The Mystery behind the iPhone time 9:42 is finally Revealed!

[Compile 'em all]

Ever wondered why all promo photos of the iPhone show 9:42 while the iPad shows 9:41?

Here is your answer

“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.”
“So you add a couple of minutes.”
“Yeah! And 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.”

http://secretlab.com.au/blog/posts/ipad-day-941-am/

 

[iphonegeek786]

Great Find!!

 

[colmaclean]

The iPad was revealed after ten minutes of the January keynote (ten past the hour). I reckon Forstall was taking the piss!

 

[Kahnyl]

The iPad was revealed after ten minutes of the January keynote (ten past the hour). I reckon Forstall was taking the piss!

And 41 minutes into it the New York Times app devs are in the middle of their demo.

 

[r0k]

Great find! I always wondered about that and I've watched enough live reveals you would think I would have noticed by now. But wait. I always assumed they had some video hookup to show a "live" device. Now I know it was simply a screen shot doctored to show the correct time.

 

[saving107]

 

[drjsway]

The iPad keynote started at 10AM. iPad was probably announced closer to 10:20.

 

[Bodhi395]

Anyone know if the iphone actually was revealed around 9:42 am?

 

[rorschach]

I figured it was something like that. Nice to have official confirmation though, haha.

And the times on the Mac boxes used to stand for the version of OS X they came with (10:42 was 10.4.2, 10:50 was 10.5, etc.) Obviously 10:60 doesn't work now.

 

[Chris Grande]

Also the time on the screen of the computer boxes used to be the version of the OS the computer shipped with 10.4.5 -> 10:45, etc as the time. I'm not sure what they are now doing with 10.6.