The first Apple iPhone was released on June 29, 2007. Nobody, including Apple, could have predicted how the iPhone would forever revolutionize the way we think about phones. Here are five fascinating facts about the phone that captured the nation's attention.
The First iPhone Was Not Made By Apple
Apple registered the iphone.org web address in December 1999. But even that wasn’t early enough. Cisco had been using the name “iPhone” since 1998. Not long after Apple’s iPhone was announced, Cisco sued Apple for calling its product the iPhone. It turns out that "iPhone" was already a Cisco trademark. The Cisco “iPhone” was a VoIP mobile device that was launched several weeks before Apple’s iPhone was announced. Both companies ended up retaining the rights to the name and settled the trademark lawsuit.
The Time In iPhone Advertisements Is Always 9:41 or 9:42
If you pay close attention, you will find that all iPhone advertisements show the device at a time set to 9:41. This is no coincidence. The reason? Apple events start at 9 a.m Former Apple executive Scott Forstall once explained, "We design the product launch 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." As a point of interest, the default display times on iPhones used to be 9:42.
Apple Predicted Siri With Almost Scary Accuracy
Siri was the big selling point of 2011’s iPhone 4s. The smartphone was unveiled by Apple in October 2011, one day before the death of Steve Jobs. But what’s most amazing about Siri is how accurately Apple predicted the feature. In the 1980s, then-Apple CEO John Sculley came up with a concept for a Siri-style virtual assistant called the Knowledge Navigator. Apple even made a video to demonstrate how it would function. In the video, set in the future, a professor asks his AI assistant for a paper written five years ago in 2006. Meanwhile, a calendar on his desk indicates the date to be September 16. Put those two numbers together and you get a predicted date of September 16, 2011; which is only two weeks off from the predicted date that was made 24 years in the past.
Apple Designed a Landline Phone In 1983
In 1983, Apple designed an all-white landline phone. The phone featured a stylus to interact with the built-in screen, and one of the pictures shows off some sort of accounting and check-writing application; possibly using a modem to pay bills. Of course, it looked nothing like the iPhone we’ve come to know and love, but that’s when the idea was first hatched. Unfortunately, the phone never saw the light of day, but it’s an interesting footnote in Apple’s history with connected phones.
The iPad Predated The iPhone
The iPad predated the iPhone, at least inside Apple. In the 1990s, Steve Jobs wanted Apple to create a device that mimicked a computer for a fraction of the price. To sell the device for just a few hundred dollars and still make a profit, the company would need to eliminate certain features, including keyboards. This led Apple to come up with the first iPad prototypes. However, Apple paused the development of the tablet to focus on building a phone. A few years after the iPhone, the iPad arrived. Everyone thought of it as a big iPhone. In fact, the iPhone was a small iPad that made calls.