Have you ever noticed that iPhones always say exactly the same time when they’re shown in adverts? 9:41.
Every single Apple poster, TV commercial and billboard will always show this time, and there’s a cool reason why.
Why iPhone time is always 9:41
It’s set to 9:41 because when the iPhone was first announced to the world, Steve Jobs wanted the time displayed to match the exact time it was in the room.
The first ever iPhone was unveiled on January 9, 2007, at the Macworld Conference & Expo held in Moscone West in San Francisco, California.
On that day, the iPhone promotion actually showed 9:42, and that’s the time the Apple founder famously said: “Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone.”
At that point, a picture of the device appeared on the screen behind him with 9:42 in big letters, leaving everyone mesmerised.
They pre-planned the event and knew the launch would come around 40 minutes into the presentation. However, they wanted to allow time for things to go a bit wrong.
Anticipating a small delay, they decided to go with 9:42 instead of 9:40 – and that time was shown for the next three years.
However, when the first iPad was unveiled, they displayed 9:41 to be even more accurate. To keep everything the same, they then changed the iPhone to 9:41 too.
Since then, every single iPhone, iPad and Mac has always displayed the same time in promotional content.
Apple software engineer confirms
This was confirmed by Scott Forstall, who used to be Apple’s senior vice president of iOS software, in a 2010 interview with Secret Lab.
When asked about the time change, he 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, that’s it! People have a genius theory about why Apple Watches always say 10:09 too – but that one hasn’t been confirmed.
