harder feat to replicate.

Between an SDK built on top of the excellent MacOS X -> iOS operating system and services, the world class developer tools that came with all of that, and the sales model of the AppStore giving every dev easy access to essentially every iPhone user in the world, the only way to compete would be another similar software stack-- ie. Linux -> Android. This completely undercut all of the technical capital the existing players had built their products on and forced everyone to start from square one, well behind where Apple had already gotten.

 

[stinkhorn9]

Actually, yeah. I mean if someone is composing a main page post, it should at least be as accurate as possible. It's like when I see an article about the latest Tesla Model S updates, and they show a stock pic of a pre-2016 Tesla with the black oval bumper insert. I think "really?" It's not like a pic of the actual item of interest is hard to find.

But in this case, I think the intention was merely to include a pic of Steve Jobs (in which he happened to be holding an iphone) - I don't think it was implied anywhere that this was the phone he threw across the room.

 

[phamilyphriend]

Was the only reason Apple went with AT&T exclusively was because they agreed to not add anything AT&T ie logo or app specific on the phone whereas Verizon/T-mobile/Sprint all wanted applications and logo bearing their name?

 

[Wildkraut]

I miss Steve's Apple.

Did he throw one at you? 🤣

Anyway, I don’t miss anybody that I don’t personally know and nobody that don’t have the potential to miss me, too. I doubt Steve would say “I miss you, Malus120 from MR Forum”.

Anyway, RIP you visionary choleric guy…

 

[matrix07]

Was the only reason Apple went with AT&T exclusively was because they agreed to not add anything AT&T ie logo or app specific on the phone whereas Verizon/T-mobile/Sprint all wanted applications and logo bearing their name?

No. Because AT&T allowed Apple to control everything, including software update something which no carrier had allowed phone manufacturers before.

 

[matrix07]

I doubt Steve would say “I miss you, Malus120 from MR Forum”.

Why does that have to matter to @Malus120? We are human, not a robot. We have feeling and can miss anyone we want to, and also has a brain big enough to know we’re not a center of the universe.

 

[henzpwnapple]

And Tim successfully split 1 device into so many different versions and names - and claimed them to be "redesigned", "reinvented", or "redefined". Tim shall just be honest and combine all these 3 braggy words to "reused" when his team talks about product innovation.

 

[Malus120]

Did he throw one at you? 🤣

Anyway, I don’t miss anybody that I don’t personally know and nobody that don’t have the potential to miss me, too. I doubt Steve would say “I miss you, Malus120 from MR Forum”.

Anyway, RIP you visionary choleric guy…

LOL. Ok bro. Just because you can't appreciate great leadership in an organization without having directly known the person doesn't mean the rest of us can't. Strange hill to die on but, you do you. 🤣

 

[rjp1]

Rewatching that gives you chills. Steve was an amazing presenter, because you could tell he had put his heart and soul into the product.

I still watch the reveal every year, but it is completely different now. Tim is so robotic. I guess as long as he keeps them on track and retires soon - the company will be in a great position to hire another visionary leader. I'd love to see Apple do amazing things again.

 

[nostaws]

I miss my Treo

I wish I could use graffiti on my Apple Watch. I find myself frequently trying/defaulting to it.

 

[quarkysg]

I still watch the reveal every year, but it is completely different now. Tim is so robotic. I guess as long as he keeps them on track and retires soon - the company will be in a great position to hire another visionary leader. I'd love to see Apple do amazing things again.

I do not think Apple has stopped.

Apple gave us the Apple I/II in the 70s.

We got the Macintosh in the 80s.

The 90s is kind of dark for Apple.

The iPhone came mid 2000s.

We get Apple Silicon in the 2010s.

I'm confident they will continue.

 

[Jony Ive and Co.]

Just imagine throwing an iPhone 13 across the room now.
I'm 100% sure that it will shatter immediately

 

[matrix07]

Just imagine throwing an iPhone 13 across the room now.
I'm 100% sure that it will shatter immediately

My X, with no case, flied across my face and landed face down on ‘stone’ pavement a couple of meters away. No crack whatsoever.

 

[MacsRgr8]

What an impact Steve Jobs had made.
When he came back to Apple in the 90's, Apple was close to being bankrupt... unbelievable nowadays.
iMac, iPod, Mac OS X, led Apple back to being profitable.
iPhone led Apple to being the dominant player it is now in tech.

Apple has grown hugely since Steve's passing away, but, it's still all based around the products Steve had led Apple in delivering.

What I miss most are the "Steve-notes"... Steve on stage at MacWorlds and Apple Expo's was unbelievable entertaining. I sometimes relive these superb keynotes, like introduction of the G5, Steve announcing te remove the "i" from "iCEO", and of course iPhone... etc.

Thanks Steve.

 

[H2SO4]

I basically owe my career to this man and his company. I won’t lie, I cried that entire evening when I heard the news. Rest easy Steve.

Can see how he’d be an influence but ……Really.
Not to your parents for raising you, (giving you the resources or toys to start your interest maybe), not your teachers for imparting their you. Not the society you live ?

 

[Armada2]

You do know if the iPhone cracked after the land he would have made a joke of it.. "I'm throwing it the wrong way" so for journalists to be impressed cause it survived the throw are gullible.

 

[gstevie]

Just imagine throwing an iPhone 13 across the room now.
I'm 100% sure that it will shatter immediately

Go watch some of the 13’s durability / drop test videos. You’ll see that whilst not invincible, it holds up to be thrown about. I was actually impressed with how well it held up.

 

[rmchale]

The current iPhone has glass front and back. As we all know, glass is glass. Also, the added weight will create more force when dropped, vs the much lighter original iPhone. (original iPhone weighs just 135gm).

135g… so you are saying it sort of floated down when he threw it?

 

[laptech]

The genius that was Apple and Steve Jobs was taking already existing phone technology and merging it into one phone. Many of the mobile phone manufactureres and the network operators had there own app stores where you could download games, music, wallpapers, icons and pictures. Many also had news and weather apps. I've still got some of my old phones from the early 2000's, NEC, Nokia and Motorola and each one had it's own store. i remember when Sony brought out it's Walkman range of phones which was seen at the time to be a combination of an mp3 player and mobile phone. The phone came with an install CD that has Sony software on it that would allow the owner to convert their music CD's to mp3's. There were phones that was using Bluetooth, GPS, fingerprint ID, touch screen but they were all in different models and makes of phones.

When it came time for people to change their mobile phone, I remember have many many conversations with my fellow work colleagues on what phone they was going to purchase and the converstations always bolied down to that they wanted one thing from one phone and one thing from another phone but could never decide on which one they wanted. I remember many work colleagues wanting the Sony walkman phone due to the mp3/phone combination but they didn't like the look of the phone.

What I find interesting is that none of the major mobile phone manufaturers at the time, Nokia, Motorola, NEC and Ericsson (becoming Sony Mobile in 2000-2001), whilst making all this individual phone technology never thought about combining it all into one phone and that it took a non mobile phone manufacturer to see the potential.

 

[biziclop]

And in other news,..apple.com/timcook/ is down! 😲

But this is still up:

Remembering Steve Jobs - Apple

 

[Makosuke]

Golly does time fly. Those old Jobs keynotes were like major sporting events for us nerds. If you watch the OG iPhone announcement you can see someone down front literally stand up and fist pump when Jobs says “these are not 3 separate products…”

I re-watched that for nostalgia, and actually, if you're talking about the same guy, he stood up and fist-pumped when Jobs got to the phone, not the "not 3 separate products" part.

My personal favorite "in hindsight" bits about that keynote were what the audience didn't get.

For one, they went nuts when he said "phone", but there wasn't much applause when he got to "Internet Communicator", probably because they didn't know quite what to make of it. The irony being that that item was in the long run exponentially more important than the other two things.

The other was that the reaction to the "no keyboard" part wasn't as enthusiastic as you'd expect for a phone completely breaking the mold. In that case it wasn't just the label, and Jobs had explained quite clearly what problem they were solving, but I am guessing that people were so focused on the idea of a keyboard as part of a smartphone they didn't know what to make of one that had none. Heck, it was years before the last "I want a hardware keyboard!" detractors finally either figured it out or just stopped talking.

 

[KindJamz]

it's insane just how important the iphone was. if you had to pick a single product that changed human lives (in the last couple decades) it's the iphone. i don't want to sound like an insane apple fanboy but seriously... where would the world be if smartphones didn't become popular and apps didn't exist in their current form.

i'd like to see that alternative timeline just out of curiosity. i know there were "smartphones" before iPhone but there just weren't the same. iPhone really kicked it off. that thing blew my mind when it came out. an ipod that could make calls and go on the internet? i remember going into an apple store after school and calling my dad "i'm using an iphone!" lol

we would have a lot more privacy

 

[MrGimper]

The OG iPhone event was immense. I still watch it, along with the iPhone 4 event.... normally after a very meh apple event. I don't think there's been anything like it in Timmy's reign, with the exception of probably the watch, that has got the hype going. Steve was a master at presenting, and as a viewer you genuinely believed him. I just don't feel like that with Timmy, always just seems so false.

 

[Makosuke]

I was randomly poking around benchmarks to appreciate just how far the iPhone has come, hardware-wise, since that first Jobs keynote introducing it.

Comparing an iPhone 13 Pro of today with the 2007 Macs available when the original iPhone shipped:

Today's iPhone has more pixels than 2007's best 17" MacBook Pro (1680x1050 for the MBP versus 2532x1170); indeed the phone actually has more pixels than even the 24" iMac of the era (1920x1200).​

​

Today's phone has the same max RAM as a loaded 2007 MPB (6GB)​

​

Today's phone is not only substantially faster than the fastest MPB of 2007, it's substantially faster--even in multicore--than the top-of-line dual-quad Mac Pro of that era.​

​

GPU is a bit harder, but I believe today's iPhone is way faster--passmark makes it look like an order of magnitude--than even the top-of-line Mac Pro GPU of 2007.​

​

Today's iPhone is available with more onboard storage than the largest desktop HDD available in 2007, with read and write speeds an order of magnitude faster.​

​

And of course today's iPhone gets way better battery life than any MacBook Pro of 2007, and comes with what would at the time have been a prosumer-grade video camera and a still camera that could certainly outperform any compact still camera and not embarrass itself against DSLRs of the era, plus a LiDAR Scanner that didn't even exist at the consumer level at that time, plus a compass and altimeter, plus a highly accurate GPS, plus 100-mbit cellular internet, plus wifi, plus bluetooth.​

I recently decommissioned a 2008 Mac Pro at work, and realized that I literally had a more powerful computer, by most benchmark measures, in my pocket.

 

[matrix07]

Comparing an iPhone 13 Pro of today with the 2007 Macs available when the original iPhone shipped:

Someone tweeted it but I can't find a tweet but basically the original iPhone has more or less same pixels as Apple Watch Series 7. 😳
That's how time flies.