first iphone presentation steve jobs

• Smartphones

Watch Steve Jobs Unveil the First iPhone 10 Years Ago Today

T oday, our smartphones function like a high-tech Swiss army knife, serving as everything from a communications device to a digital camera to an alarm clock. That multiple-use functionality is exactly how late Apple CEO Steve Jobs teased the first iPhone when he introduced it on stage ten years ago today, on Jan. 9, 2007.

“An iPod, a phone, and an Internet communicator,” Jobs said on stage during the Macworld conference. “Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device.”

The first-generation iPhone would be considered primitive by today’s technology standards, with its 2-megapixel camera, iPod Touch-inspired design, and 3.5-inch touchscreen. And it certainly wasn’t the first portable phone capable of connecting to the Internet. But the first iPhone is widely credited with heralding in the modern smartphone era, with nearly all of today’s devices taking design and functionality cues from Apple’s original handset.

Read more: The 50 Most Influential Gadgets of All Time

A decade after its original debut, the iPhone has become Apple’s most popular product, accounting for most of the company’s revenue . Later this year, Apple is expected to unveil a new iPhone with a dramatically different design, potentially adding new characteristics like a curved screen and ditching the home button.

Watch Jobs’ full 2007 keynote below:

More Must-Reads from TIME

• The New Face of Doctor Who
• Putin’s Enemies Are Struggling to Unite
• Women Say They Were Pressured Into Long-Term Birth Control
• Scientists Are Finding Out Just How Toxic Your Stuff Is
• Boredom Makes Us Human
• John Mulaney Has What Late Night Needs
• The 100 Most Influential People of 2024
• Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Contact us at [email protected]

The iPhone at 15: Steve Jobs Revealed His Greatest Product in 2007

The first iPhone went on sale on June 29, 2007 and it helped Apple grow into a $3 trillion company over the next 15 years.

• Patrick's play The Cowboy is included in the Best American Short Plays 2011-12 anthology. He co-wrote and starred in the short film Baden Krunk that won the Best Wisconsin Short Film award at the Milwaukee Short Film Festival.

On Jan. 9, 2007 at the MacWorld Expo, Steve Job unveiled the first iPhone.

Fifteen years ago today, the first iPhone went on sale. It was five months after Steve Jobs, in perhaps his most iconic Apple keynote,  introduced the original iPhone : "An iPod, a phone and internet communicator. An iPod, a phone, are you getting it?"

Steve Jobs revealed Apple's phone on Jan. 9, 2007. Night at the Museum was No. 1 in theaters. Nokia was the big name in phones. President Gerald Ford had been buried days earlier. And in a wildcard playoff game, the Indianapolis Colts had just defeated the Kansas City Chiefs before going on to win the Super Bowl. 

"iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone," Jobs said during his keynote speech.

The iPhone wasn't actually magical. There were even  behind-the-scenes efforts required to keep the iPhone from crashing while Jobs demonstrated it during the keynote . But 15 years later, it would be hard to argue that the iPhone wasn't revolutionary. Whether you are a loyal iPhone owner or have never owned one, the impact the iPhone has made in our daily lives is indisputable.

Read: What it was like attending the very first iPhone event

Months after being announced, the iPhone arrived in stores on June 29, 2007.

To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the iPhone, here are 15 facts about the iPhone and Apple.

Apple is now worth $3 trillion dollars

In 2007, Apple's market capitalization (the total value of all the shares of Apple stock) was $174.03 billion. On Jan. 3, 2022, it hit $3 trillion dollars , the highest market capitalization for any company ever.

The first iPhone had an aluminum body

The original iPhone came with a silver brushed aluminum finish. The current  iPhone 13 has an aluminum frame, glass front and back, and comes in five colors. The iPhone 13 Pro is available in three finishes.

An iPhone for $499

The original iPhone cost $499 and came with 4GB of storage. For $100 more you could get one with 8GB of storage. The iPhone 13 Pro Max costs $1,099 for 256GB of storage and tops out at 1TB of storage for $1,599.

It predates Instagram, Uber, TikTok and more

The following companies didn't exist in 2007: Instagram, Uber, TikTok, Twitch, Snap, Lyft, DoorDash, Tinder, Slack, Lime, Postmates, Venmo and Pinterest.

It only had a single camera

The original iPhone had a single camera and it was located on the back. The iPhone 13 Pro has four cameras (three on the back and one on the front).

You couldn't copy and paste

You couldn't copy and paste text with the original iPhone. In fact, copy and paste wasn't added until 2009 with the release of iPhone OS 3.

The first iPhone had 15 apps.

There were only 15 apps to start

The original iPhone had 15 apps: Calendar, Camera, Clock, Contacts, iPod, Maps (Google Maps), Messages, Notes, Phone, Photos, Safari, Stocks, Voice Memos, Weather and Settings.

The first of 34 iPhone models

There have been 34 iPhone models, and  Apple currently sells eight .

You couldn't record video

You couldn't record videos with the original iPhone. Now the iPhone 13 Pro can record 4K 60fps video and can even record in  ProRes at 4K 30fps .

A future movie maker

The following movies were filmed with an iPhone: Unsane , Tangerine , Detour , High Flying Bird , Snow Steam Iron and Lady Gaga: Stupid Love (which is technically a music video).

You couldn't text photos

The original iPhone didn't support MMS for sending things like photos and videos via text messages. It was added as a part of iPhone OS 3 .

A 3.5-inch screen

The original iPhone had a 3.5-inch screen. The iPhone 13 Mini has a 5.4-inch screen, the iPhone 13 comes with a 6.1-inch screen and the 13 Pro Max has a giant 6.7-inch screen.

Blue bubbles came later

FaceTime was released in 2010 and iMessage in 2011.

The App Store came later

The App Store opened on July 10, 2008 with 500 apps. According to Apple's website , there are currently 1.8 million apps in the App Store.

A million iPhones sold every day and a half

On Sept. 10, 2007 (74 days after the launch of the original iPhone) Apple sold its millionth iPhone. In 2018, Apple sold 216.7 million iPhones which is roughly a million iPhones sold every 1.5 days. Apple stopped sharing the number of iPhones sold after 2018.

How the original iPhone stacks up to the iPhone 7 Plus

Mobile Guides

• Best iPhone
• Best Galaxy S24 Deals
• Best iPhone Deals
• Samsung Galaxy S24 Review
• Best Android Phones
• Best Samsung Galaxy Phone
• Pixel 8 Pro Review
• iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max Review
• Best iPhone 15 Deals
• Best Foldable Phones
• Galaxy Z Fold 5 Review
• OnePlus Open Review
• Best Galaxy Z Flip Deals
• Best Wireless Earbuds
• Best Noise Canceling Headphones
• Best Headphones
• Best Over Ear Headphones
• Best Wireless Earbuds and Headphones for Making Calls
• Best Headphones for Work at Home
• Best Noise Canceling Wireless Earbuds
• Best Sounding Wireless Earbuds
• Best Cheap Wireless Earbuds
• Best Wireless Headphones
• Best iPhone 15 Cases
• Best iPhone 14 Cases
• Best Power Bank for iPhone
• Best Airpods Pro Accessories
• Best Magsafe iPhone Accessories
• Best Speakerphone
• Best Wireless Car Charger and Mount
• Best iPhone Fast Charger
• Best Portable Chargers and Power Banks for Android
• Apple Watch Series 8 vs Series 7
• Best Apple Watch Bands
• Best Android Smartwatch
• Apple Watch Ultra Review
• Best Smartwatch
• Best Prepaid Phone Plans
• Best Cheap Phone Plans
• Best Unlimited Data Plans
• Best Phone Plans
• Best Phone Plan Deals
• Best Senior Phone Plans
• Best Family Phone Plans
• Best Travel Phone Plans
• Best Verizon Plans

15 years of iPhone: Rewatch the original Steve Jobs keynote announcing the iPhone

Believe or not, today marks 15 years since Steve Jobs took the stage to announce the first-ever iPhone. Jobs took the stage at the Macworld Conference at Moscone West in San Francisco to announce the iPhone, touting that it was a “widescreen iPod with touch controls,” a “revolutionary mobile phone,” and a “breakthrough Internet communicator.”

Jobs announced the iPhone on January 9, 2007 and it would go on to be released on June 29, 2007. During that year’s Macworld keynote, Jobs teased that Apple was about “to reinvent the phone” with the iPhone’s announcement and release. 15 years later, it’s clear Apple did just that. Somewhat coincidentally, BlackBerry just ended support for all BlackBerry OS smartphones on January 4 .

As we celebrate the 15th anniversary of the iPhone’s original announcement, some really interesting coverage has popped up from news outlets. One of my favorite stories so far is from Sascha Segan at PCMag , who shared pictures of his original notes from the iPhone’s announcement:

Fifteen years ago, I was at CES, the big consumer electronics show, while history was being made as Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone in Cupertino. I multitasked. Specifically, I remember squatting in a convention center vestibule trying to make sense of Jobs’ reality distortion field, and then attending a press gaggle where two Cingular (now AT&T) executives explained how important the iPhone would be, from their perspective.

Here are some of our other favorites from around the web today:

• My Reporting Notes From the Original iPhone Launch 15 Years Ago
• The iPhone at 15: Steve Jobs revealed his greatest product 15 years ago
• What using an iPhone for 15 years has done to your brain
• 15 Years Ago Today, Steve Jobs Introduced the Most Successful Product in History. Here are 3 Ways the iPhone Almost Failed
• Apple introduced the first iPhone 15 years ago. Here’s a look back at everything that’s changed.

Furthermore, Basic Apple Guy has also put together some wallpapers for your Apple devices inspired by the original iPhone keynote.

The iPhone keynote

Specifications of the original iPhone included a 3.5-inch touchscreen with a 480×320 resolution, a physical home button, and a 2MP rear-facing camera. The iPhone also featured a pesky recessed headphone jack, a 30-pin dock connector, up to 16GB of internal storage, and was available exclusive with AT&T connectivity in the United States.

The 15th anniversary of the iPhone’s announcement is a great excuse to relive the original keynote from Macworld 2007. Check it out below and tell us some of your favorite original iPhone memories in the comments.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news:

Introduced in 2007 by Steve Jobs, iPhone is Appl…

Chance is an editor for the entire 9to5 network and covers the latest Apple news for 9to5Mac.

Tips, questions, typos to [email protected]

Manage push notifications

• History Classics
• Your Profile
• Find History on Facebook (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Twitter (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on YouTube (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on Instagram (Opens in a new window)
• Find History on TikTok (Opens in a new window)
• This Day In History
• History Podcasts
• History Vault

Steve Jobs Originally Envisioned the iPhone as Mostly a Phone

By: Dave Roos

Updated: May 17, 2024 | Original: September 12, 2018

As Apple's iPhones and other smartphones feature increasingly sophisticated cameras, processors and touch screens, the rise of the super-stocked device shows that even the inimitable Steve Jobs couldn’t predict the future.

The popular mythology around Jobs was that he was always thinking 10 years ahead of the rest of the computing and electronics world. Under Jobs’ leadership, Apple produced some of the most revolutionary and iconic pieces of consumer technology ever: the Apple IIc, the original Macintosh, the iMac G4, the iPod, the iPhone and iPad.

The Mega-Brands That Built America

New episodes of The Mega-Brands That Built America premiere Sundays at 9/8c and stream the next day.

But the origin story of the first iPhone reveals that Jobs, while undeniably brilliant, was not a technological soothsayer who predicted our digital future. He was just trying to make a really cool phone.

Brian Merchant, author of The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone , says that for all of the original iPhone’s game-changing innovations—the multitouch screen, the high-quality camera, the built-in accelerometers and gyroscopic sensors—Jobs conceived of the device as a cellphone, first and foremost.

And central to the concept of a cellphone back in 2005 and 2006 when the iPhone was being developed, was that it fit comfortably in your hand and in your pocket. “If the iPhone was uncomfortable to hold, that would have been a non-starter for Jobs,” says Merchant.

If you watch the 2007 Apple keynote when the iPhone debuted, the first thing Jobs says when he unveils the device is that “It fits beautifully in the palm of your hand.” Its size was perfectly suited for what Jobs believed was the original iPhone’s crowning achievement, making phone calls.

“We want to reinvent the phone,” said Jobs at the 2007 keynote. “What’s the killer app? The killer app is making calls. It’s amazing how hard it is to make calls on most phones.”

Merchant says that Jobs’ number one pet peeve, according to developers who worked on the original iPhone, was that his regular cellphone would drop calls. No doubt Jobs was jazzed about the iPhone’s groundbreaking touchscreen and Apple’s first-ever apps for music, photos, and SMS texting, but none of that could get in the way of making phone calls. The first iPhone shipped without the App Store, in fact, because Jobs didn’t trust third-party developers to prevent dropped calls.

“Which is insane to think now,” says Merchant. “Because the iPhone became famous for being kind of a crappy phone. The phone was the last thing anybody used it for.”

The iPhone took two-and-a-half years to develop and wasn’t even Jobs’ brainchild. In 2001, Apple released the iPod, a sleek, handheld digital music player that sold millions and catapulted Apple into the device market. Apple executives worried that the iPod would lose market share once cellphone manufacturers figured out how to put MP3 players on their phones. But not if Apple beat them to it.

The first prototype of an Apple phone shows just how stuck Jobs and his team were in existing technologies. According to Tony Fadell, one of the original designers of the iPod and the first three iPhones, the first concept was literally an “iPod phone.”

“It was an iPod with a phone module inside it,” Fadell told Venturebeat . “It looked like an iPod, but it had a phone, and you would select numbers through the same interface and so on. But if you wanted to dial a number it was like using a rotary dial. It sucked."

Jobs scrapped the design and started from scratch. At the time, there was a team of Apple engineers who had been playing with a device called the Fingerworks iGesture Pad invented by a man with hand injuries who couldn’t use a conventional mouse. Members of the team had worked on the Newton, Apple’s infamous flop of a PDA, but still believed touchscreens held promise.

“It was more of a ‘blue sky, future of computing’ kind of thing,” says Merchant. “The touchscreen research had gone through several iterations. It was briefly tied to a tablet, put aside, and had just kind of sat in the dark. Then Steve Jobs showed up and said, maybe this is the phone. Out of that mutation was how the iPhone was born inside Apple.”

With the touchscreen technology in place, Merchant says that many of the designers and engineers on the iPhone development team absolutely saw it as an opportunity to build an entirely new kind of mobile computer, exactly what the iPhone would become for its millions of loyal users.

“Steve Jobs didn’t,” says Merchant. “He thought it was cool, but the evidence suggests that Steve Jobs wanted to use Apple’s technology to build the best phone possible. And a phone fits in your hand.”

Subsequent generations of the iPhone stuck to the small design, incrementally increasing screen size, but nothing beyond 4 inches. Samsung was the first to release a truly huge phone in 2011. The Samsung Galaxy Note featured an almost comically huge (at the time) 5.3-inch screen and single-handedly popularized the term “phablet,” a cross between a phone and a tablet.

Jobs passed away from pancreatic cancer that same year. Whether or not it had anything to do with his absence, Apple released the iPhone 5 in 2012 with a noticeably larger 4-inch screen. Its first bona fide phablet was the iPhone 6 Plus, though, a 5.5-inch version released in 2014.

Simply put, the move toward larger screen sizes across the smartphone industry reflects the way that consumers are using their mobile devices. Jobs may not have imagined back in 2005 how the humble cellphone would become the primary platform for thousands of apps offering streaming music and video, real-time video chat, addictive video games and virtual and augmented reality experiences.

“The iPhone was designed to be a super slick phone in Steve Jobs’ mind,” says Merchant. “It was his development team and the demands of the user base that saw the potential in the new platform, that transformed the iPhone from a ‘slick phone’ into the culturally dominant, world-eating phenomenon that it is today.”

HISTORY Vault: 101 Inventions That Changed the World

Take a closer look at the inventions that have transformed our lives far beyond our homes (the steam engine), our planet (the telescope) and our wildest dreams (the internet).

Sign up for Inside History

Get HISTORY’s most fascinating stories delivered to your inbox three times a week.

By submitting your information, you agree to receive emails from HISTORY and A+E Networks. You can opt out at any time. You must be 16 years or older and a resident of the United States.

More details : Privacy Notice | Terms of Use | Contact Us

Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission.

How Steve Jobs Faked His Way Through Unveiling the iPhone

Ten years ago today, Steve Jobs took the stage at Macworld and showed off a new device. You know the spiel. “So, three things: a widescreen iPod with touch controls. A revolutionary mobile phone. And a breakthrough internet communications device. An iPod. A phone. And an internet communicator. An iPod. A phone — are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device! And we are calling it iPhone .”

Brian McCullough of the Internet History podcast pulls together a good collection of memories from the day of the event itself, showing how much of Jobs’s presentation was held together with tape and glue to ensure his brand-new device was successful, unlike Apple’s previous foray into cell phones, the little-loved and little-remembered Motorola Rokr .

After two-and-a-half years of extremely secretive work on what Apple code-named “Project Purple,” Jobs was ready to take the stage at the Moscone Center and show off the iPhone. The problem was that the iPhone itself wasn’t quite ready.

Jobs rehearsed his presentation for six solid days, but at the final hour, the team still couldn’t get the phone to behave through an entire run through. Sometimes it lost internet connection. Sometimes the calls wouldn’t go through. Sometimes the phone just shut down.

Per Andy Grignon, senior radio engineer for the iPhone: “Very rarely did I see him become completely unglued. It happened. But mostly he just looked at you and very directly said in a very loud and stern voice, ‘You are fucking up my company,’ or, ‘If we fail, it will be because of you.’”

Of course, if the iPhone failed onstage, it was because the prototype Jobs would be demoing was a bug-filled nightmare. From Fred Vogelstein’s 2013 write-up in The New York Times Magazine :

The iPhone could play a section of a song or a video, but it couldn’t play an entire clip reliably without crashing. It worked fine if you sent an e-mail and then surfed the Web. If you did those things in reverse, however, it might not. Hours of trial and error had helped the iPhone team develop what engineers called “the golden path,” a specific set of tasks, performed in a specific way and order, that made the phone look as if it worked.

Jobs also wanted to make sure that connectivity wasn’t an issue for the iPhone. But to do that required some shading around the edges. From the same Times Magazine report:

They had AT&T, the iPhone’s wireless carrier, bring in a portable cell tower, so they knew reception would be strong. Then, with Jobs’s approval, they preprogrammed the phone’s display to always show five bars of signal strength regardless of its true strength.

Jobs had more than just the reputation of the iPhone to contend with. CES was happening at the same time, and it was Jobs’s hope that the iPhone would steal headlines away from whatever was being debuted in Vegas that day. But there was still a nagging problem: In virtually every rehearsal Jobs had done with the phone, it would run out of memory at some point, causing the phone to crash and restart. The only fix was to have multiple backups on hand.

 Jobs had a number of demo units onstage with him to manage this problem. If memory ran low on one, he would switch to another while the first was restarted. But given how many demos Jobs planned, Grignon worried that there were far too many potential points of failure. If disaster didn’t strike during one of the dozen demos, it was sure to happen during the grand finale, when Jobs planned to show all the iPhone’s top features operating at the same time on the same phone. He’d play some music, take a call, put it on hold and take another call, find and e-mail a photo to the second caller, look up something on the Internet for the first caller and then return to his music.

McCullough goes on to explain what happened after — how Jobs had to be convinced to actually create an App Store (he wanted developers to simply do everything in Safari), and the struggle to get the next version of the iPhone, the iPhone 3G, off the slow-as-hell Edge data networks.

Jobs unveiling the iPhone is often pointed to as the pinnacle in tech presentations — one of the few times where the hype and grandeur actually matched the device on display. But it wasn’t just a master class in marketing and showmanship; it was a technological roll of the dice that ended up changing the world.

Most Viewed Stories

• Who Wants 30,000 Used Teslas?
• A Second Young Bank of America Employee Has Suddenly Died This Month
• Running From Inside  
• The Package King of Miami  
• Everything That Happened in Last Night’s Reality-Show House Hearing
• Who’s the Trump VP Pick? Latest Odds for Every Shortlist Candidate.

Editor’s Picks

Most Popular

• Who Wants 30,000 Used Teslas? By Kevin T. Dugan
• A Second Young Bank of America Employee Has Suddenly Died This Month By Kevin T. Dugan
• Running From Inside   By Olivia Nuzzi
• The Package King of Miami   By Ezra Marcus
• Everything That Happened in Last Night’s Reality-Show House Hearing By Nia Prater
• Who’s the Trump VP Pick? Latest Odds for Every Shortlist Candidate. By Margaret Hartmann

What is your email?

This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us.

Sign In To Continue Reading

Create your free account.

Password must be at least 8 characters and contain:

• Lower case letters (a-z)
• Upper case letters (A-Z)
• Numbers (0-9)
• Special Characters (!@#$%^&*)

As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York , which you can opt out of anytime.

You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience.

Behind-the-scenes details revealed about Steve Jobs' first iPhone announcement

The engineers and managers were downing Scotch in the fifth row of the Moscone Center as Apple's co-founder demonstrated an aspect of the iPhone. According to a new write-up in The New York Times Magazine , they were all quite nervous that the still-incomplete iPhone prototype would fail to perform some task during the demonstration, and whoever had been responsible for that feature prior to the demo would later have to suffer the wrath of Jobs.

The Times ' look back at the development of the iPhone reveals a process filled with setbacks, glitches, and obstacles. Andy Grignon, a senior radio engineer at Apple, contributes a first-hand perspective on the process, one filled with stress and high stakes.

“At first it was just really cool to be at rehearsals at all — kind of like a cred badge,” Grignon said of the rehearsals that preceded the actual iPhone unveiling. “But it quickly got really uncomfortable. Very rarely did I see him become completely unglued — it happened, but mostly he just looked at you and very directly said in a very loud and stern voice, ‘You are [expletive] up my company,’ or, ‘If we fail, it will be because of you.’ He was just very intense. And you would always feel an inch tall.”

Before those rehearsals, Apple was on lockdown. Apple is well known for its culture of secrecy, and the development of the iPhone was no different. Engineers were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements before they could even be told what they were working on, and then they were asked to sign documents reaffirming the previous agreements. "Rockstar" employees began disappearing from their departments, only to be seen later entering rooms with badge scanners and multiple other levels of security. The secrecy was aimed at preventing any leaks of what employees would soon find out was a "moon shot" of sorts for the then-iPod maker.

"It had been drilled into everyone’s head that this was the next big thing to come out of Apple," Grignon said, as the iPhone was essentially the only big, new product Apple had been working on at the time. “It was Apple TV or the iPhone... And if he had gone to Macworld with just Apple TV” — a new product that connected iTunes to a television set — “the world would have said, ‘What the heck was that?’ ”

The iPhone project — which would eventually cost $150 million to create, by some estimates — produced a number of prototypes. Among them was a device that looked like a joke slide Jobs showed before introducing the real iPhone: an iPod with a rotary dial in place of the click wheel. That design was rejected, as it "was not cool" in the way Apple wanted its products to be.

The team behind the iPhone's development came to realize that their earlier idea that building the device would be like building a small Mac was quite off the mark. Issues arose with battery life, the multitouch interface, and even build materials. Jobs and Apple design guru Jony Ive initially designed an iPhone made entirely from brushed aluminum; they had to be gently let down by Apple's antenna experts that such a design would block radio waves, rendering the device "a beautiful brick."

“And it was not an easy explanation," said Phil Kearney, a former Apple engineer. "Most of the designers are artists. The last science class they took was in eighth grade. But they have a lot of power at Apple. So they ask, ‘Why can’t we just make a little seam for the radio waves to escape through?’ And you have to explain to them why you just can’t.”

By the time the actual device was unveiled in San Francisco, nerves were frayed throughout the development team. The process was fraught with slammed doors, shouting matches, and exhausted engineers quitting in a huff, only to return once they had gotten a few nights' sleep. When the finale came — and it worked along with everything before it, we all just drained the flask.

The device that Jobs actually took onto the stage with him was actually an incomplete prototype. It would play a section of a song or video, but would crash if a user tried to play the full clip. The apps that were demonstrated were incomplete, with no guarantee that they would not crash mid-demonstration. The team eventually decided on a "golden path" of specific tasks that Jobs could perform with little chance that the device would crash in the actual keynote.

Jobs took the stage on January 9, 2007 in his trademark black turtleneck and jeans, saying "This is a day I have been looking forward to for two and a half years," before showing off Apple's revolutionary take on the phone. Grignon, by that time, was drunk, having brought a flask in order to calm his nerves. As Jobs swiped and pinched, some of his staff swigged and sighed in relief, each one taking a shot as the feature they were responsible for performed without a hitch.

"When the finale came," Grignon said, "and it worked along with everything before it, we all just drained the flask. It was the best demo any of us had ever seen. And the rest of the day turned out to be just a [expletive] for the entire iPhone team. We just spent the entire rest of the day drinking in the city. It was just a mess, but it was great.”

47 Comments

I guess SJ just didn't want to wait for 3 years to tell the world about iPhone then.

From the bio, hope this is not plagiarism: [quote]Three Revolutionary Products in One An iPod That Makes Calls By 2005 iPod sales were skyrocketing. An astonishing twenty million were sold that year, quadruple the number of the year before. The product was becoming more important to the company’s bottom line, accounting for 45% of the revenue that year, and it was also burnishing the hipness of the company’s image in a way that drove sales of Macs. That is why Jobs was worried. “He was always obsessing about what could mess us up,” board member Art Levinson recalled. The conclusion he had come to: “The device that can eat our lunch is the cell phone.” As he explained to the board, the digital camera market was being decimated now that phones were equipped with cameras. The same could happen to the iPod, if phone manufacturers started to build music players into them. “Everyone carries a phone, so that could render the iPod unnecessary.” His first strategy was to do something that he had admitted in front of Bill Gates was not in his DNA: to partner with another company. He began talking to Ed Zander, the new CEO of Motorola, about making a companion to Motorola’s popular RAZR, which was a cell phone and digital camera, that would have an iPod built in. Thus was born the ROKR. It ended up having neither the enticing minimalism of an iPod nor the convenient slimness of a RAZR. Ugly, difficult to load, and with an arbitrary hundred-song limit, it had all the hallmarks of a product that had been negotiated by a committee, which was counter to the way Jobs liked to work. Instead of hardware, software, and content all being controlled by one company, they were cobbled together by Motorola, Apple, and the wireless carrier Cingular. “You call this the phone of the future?” Wired scoffed on its November 2005 cover. Jobs was furious. “I’m sick of dealing with these stupid companies like Motorola,” he told Tony Fadell and others at one of the iPod product review meetings. “Let’s do it ourselves.” He had noticed something odd about the cell phones on the market: They all stank, just like portable music players used to. “We would sit around talking about how much we hated our phones,” he recalled. “They were way too complicated. They had features nobody could figure out, including the address book. It was just Byzantine.” George Riley, an outside lawyer for Apple, remembers sitting at meetings to go over legal issues, and Jobs would get bored, grab Riley’s mobile phone, and start pointing out all the ways it was “brain-dead.” So Jobs and his team became excited about the prospect of building a phone that they would want to use. “That’s the best motivator of all,” Jobs later said. Another motivator was the potential market. More than 825 million mobile phones were sold in 2005, to everyone from grammar schoolers to grandmothers. Since most were junky, there was room for a premium and hip product, just as there had been in the portable music-player market. At first he gave the project to the Apple group that was making the AirPort wireless base station, on the theory that it was a wireless product. But he soon realized that it was basically a consumer device, like the iPod, so he reassigned it to Fadell and his teammates. Their initial approach was to modify the iPod. They tried to use the trackwheel as a way for a user to scroll through phone options and, without a keyboard, try to enter numbers. It was not a natural fit. “We were having a lot of problems using the wheel, especially in getting it to dial phone numbers,” Fadell recalled. “It was cumbersome.” It was fine for scrolling through an address book, but horrible at inputting anything. The team kept trying to convince themselves that users would mainly be calling people who were already in their address book, but they knew that it wouldn’t really work. At that time there was a second project under way at Apple: a secret effort to build a tablet computer. In 2005 these narratives intersected, and the ideas for the tablet flowed into the planning for the phone. In other words, the idea for the iPad actually came before, and helped to shape, the birth of the iPhone. Multi-touch One of the engineers developing a tablet PC at Microsoft was married to a friend of Laurene and Steve Jobs, and for his fiftieth birthday he wanted to have a dinner party that included them along with Bill and Melinda Gates. Jobs went, a bit reluctantly. “Steve was actually quite friendly to me at the dinner,” Gates recalled, but he “wasn’t particularly friendly” to the birthday guy. Gates was annoyed that the guy kept revealing information about the tablet PC he had developed for Microsoft. “He’s our employee and he’s revealing our intellectual property,” Gates recounted. Jobs was also annoyed, and it had just the consequence that Gates feared. As Jobs recalled: This guy badgered me about how Microsoft was going to completely change the world with this tablet PC software and eliminate all notebook computers, and Apple ought to license his Microsoft software. But he was doing the device all wrong. It had a stylus. As soon as you have a stylus, you’re dead. This dinner was like the tenth time he talked to me about it, and I was so sick of it that I came home and said, “**** this, let’s show him what a tablet can really be.” Jobs went into the office the next day, gathered his team, and said, “I want to make a tablet, and it can’t have a keyboard or a stylus.” Users would be able to type by touching the screen with their fingers. That meant the screen needed to have a feature that became known as multi-touch, the ability to process multiple inputs at the same time. “So could you guys come up with a multi-touch, touch-sensitive display for me?” he asked. It took them about six months, but they came up with a crude but workable prototype. Jony Ive had a different memory of how multi-touch was developed. He said his design team had already been working on a multi-touch input that was developed for the trackpads of Apple’s MacBook Pro, and they were experimenting with ways to transfer that capability to a computer screen. They used a projector to show on a wall what it would look like. “This is going to change everything,” Ive told his team. But he was careful not to show it to Jobs right away, especially since his people were working on it in their spare time and he didn’t want to quash their enthusiasm. “Because Steve is so quick to give an opinion, I don’t show him stuff in front of other people,” Ive recalled. “He might say, ‘This is shit,’ and snuff the idea. I feel that ideas are very fragile, so you have to be tender when they are in development. I realized that if he pissed on this, it would be so sad, because I knew it was so important.” Ive set up the demonstration in his conference room and showed it to Jobs privately, knowing that he was less likely to make a snap judgment if there was no audience. Fortunately he loved it. “This is the future,” he exulted. It was in fact such a good idea that Jobs realized that it could solve the problem they were having creating an interface for the proposed cell phone. That project was far more important, so he put the tablet development on hold while the multi-touch interface was adopted for a phone-size screen. “If it worked on a phone,” he recalled, “I knew we could go back and use it on a tablet.” Jobs called Fadell, Rubinstein, and Schiller to a secret meeting in the design studio conference room, where Ive gave a demonstration of multi-touch. “Wow!” said Fadell. Everyone liked it, but they were not sure that they would be able to make it work on a mobile phone. They decided to proceed on two paths: P1 was the code name for the phone being developed using an iPod trackwheel, and P2 was the new alternative using a multi-touch screen. A small company in Delaware called FingerWorks was already making a line of multi-touch trackpads. Founded by two academics at the University of Delaware, John Elias and Wayne Westerman, FingerWorks had developed some tablets with multi-touch sensing capabilities and taken out patents on ways to translate various finger gestures, such as pinches and swipes, into useful functions. In early 2005 Apple quietly acquired the company, all of its patents, and the services of its two founders. FingerWorks quit selling its products to others, and it began filing its new patents in Apple’s name. After six months of work on the trackwheel P1 and the multi-touch P2 phone options, Jobs called his inner circle into his conference room to make a decision. Fadell had been trying hard to develop the trackwheel model, but he admitted they had not cracked the problem of figuring out a simple way to dial calls. The multi-touch approach was riskier, because they were unsure whether they could execute the engineering, but it was also more exciting and promising. “We all know this is the one we want to do,” said Jobs, pointing to the touchscreen. “So let’s make it work.” It was what he liked to call a bet-the-company moment, high risk and high reward if it succeeded. A couple of members of the team argued for having a keyboard as well, given the popularity of the BlackBerry, but Jobs vetoed the idea. A physical keyboard would take away space from the screen, and it would not be as flexible and adaptable as a touchscreen keyboard. “A hardware keyboard seems like an easy solution, but it’s constraining,” he said. “Think of all the innovations we’d be able to adapt if we did the keyboard onscreen with software. Let’s bet on it, and then we’ll find a way to make it work.” The result was a device that displays a numerical pad when you want to dial a phone number, a typewriter keyboard when you want to write, and whatever buttons you might need for each particular activity. And then they all disappear when you’re watching a video. By having software replace hardware, the interface became fluid and flexible. Jobs spent part of every day for six months helping to refine the display. “It was the most complex fun I’ve ever had,” he recalled. “It was like being the one evolving the variations on ‘Sgt. Pepper.’” A lot of features that seem simple now were the result of creative brainstorms. For example, the team worried about how to prevent the device from playing music or making a call accidentally when it was jangling in your pocket. Jobs was congenitally averse to having on-off switches, which he deemed “inelegant.” The solution was “Swipe to Open,” the simple and fun on-screen slider that activated the device when it had gone dormant. Another breakthrough was the sensor that figured out when you put the phone to your ear, so that your lobes didn’t accidentally activate some function. And of course the icons came in his favorite shape, the primitive he made Bill Atkinson design into the software of the first Macintosh: rounded rectangles. In session after session, with Jobs immersed in every detail, the team members figured out ways to simplify what other phones made complicated. They added a big bar to guide you in putting calls on hold or making conference calls, found easy ways to navigate through email, and created icons you could scroll through horizontally to get to different apps—all of which were easier because they could be used visually on the screen rather than by using a keyboard built into the hardware.[/quote]

[quote name="mubaili" url="/t/159938/behind-the-scenes-details-reveal-steve-jobs-first-iphone-announcement#post_2411536"]based the check from this site [URL=http://iphone-check.herokuapp.com/]http://iphone-check.herokuapp.com/[/URL], it only seems the 16G grey one is readily available, which is a good thing. It means people do want and are willing to pay at least $100 more for more capacity, which boost Apple's margin, cause a 16GB more storage cost way less than $100. Hooray!!! [/quote] It's $20 for the extra 16GB for Apple, $29 for the additional 48GB in the largest model. Maybe I should start that line with 'supposedly'

It's hard to believe where we've come in just six short years, thanks to Apple!

[quote name="PhilBoogie" url="/t/159938/behind-the-scenes-details-reveal-steve-jobs-first-iphone-announcement#post_2411538"][/quote] Leander Kahney had a bio of Jony Ive coming out in November. He says he got a number of current and former Apple employees to talk. It will be interesting to see how much of that book jives with Walter Isaacson's bio or other stories we've head over the years. I heard Kahney talk about his book on a podcast once and I got the impression that the way things have been recounted over the years weren't always accurate. At least according to the employees he interviewed.

Top Stories

Apple's popular 1TB 14-inch MacBook Pro is $250 off today

iPad Pro hands on: Luxury technology in an impossibly-thin package

How to use iPad as a Mac replacement and why you'd want to

iPhone 16 camera upgrades may be the best reason to upgrade

How to use RetroArch to play retro games on iPhone and iPad

iPad Air hands on: A return to an affordable large-format iPad

Featured deals.

Apple resellers celebrate the launch of 2024 iPads with deals in every category

Latest exclusives.

Apple set to deliver AI assistant for transcribing, summarizing meetings and lectures

Apple's new Photos app will utilize generative AI for image editing

Siri for iOS 18 to gain massive AI upgrade via Apple's Ajax LLM

Latest comparisons.

13-inch tablet power compared — iPad Pro vs iPad Air

Flagship iPad head-to-head — M4 iPad Pro vs M2 iPad Pro compared

iPad Air shootout — 2024 M2 iPad Air vs M1 iPad Air compared

Latest news.

2023 App Store report shows rise in downloads, developers & removals

Apple's recent App Store Transparency Report highlights substantial increases in app downloads and registered developers, along with details on the latest app removals due to government takedowns.

The iPhone has a well-loved camera system that Apple continues to improve over time. Here's what's rumored to change with the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro.

Delta Emulator changes logo after Adobe legal threat

The developer behind Delta has been threatened with legal action by Adobe, forcing the game emulator to change its icon.

OLED iPad Pro owners discover grainy display problem

New M4 iPad Pro owners are complaining about an issue that produces visible grainy artifacts in the display.

With the RetroArch app for iPhone and iPad, you can now play your favorite legacy games on the go — but it takes some work and configuration. Here's how to do it.

Apple plans a thinner and more expensive iPhone 17 for 2025

After the release of Apple's thinnest-ever iPad, A thinner iPhone is next, and may be even costlier than the iPhone 17 Pro Max.

Apple's M3 MacBook Air with 16GB RAM drops to $1,199 with promo code

A coupon discount on the latest MacBook Air with a bump up to 16GB in RAM drops the price to $1,199. Plus, add 3 years of AppleCare for just $159 — a $40 savings.

M4 iPad Pro teardown shows copper logo, highly repairable internals

A teardown of the 13-inch iPad Pro with M4 reveals it is a fairly repairable tablet, as well as an actual practical use for the rear Apple logo.

Latest Videos

Retro gold rush: which emulators are on the App Store, and what's coming

iPad, iPad Air, iPad Pro buyer's guide May 2024: which iPad to buy for any budget

iOS 17.5 is here with Repair State & EU Web Distribution

Latest reviews.

Keychron Q1 HE Review - Near-infinitely adjustable keyboard with impressive design

Atoto S8 Pro Wireless CarPlay receiver review: great, but fragile aftermarket solution

Unistellar Odyssey Pro review: Unlock pro-level astronomy with your iPhone from your backyard

{{ title }}

{{ summary }}

The first iPhone was announced 13 years ago today — here's how Steve Jobs introduced it

• Apple cofounder and former CEO Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone thirteen years ago today.
• Jobs announced the phone, which he called "revolutionary" at a Macworld conference.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories .

January 9, 2007, was a milestone in the history of computing: the introduction of the first iPhone.

It wasn't the first "smartphone," or the first phone with a camera. It wasn't the first mobile device to have a touchscreen, or to let users install apps. (In fact, the App Store didn't even launch until 2008 , a year after the first iPhone was released!)

But it tied numerous disparate features together in a cohesive, well-designed whole — kickstarting a mobile revolution that has transformed the modern world.

Today's app economy is bigger than Hollywood , and WhatsApp , Snapchat , Uber , Tinder , and more are essential parts of modern culture, collectively used by hundreds of millions of people every day. But prior to 2007, none of that existed, and the iPhone's success was by no means guaranteed.

It was announced by the late Steve Jobs, Apple's cofounder, onstage at the company's Macworld conference on January 9, 2007. The now-iconic exec was not humble about its possibilities — calling it a "revolutionary device ... that changes everything."

Five months later, as customers queued for days, it hit shop shelves in the US.

And the rest is history.

Keep reading for the story behind the launch and to watch the full keynote ...

Jobs took to the stage in his trademark black turtleneck sweater for the now-legendary presentation in January.

"Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything," the executive said. "Apple's been very fortunate. It's been able to introduce a few of these into the world."

"Well, today, we're introducing three revolutionary products of this class. The first one is a wide-screen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough internet-communications device."

He went on: "An iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator. An iPod, a phone … are you getting it? These are not three separate devices: This is one device, and we are calling it iPhone."

The performance was carefully stage-managed — but it wasn't all smooth sailing getting there.

According to a report from The New York Times from 2013, rehearsals were plagued with technical glitches. An early iPhone engineer said Jobs was "intense," telling him, "If we fail, it will be because of you," and, "You are [expletive] up my company."

Source: The New York Times

Apple is (in)famous for its secrecy — and Jobs reportedly even wanted contractors working on the presentation to sleep at the auditorium to prevent leaks. (In the end he was persuaded against the idea.)

When the phone launched, The New York Times described it as "not ... for everyone" and a "gamble." That "gamble" has propelled Apple to stratospheric heights, with the largest market cap of any company in the world.

Revisiting the launch ten years later, BBC tech reporter Rory Cellan-Jones wrote that he was criticised for giving what some argued was "undue prominence to a product launch." He now feels as if his coverage was probably justified.

Source: BBC

Google and Apple would become bitter rivals, battling for supremacy on mobile. But Eric Schmidt, then the CEO of Google, actually appeared onstage at the iPhone launch. He praised it as an "incredible job" that let companies like Google and Apple "merge without merging."

Though hyped, dozens of features iPhone owners now take for granted were nowhere to be seen at the time. No App Store, no copy-paste, no changeable background, no picture messaging, no video camera, no Siri, no notification centre, and more. It was actually pretty basic.

We've rounded up even more here .

After 2 1/2 years in development, the iPhone was announced on January 9, 2007.

It went on sale on June 29, 2007, in the US. People lined up for days outside Apple Stores to be the first to get their hands on it.

It didn't launch in the UK until months later, on November 9, 2007. People queued for it then too — and queues have since become a familiar sight at Apple's hyped launches.

Since then, more than 1 billion iPhones have been sold worldwide.

In a statement celebrating 10 years of the iPhone, Apple CEO Tim Cook said the "iPhone is an essential part of our customers' lives and today more than ever it is redefining the way we communicate, entertain, work and live ... iPhone set the standard for mobile computing in its first decade, and we are just getting started. The best is yet to come."

Source: Apple

Finally, here's part of the press release that came out alongside the announcement of the first iPhone, and the full keynote:

Apple Reinvents the Phone with iPhone

MACWORLD SAN FRANCISCO - January 9th, 2007

Apple today introduced iPhone, combining three products — a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, Web browsing, searching and maps — into one small and lightweight handheld device. iPhone introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting users control iPhone with just their fingers. iPhone also ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, which completely redefines what users can do on their mobile phones.

"iPhone is a revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone", said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We are all born with the ultimate pointing device — our fingers — and iPhone uses them to create the most revolutionary user interface since the mouse".

• Main content

• Today's news
• Reviews and deals
• Climate change
• 2024 election
• Fall allergies
• Health news
• Mental health
• Sexual health
• Family health
• So mini ways
• Unapologetically
• Buying guides

Entertainment

• How to Watch
• My Portfolio
• Latest News
• Stock Market
• Premium News
• Biden Economy
• EV Deep Dive
• Stocks: Most Actives
• Stocks: Gainers
• Stocks: Losers
• Trending Tickers
• World Indices
• US Treasury Bonds
• Top Mutual Funds
• Highest Open Interest
• Highest Implied Volatility
• Stock Comparison
• Advanced Charts
• Currency Converter
• Basic Materials
• Communication Services
• Consumer Cyclical
• Consumer Defensive
• Financial Services
• Industrials
• Real Estate
• Mutual Funds
• Credit cards
• Balance Transfer Cards
• Cash-back Cards
• Rewards Cards
• Travel Cards
• Personal Loans
• Student Loans
• Car Insurance
• Morning Brief
• Market Domination
• Market Domination Overtime
• Opening Bid
• Stocks in Translation
• Lead This Way
• Good Buy or Goodbye?
• Fantasy football
• Pro Pick 'Em
• College Pick 'Em
• Fantasy baseball
• Fantasy hockey
• Fantasy basketball
• Download the app
• Daily fantasy
• Scores and schedules
• GameChannel
• World Baseball Classic
• Premier League
• CONCACAF League
• Champions League
• Motorsports
• Horse racing
• Newsletters

New on Yahoo

• Privacy Dashboard

Yahoo Finance

Steve jobs rigged the first iphone demo by faking full signal strength and secretly swapping devices because of fragile prototypes and bug-riddled software — the engineers were so nervous they got drunk during presentation to calm their nerves.

The late Steve Jobs , renowned for his innovative vision at Apple Inc., faced a unique challenge in 2007 with the first iPhone presentation. The device was a groundbreaking concept, but it wasn't ready for a public debut. Jobs, known for pushing boundaries, orchestrated a presentation that was more of an artful illusion than a demonstration of a fully functional product.

Jobs insisted on a live presentation, deviating from the norm of prerecorded demonstrations common in Silicon Valley. To ensure the success of his ambitious plan, Apple’s development team devised a “golden path” — a carefully scripted sequence of actions designed to minimize the risk of malfunctions during the demonstration. Jobs also requested that the iPhones be configured to always display full signal strength, regardless of the actual signal quality. This was to showcase the phone’s wireless capabilities convincingly.

Don't Miss:

The vodka market is set to soar at 5.6% CAGR to $40 billion by 2030. Join Lit Vodka’s journey for a piece of the premium spirits pie.

Funders on this alternative asset platform are earning more than 14% annualized consignment profit funding Pro consignment opportunities.

Another major hurdle was the iPhone’s limited memory capacity of 128 megabytes, inadequate for unfinished, resource-heavy applications. To circumvent this, Jobs used multiple iPhones on stage, switching them out as needed to manage memory constraints.

Jobs dedicated five days to rehearse the presentation, a testament to the gravity of the event for Apple. On the day of the presentation, despite the high risk of technical failures, Jobs completed the 90-minute demonstration without any noticeable issues, a feat considered nearly miraculous by those aware of the backstage challenges.

The iPhone’s development was shrouded in secrecy. Apple’s culture of discretion was evident as engineers signed multiple nondisclosure agreements, disappearing into highly secure areas to work on what was internally seen as a moon-shot project. This intense environment led to a high-stress situation where engineers and managers were reportedly consuming alcohol and got drunk during the presentation to ease their nerves, fully aware of the device’s fragility and being "riddled with bugs."

Trending: The average American couple has saved this much money for retirement — How do you compare ?

The original iPhone also faced design challenges. Jobs and Apple’s design chief Jony Ive initially envisioned an iPhone made entirely of brushed aluminum, but this was later revised because of concerns about radio wave interference. The eventual prototype presented by Jobs was a marvel of ingenuity under constraints, showcasing a revolutionary device amid internal challenges.

When Jobs stepped onto the stage on Jan. 9, 2007, the world saw a confident presentation of a revolutionary phone. Behind the scenes, however, it was a different story. The development process was tumultuous, marked by disagreements and high turnover among engineers.

The device demonstrated on stage was an incomplete prototype, with no guarantee of stability. Jobs’ flawless demonstration was a carefully orchestrated series of tasks designed to avoid any system crashes. Despite the backstage chaos and technical limitations, the presentation was a success, marking a significant milestone in technology history and setting the stage for the iPhone’s monumental impact on the smartphone industry​​.

Why you've been left out of the insanely profitable business of website flipping until now .

Many NBA players, including LeBron James, have ventured into fine wine investments as an alternative asset. Now you can too with just $25 .

"ACTIVE INVESTORS' SECRET WEAPON" Supercharge Your Stock Market Game with the #1 "news & everything else" trading tool: Benzinga Pro - Click here to start Your 14-Day Trial Now!

This article Steve Jobs Rigged The First iPhone Demo By Faking Full Signal Strength And Secretly Swapping Devices Because Of Fragile Prototypes And Bug-Riddled Software — The Engineers Were So Nervous They Got Drunk During Presentation To Calm Their Nerves originally appeared on Benzinga.com

© 2023 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

“That was all we had of the game…”: Hellblade 2’s Rocky Start Draws Comparisons with Steve Jobs’ iPhone Launch, but Will it Be 1/10th as Successful?

F ans are at it again after they spotted another one of the comments made by Xbox head Phil Spencer, which proved untrue. Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 was announced in 2019, but the statement given by Phil back in the day might have stirred a false sense regarding the sequel to the 2017 hit.

And fans are debating it as the release date for the game nears. The Hellblade sequel is slated for release on May 21, 2024, and fans are already feasting their eyes on the game’s realism, not just VFX-wise. However, there may be a problem.

Another Old Grave Was Dug After Ninja Theory’s Revelation

As they say, honesty is the best policy, and gamers don’t like it when top gaming executives don’t adhere to it. A fan of Xbox wasn’t happy with what Phil Spencer put forth in his statements and highlighted one comment he made in 2019.

“I really hope it will be a worldwide campaign”: Hellblade 2 Marketing Campaign Has Finally Begun And Fans Have 1 Request For Microsoft

Apparently, the year saw the Hellblade sequel’s announcement trailer for Series X. The Red Dragon, a user on X/Twitter, shared a clip from the Kinda Funny podcast where Ninja Theory head Dom Matthews revealed that they had nothing but the trailer of the game at that time.

The fan was talking about Spencer’s statement he made while appearing in an interview with VICE Waypoint. He clarified that putting a trailer for a game on the screen that won’t be coming for 2-3 years wouldn’t be fair. This is similar to Steve Jobs’ first iPhone presentation that had three models but not even one was working.

Given the recent events that followed, fans aren’t really in the mood to pat Phil’s back. On the contrary, the man does have the support of executives from other video game companies .

Fans Should Just Let The Guy Go and Focus on Hellblade 2

Besides the conversation on X, fans on a gaming forum, ResetEra, were also sharing their dismay over the fact that Phil Spencer didn’t adhere to his comments. But then again, we cannot blame him alone, given Microsoft remains the main boss in the game.

Hellblade 2 PS5 Rumor Further Confirms Helldivers 2 Xbox Release Prediction

A user dubbed MuricaBob believes that last year, Microsoft “ was all promises the last handful of years .” Some users seemed relaxed and made a sarcastic comment. One of them, called Absoludacrous, implies that Phil was right, as the game was “ 4 years away “.

Phil was recently caught in another crossfire as fans started nuking his campsite in  Fallout 76 . This might have helped them release their anger a bit. However, he seems to be preparing for retaliation as he completes a quest dubbed Officer on Deck that allows players to launch nukes.

Though fans might not be happy about his statements not living up to them, they should stop digging old graves and prepare for the launch of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2 due in few days.

What do you think about Phil Spencer’s statements? We would like to know your thoughts in the comments section below.