Remembering The Day Steve Jobs Gave Us The iPhone

All right, we're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, and paired all those weird-shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses, and I plugged in the Bartesian. Bartesian? It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails, plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites, too.

I just got it for 50 off. So, how about a Closmopolitan or a mistletoe margarita? I'm thirsty.

Watch. I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength, and... Wow, it's beginning to feel more seasonal in here already. If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender. Unless you've got a Bartesian, because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly, in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off.

Tis the season to be jollier. Add some holiday flavor to every celebration with the sleek, sophisticated home cocktail maker, Bartesian. Get $50 off any cocktail maker at Bartesian.com slash cocktail. That's B-A-R-T-E-S-I-A-N dot com slash cocktail.

Hey, it's me, Tyla. Both open earbuds are stylish. The color, the way it looks, it looks almost like an earring, you know? So, I feel like I could go with anything. My style is very fun.

I feel like I always look like I'm on holiday. I just really like playing around with it and tying it to the music. So yeah, I really feel like the music I'm making right now feels like a holiday, so I want to look like it too.

Check out Bose dot com for more. This is Simone Boyce from The Bright Side. Beauty is about more than just beauty. It's about worth, individuality and the power that comes from being your truest self. At L'Oréal Paris, beauty means embracing who you already are, enhancing the diverse features, experiences and personality that makes you, well, you. L'Oréal's beauty essentials combine innovative products with that classic Parisian touch to help you feel like your most confident self.

Because taking on the world is a little less scary when you feel ready for your close up. L'Oréal Paris, because you're worth it. Learn more at L'Oréal Paris dot com. Hey, it's Will Friedle and Sabrina Bryan, and we're the hosts of the new podcast, Magical Rewind. You may know us from some of your favorite childhood TV movies like My Date with the President's Daughter and the Cheetah Girls movies. Together, we're sitting down to watch all the movies you grew up with and chat with some of your favorite stars and crew that made these iconic movies happen.

So kick back, grab your popcorn and join us. Listen to Magical Rewind on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by State Farm.

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. And we continue with Our American Stories and to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Up next, a story about an American product that was released not so long ago, one you might be listening to this show on right now. Well, this product, it changed the world. It changed everything.

Let's take a listen. On January 9th, 2007, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, already a legendary pitchman, put on what many considered the best business presentation in corporate history. Here's technology commentator Charlie Brown. Steve Jobs was a master at teasing new technology to people and everyone turned up to Macworld thinking they were seeing a new iPod or a new Mac. He was showing them something vastly different, something new and something that was going to change the world.

And he did it like the master that he was. This is a day I've been looking forward to for two and a half years. At the Macworld conference in San Francisco, Jobs built up the narrative before he even mentioned a new product. Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. 1984, we introduced the Macintosh. It didn't just change Apple, it changed the whole computer industry. In 2001, we introduced the first iPod and it didn't just change the way we all listen to music, it changed the entire music industry. Well, today we're introducing three revolutionary products of this class.

Jobs was famous for adding one more thing at the end of his keynotes. In his 2007 iPhone presentation, he put the twist at the beginning. The following excerpt is the most viewed and maybe the most memorable part of the iPhone presentation. The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough internet communications device.

So, three things. 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. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.

Every great story has a villain or a conflict in need of a resolution. In his 2007 iPhone keynote, Jobs showed several competing smartphones and pointed out their weaknesses, and then showed how the iPhone solved all their issues. Now, here's four smartphones, right? Motorola Q, the Blackberry, Palm Treo, Nokia E62, the usual suspects.

And the problem with them is really sort of in the bottom 40 there. They all have these keyboards that are there whether you need them or not to be there. And they all have these control buttons that are fixed in plastic and are the same for every application. Well, every application wants a slightly different user interface, a slightly optimized set of buttons just for it.

And what happens if you think of a great idea six months from now? You can't run around and add a button to these things. They're already shipped. Well, how do you solve this? Hmm, it turns out we have solved it. We solved it in computers 20 years ago. We solved it with a bitmap screen that could display anything we want, put any user interface up, and a pointing device. We solved it with the mouse, right?

We solved this problem. So how are we going to take this to a mobile device? Well, what we're going to do is get rid of all these buttons and just make a giant screen.

A giant screen. Now, how are we going to communicate this? We don't want to carry around a mouse, right?

So what are we going to do? Oh, a stylus, right? We're going to use a stylus. No.

No. Who wants a stylus? You have to get them and put them away and you lose them, yuck. Nobody wants a stylus. So let's not use a stylus. We're going to use the best pointing device in the world. We're going to use a pointing device that we're all born with. We're born with ten of them.

We're going to use our fingers. It's easy to forget how funny Jobs could be on stage. His iPhone launch presentation elicited a laugh from the audience 51 times. Here's one of those times during the iPhone Maps pitch. Starbucks. So I'm going to search for Starbucks. And sure enough, there's all the Starbucks. Now, I can get a list of Starbucks here.

So I can pick that one if I want. And I can even go look at that Starbucks. And there it is.

And let's give them a call. Good morning. This is Starbucks.

How can I help you? Yes, I'd like to order 4,000 lattes to go, please. No, just kidding. Wrong number. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Okay. Today we look back, and it all looks so easy. But the launch of one of the best-selling products of all time was expected by many to go disastrously wrong and take Apple's fortunes along with it. Here's iPhone co-creator Andy Grignon. Every single time he touched the screen, we're waiting for the music to stop playing. We're waiting for the browser to just go white.

I mean, there's all sorts of things that we knew could happen. I've got playlists here. I can go into my playlists. I've got artists.

I've got songs. The stress level is through the roof. You've never seen behind stage a more angsty, miserable group of people. Jobs' team is stressed for good reason. Up until this point, the iPhone had never made it without a glitch through all the trial tests and practice presentations. We had a very careful path. It was called the golden path that Steve had to follow. He had to do exactly these things in exactly this order.

And if he didn't, it could crash. What the audience didn't know was to avoid these crashes, there are several iPhones in Jobs' lectern, with Jobs discreetly switching between them. It would take a magician to figure out how he did it.

Here's magician Penn Jillette. He was doing switches. He would switch one iPhone for the other so he could show off different apps when they actually couldn't change. But even with the multiple hidden iPhones, Andy Grignon and his team of engineers who watched backstage expected the worst. Grignon came prepared, especially for that grand finale crank call to Starbucks. I could play with this for a long time. I just anticipated all this going wrong. So on my drive, I brought with me a bottle of scotch. And what we decided to do is every one of us who was responsible for a certain part of the demo, whether it was playing some music, showing the maps, whoever was responsible for that part would take a shot.

Problem was, I'd been involved for all of them. By the time Steve does the big finale, I'm completely wasted. He's got, at this point, maps going, there's paused music.

All the software is lit up on this phone. So I'm going to search for Starbucks, and sure enough, there's all the Starbucks. Things could go just absolutely sideways.

I can even go look at that Starbucks. And there it is, and let's give him a call. Maybe the whole thing was just going to go black and then restart. We didn't know. It was the first time any of us as a group saw just a perfect demo.

I mean, we'd never seen the whole thing go off without a hitch. Five months after Steve Jobs' presentation, as customers waited in line for days, the iPhone hit the shelves in the United States. The device is still Apple's most important product in their arsenal of cultural and technological must-have items. 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 before the iPhone, none of that existed. And great work as always, and thanks to the folks at Hillsdale College, who, by the way, teach things like the fact that intellectual property rights, well, they're in the Constitution, and they're in Article I, and this innovation is not possible without that.

And what free enterprise does for the world and for human progress? By the way, that clapping you kept hearing, that was not your typical corporate meeting and corporate launch, was it, folks? On this day in history, in 2007, the iPhone has launched and changed the world.

This is Our American Stories. All right, we're all set for the party. I've trimmed the tree, hung the mistletoe, prepared all those weird-shaped knives and forks with the appropriate cheeses, and I plugged in the Bartesian. Bartesian? It's a home cocktail maker that makes over 60 premium cocktails, plus a whole lot of seasonal favorites, too.

I just got it for 50 off. So how about a Clausmopolitan or a mistletoe margarita? I'm thirsty.

Watch. I just pop in a capsule, choose my strength, and... Wow, it's beginning to feel more seasonal in here already. If your holiday party doesn't have a bartender, then you become the bartender, unless you've got a Bartesian, because Bartesian crafts every cocktail perfectly, in as little as 30 seconds. And I just got it for $50 off.

Tis the season to be jollier. Add some holiday flavor to every celebration with the sleek, sophisticated home cocktail maker, Bartesian. Get $50 off any cocktail maker at bartesian.com slash cocktail.

That's B-A-R-T-E-S-I-A-N dot com slash cocktail. I have a way to make your morning more efficient. You can get caught up on the news in about seven minutes. That is my promise to you as the host of The 7 Podcast from The Washington Post. And in that time, I will run down seven stories, everything from the most important headlines to fascinating new information you might miss otherwise.

My name's Hannah Jewell. Go follow The 7 right now, wherever you're listening, and we will get you caught up. So stream what you love and turn up the cheer with iHeartRadio on the Roku channel.

Happy streaming! Take a deep dive into the stories making the news headlines across the world. The news agents. We're not just here to tell you what's happening, but why.

From me, Emily Maitlis. And me, John Sople. With Global's award-winning podcast, The News Agents, dropping daily, covering everything you need to know about politics and current affairs. And The News Agents USA. Listening to The News Agents on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search The News Agents to start listening.