If you are the observant types, you must have noticed that Apple’s iPhone and iPad commercials always display 9:41 AM on the phone screen. And in case you haven’t, skim through their advertisements and you’ll see that in each ad, the devices are set to the same time.
Can you think of a reason why?
You might think that there can’t be a logical reason behind this but you’ll be surprised to know that this particular time, in fact, is a moment seized from one of the historic keynote presentations given by Steve Jobs. The tradition of iPhone and iPad commercials showing 9:41 AM started during the 2007 Macworld Conference & Expo, when Jobs was going to announce the official launch of the iPhone in a keynote presentation.
While rehearsing for the presentation, Jobs had calculated that the slide of the newly launched iPhone was going to appear on screen at around 9:41 AM. Acting in advance, to show the real time, he instructed his advertising team to prepare it with the device showing 9:41 AM.
Such was the accuracy of his calculation that during the presentation, the first ever iPhone was unveiled at the near-exact time! The skilled orator that he was, Jobs gave a very engaging presentation. As he began to announce the launch of an iPhone, his words were:
“This is a day I’ve been looking forward to for two and a half years.”
As Scott Forstall, senior vice president of iPhone software, also revealed in a Quora answer:
“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. And 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.”
Here is the full keynote presentation, given in 2007, by Steve Jobs:
Source: Jonathan Turetta