4 HN users recommended this talk4 months2020–2025score 5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Cited as a landmark tech presentation, especially for the audience's astonished reaction to touch scrolling and demo moments like visual voicemail.
The full 80-minute Macworld 2007 keynote in which Steve Jobs introduced the original iPhone. It includes the multitouch demos, visual voicemail and scrolling.
“I consider AlphaGo - The Movie [1] to be a timeless classic that will never feel outdated.” (HN, 2025)
Phone, music player, and internet communicator in a single device, that enabled worldwide communication reliably. Just the original phone solved voicemail (with visual voicemail) once and for all in one fell swoop. It was just echelons better. That part of the initial demo still continues to blow my mind. [this video] Here’s the original introduction to the iphone: [link]
Original iPhone demo, especially visual voicemail, still impressive
I consider AlphaGo - The Movie [1] to be a timeless classic that will never feel outdated. In my opinion, it surpasses even Hollywood productions, despite being based on true events and filmed live with real people. I'm ranking it as #2, though, because I still believe Steve Jobs' 2007 iPhone presentation [2] is the greatest live tech event ever captured on film. Hearing the crowd screaming when seeing some tricks and techniques ( eg. slide to unlock , pinch to zoom and scrolling up ) on how to use the phone does really triggers some haptic feedback in my heart because we are now so used to these tricks that were pure magic back then. ______________________________ 1. [link] 2. [this video]
Greatest live tech event ever, crowd reacting to new gestures
It's hard to overstate just how big of a leap the iPhone was. Critics only focused on the shortcomings but neglected to see what it really was. Steve Jobs Introducing at Macworld in 2007 is a classic for the ages. [this video]
Classic Jobs keynote introducing a major leap in phones
A very interesting video take: [this video] tl;dw -- reviewers are understandably focusing on the technical specs, but ignoring the much more simple metric: conceptually, does the device fool the mind into accepting what it sees as "real"? And the answer for the Vision Pro is yes. It will get lighter, better, cheaper, but even now, it's important to realize that the AVP can transport you to another realistic reality in a way no other device has managed. I've only done the in-store demo, but I understand what the video is saying, and it resonates for me.
Argues Vision Pro convincingly fools the mind into seeing it as real
> I do not recall iPhone in 2007 being that huge of a hit. I was working in mobile phone retail in 2007. It was absolutely an enormous hit, and was sold out everywhere. They couldn't ramp up production fast enough. Steve Jobs original iPhone demo was a huge, huge hit: [this video] Apple already had a huge, established, fanatic base of iPod users by 2007. The presentation went viral, and people couldn't wait to get their hands on it.
I heard of Alan Kay via Steve Jobs's intro of the iPhone [1], but otherwise know little about him - can anyone recommend other Alan Kay talks/essays/books? [1] [this video]
>, we had plenty touch screen smartphones in Europe, between Nokia, Siemens-Ericson and PocketPC/Windows CE. Those were older TFT resistive touchscreens and not the newer capacitive touchscreens that could detect multi-finger gestures like swipes and pinch-to-zoom. TFT touchscreens requiring finger pressure instead of finger swipes is not as intuitive a UI. That's why the audience at Macworld 2007 gasped in astonishment when Steve Jobs demonstrated gentle finger scrolling on a capacitive screen. Deep link to that demo: [this video] Keep in mind that MacWorld tradeshow attendees are technology geeks who are aware of the latest gadgets and phones . Many of those in the audience would already have the latest 2006 Palm Treo 680 in their pocket that had a TFT touchscreen. ( [link] ) The iPhone's touchscreen capabilities made that Palm phone's TFT touchscreen technology obsolete. You can check the Europe news archives back in 2007 to see both the telecoms and customers there were also eagerly awaiting the iPhone. If Europe already had equivalent touchscreen smartphones with Nokia, Siemens-Ericsson etc, the iPhone would have been a non-event and flopped in sales. Nokia/Blackberry/WindowsCE/Android/etc switched to capacitive touchscreens to compete with the iPhone. Why didn't European devs collectively just ignore the Apple iPhone and instead, focus on Nokia Symbian OS? Devs did ignore platforms if they wanted to. E.g. the devs mostly ignored the Blackberry OS and Microsoft Windows CE Mob
Audience astonished at capacitive finger scrolling demo
Not at all. The iPod of the day had a click wheel as an input device. The iPhone introduced us to capacitive touch, multitouch, gesture recognition, full web browsing. Huge leap compared to not only the iPod but the PocketPCs of the day. Listen to the audience reaction when he shows how you scroll a list view: [this video]
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