MacWorld 2007 Keynote: What You Need to Know About the iPhone's Debut

[00:04:25] SJ: So, 2007 is going to be a great year for the Mac. But this is all we're going to talk about the Mac today. We're going to move on to some other things. And over the course of the next several months, we're going to roll out some awesome stuff for the Mac. But for today, we're going to move on.

[00:53:27] SJ: So here we are. And - listen, I got to get back to my keynote. So if I want to do that, then I'm - I just touch this arrow right here. And I'm going to go ahead and take Jony private here, and put Phil on hold. Jony, do you have anything to say on the first phone call?

MacWorld 2007 Keynote

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[00:56:26] Tim Cook: Hi Steve, it's Tim. I've got the results from last quarter. Revenue was, you know, I'll just wait and tell you when I see you in person. Good luck on the keynote. See you there.

[01:44:22] You know, I didn't sleep a wink last night. And I was so excited about today because, we've been so lucky at Apple. We've had some real revolutionary products. The Mac in 1984 is an experience that those of us that were there will never forget. And I don't think the world will forget it either. The iPod in 2001 changed everything about music. And we're going to do it again with the iPhone in 2007. We're very excited about this.

During Macworld in San Francisco, a focus in CEO Gil Amelio's keynote was Apple's recently-announced purchase of NeXT, which would include the return of company co-founder Steve Jobs in an advisory role, and the adaptation of its NeXTSTEP operating system into a future release of Mac OS codenamed "Rhapsody".[16] The signature hardware announcement of the show was the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh, a limited edition model designed to mark the 20th anniversary of the founding of Apple Computer.[17]

That August, Macworld in Boston featured Steve Jobs' first appearance at the exhibition as interim CEO,[18] and came on the heels of the release of Mac OS 8. During his keynote, Jobs notably announced that Apple had reached several agreements with Microsoft to ensure the company's stability, which included an agreement to settle patent disputes with Microsoft over its Windows operating system (including patent cross-licensing agreements), a $150 million stock investment in the company by Microsoft, a commitment for Microsoft to develop versions of Office for Macintosh for the next five years (beginning with the upcoming Office 98), and an agreement to ship Internet Explorer as the default web browser on future releases of Mac OS (with Netscape still available as an option alongside it). Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates made a remote appearance to acknowledge the partnerships, which was infamously met with a shower of boos from the audience.[19][20][21]

During Macworld in San Francisco, Jobs announced that the company had reached its fifth consecutive quarter of profitability. He unveiled the new "Blue and White" Power Macintosh G3, and a revision to the iMac with updated specifications and new color options. Part of the keynote also focused on the release of Mac OS X Server, featuring a demonstration of the NetBoot feature, and QuickTime Streaming Server by presenting a large wall of 50, diskless iMacs all streaming videos from the same Power Mac G3. Connectix presented its Virtual Game Station software for emulating the PlayStation on PowerPC Macs, and Microsoft demonstrated Internet Explorer 4.5 Macintosh Edition.[25][26][27]

The New York show took place at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. Apart from an upgraded Power Mac G4 and the announcement of Mac OS X 10.1, there were no major announcements from Apple, but the keynote presentation did feature a segment on the megahertz myth, presented by Jon Rubenstein.[35] Attendance was 64,000, a record for the event.[36]

But that's just the tip of the iPhone iceberg. All sorts of intriguing historical notes jump out from a rewatch of this famous keynote in 2022, starting with one that has nothing to do with the iPhone at all.

The iPod stood astride the world in early 2007; so much so that Jobs' first job was to sell the iPhone as a larger-screen version of the famous music and video machine. He accomplished this with the help of a playlist of "favorites" on shuffle. Perhaps this genuinely was his favorite music, or perhaps like the Mac iPhoto app slideshow he'd claimed earlier to have made himself (featuring models on a day out at Mammoth), it was in fact put together for him.

Sure, the media brand still exists, having been purchased by Verizon in 2017 for $4.5 billion. But that's a fraction of what the company was worth when the iPhone launched; a year after he was on-stage with Jobs, Yang would turn down a $44.6 billion offer from Microsoft. Both Yahoo and Microsoft would struggle to stay relevant thereafter; not even offering free email to compete with Gmail in 2007 nor buying Tumblr for $1 billion under former Googler Marissa Mayer in 2013 would help Yahoo survive in its original form.

And when Jobs introduces "visual voicemail," it takes a second to remember that he's not talking about the automatic transcript version in today's iOS; merely being able to choose which voicemail to listen to first was enough to wow the inhabitants of 2007. (For younger iPhone users, a "voicemail" is like when you leave someone a voice memo in iMessage, but for some reason you decide to do it after "calling" their "number" in the phone app.)

Today, 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.

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.

Introduced in 2007 by Steve Jobs, iPhone is Apple's flagship iOS device and easily its most popular product around the world. The iPhone runs iOS and includes a large collection of mobile apps through the App Store.

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.

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.

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.

"Steve’s keynote is always a great way to kick off the biggest Mac event of the year,” said David Korse, CEO of IDG World Expo. "We’ve added several new features to this year’s event, and we’re working hard to make this the most entertaining and informative Macworld ever."

The latter question was quickly answered by a steady stream of email requests for a MacWorld San Francisco 2007 bingo card. As for the former question, I figured the demand for keynote bingo would be filled by others if not by me. Sure enough, there are at least two other MWSF 2007 bingo games out there: a nice bingo PDF generator from Peter Hosey and a bingo game application from members of the #macnytt IRC channel on Freenode.

Both of these applications produce randomized bingo cards, which is in keeping with the actual game of bingo. It's also why I've decided to field my own card after all. I look at keynote bingo a bit differently. Unlike normal bingo, the point is not to give everyone an appropriately arbitrary chance of winning. In fact, winning is not the point at all.

The way I see it, the most important part of keynote bingo is the card itself. The choice and arrangement of squares documents the hopes and fears of the card maker, and perhaps the larger Mac community, at a particular point in time. And the detailed definitions for each square provide important context for each prediction.

Experienced keynote bingo-ers may notice that some squares left unmarked at WWDC are carried over to the new card. This is as it should be, I think. A square that remains plausible enough to be on a bingo card, but is eternally left unmarked, says something important about the interplay between what Mac fans want and what Apple chooses to produce. And yes, there's a square for both "iPhone" and "No iPhone" because, at this point, either one is a story.

The rules for keynote attendees are the same as they were last year. If you're going to the keynote in person, print out the bingo card and play along live. The first person in the audience to win the game is expected to yell "BINGO!" loud enough so that the rest of us can hear it when we watch the keynote webcast video later. If we can't actually hear you, it's also acceptable if Steve Jobs hears you on stage and gives you The Glare.

Watch Apple CEO Steve Jobs kick off the Macworld Conference & Expo 2008 with a keynote address that covers exciting developments at Apple, including the MacBook Air and the addition of movie rentals to iTunes and on Apple TV. Wed, 16 Jan 2008 - download

Check out the exciting new developments at Apple, which include the addition of Paramount movies to iTunes, Apple TV, which allows you to wirelessly play all of your iTunes content from your Mac or PC on your television, and the pioneering iPhone. This revolutionary product is a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a mobile phone, and an Internet communications device all in one. Tue, 9 Jan 2007 - download 2ff7e9595c