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Steve Jobs Flung The First iPhone On The Floor To Impress Reporters
By Ell Ko, 04 Oct 2021
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Image via Matt Yohe / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY SA 3.0)
Just after the first-ever revolutionary iPhone was revealed in January 2007, Steve Jobs made a trip down to the headquarters of the Wall Street Journal in Manhattan, New York, to show the device to some reporters in more detail before it went on sale.
This event was attended by Roger Cheng of CNET, who recalls that the entire thing was off the record as Jobs not only instructed everyone to turn off their phones and recorders, but also to put their notebooks and pens away.
The original black and silver device was shown to more than two dozen people at the time, and Jobs was on scene to answer any and all questions about his new innovation.
One of those questions was about its durability. And, hey, actions speak louder than words, right? So, to a gasp and stunned silence, Jobs raised the iPhone into the air and tossed it swiftly into the middle of the room, as one does.
When revealed at the January event, the original iPhone was extremely glitchy. It was reported to have more bugs than actual functioning features. Although, at this stage, the phone was more developed and could allow for users to test it out like the reporters did that day, it was still pretty fragile and issue-prone. This makes that throw even riskier than it already sounds.
Thankfully, the floor was carpeted. It broke the device’s fall, and it worked perfectly fine afterward. Following this, staff handed out a few more test units for the reporters to experiment with, now clear of the bugs that plagued the device at the earlier reveal.
Cheng writes, “Picture two dozen dressed up and professional journalists breaking out into small groups and circling the phones like schoolchildren around new toys, then moving in to swipe, pinch and otherwise test out that then-revolutionary capacitive touchscreen.”
When the iPhone hit the market later on in June that year, it changed the world and saw the mobile industry make a huge leap forward, and the rest is history.
[via CNET, image via Matt Yohe / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY SA 3.0)]
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