The iPhone has been around for nine years now, and in many respects the handset has changed beyond recognition. However, its advertising seems to be stuck in Apple’s own Groundhog day.
Take the original iPhone ad, from 2007:
Three years later, the iPhone 3GS launched:
What about the iPhone 4, two years after that?
And the iPhone 6?
If you’ve no idea what I’m banging on about, scroll back up and look at the clock. Yep, it reads 09.41 or 09.42 – as it always does in every piece of iPhone marketing. In fact, head to the Apple website right now: what do you find?
Bingo!
Why these two times in particular? Well, when Steve Jobs first unveiled the iPhone in the January 2007 keynote, the time was 09:41. But it goes a little deeper than that, as Apple’s former senior vice-president for iOS Scott Forstall explained. “We design the keynotes so that the big reveal of the product happens around 40 minutes into the presentation. When the big image of the product appears on screen, we want the time shown to be close to the actual time on the audience’s watches. But we know we won’t hit 40 minutes exactly.
“For the iPhone, we made it 42 minutes. It turned out we were pretty accurate with that estimate, so for the iPad, we made it 41 minutes. And there you are – the secret of the magic time.”
So, now you know why Apple’s adverts present a world packed with morning people… and that you can safely tune in 40 minutes late for a keynote without missing too much.
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iPhone 3GS
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