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Frame from Steve Jobs introduces iPhone in 2007 Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Steve Jobs introduces iPhone in 2007

John Schroter
Demos
YouTube
3 HN users recommended this demo2 months2020–2025 score 2.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN treats it as the model product demo and MVP showcase, and as a reminder of how constrained the first iPhone hardware was.

An excerpt from Steve Jobs's January 2007 Macworld keynote in which he introduces the original iPhone. It shows the pitch of a phone, music player and internet communicator, along with the live demo.

“If you want to se the ultimate MVP demo of a product look no further than the 2007 introduction of the Apple iPhone” (HN, 2022)

1 strong recommendations · 2 recommendations · 3 citations · Demos

6 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@senttoschool Oct 2022 Strongly recommends
on HN thread Meta and the Innovator's Dilemma
>It wasn't "so much more advanced", it used a heavily power constrained ARM SoC with limited memory running a software stack ported over from desktop and gosh could you ever feel it. [this video] I highly recommend watching this.
Shows how constrained the first iPhone hardware felt in the demo
@maneesh Aug 2020 Recommends
on HN thread My startup validation process
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. [link] Here’s the original introduction to the iphone: [this video]
Original iPhone keynote showing phone, music player and internet communicator
@vparikh Oct 2022 Recommends
on HN thread Ask HN: How to show a not “so perfect” MVP to potential customers?
Read more
If you want to se the ultimate MVP demo of a product look no further than the 2007 introduction of the Apple iPhone - [this video] It was not a finished product and the dev team was terrified that the system would crash. In fact you could argue that the first iPhone was an MVP released to the public. These would help: - Be upfront that this is an MVP. Do not try to sell it as a product that is a finished product - Create a script that shows the core working functionality - rehearse the script and make sure the feature list demonstrated and that you can run through the script - In your case, is it possible that you can dictate (you need to control the variables)? - Ask for feed back. Listen. Do not try to defend the product. Hope this helps
Example of a high-stakes MVP demo with a scripted core flow

Citations, criticism and jokes

@probably_wrong Sep 2022 Cites it
on HN thread Ask HN: Which software do you use for your presentations?
Read more
> Total noob here when it comes to making good presentations. No software in the world will make your presentation interesting if you don't know how to make a good presentation. A good place to start, IMHO, are the "Death by Powerpoint" guidelines [1]. As for the software itself: I use LibreOffice and that's fine - if it can generate presentations that would allow Steve Jobs to introduce the iPhone [2], it is good enough for me. I've also used Powerpoint and Keynote, and other than Keynote having slightly prettier defaults I couldn't give a strong reason for choosing one over the other. I would encourage you to be very careful with animations - you don't want your audience to lose focus because you took them on a Hollywood-like trip across the universe every three minutes (looking at you, Prezi). I think your slides should be there only to show content that you cannot explain with words alone - if I can read everything I need from your slides, then why are you here? Note: you would be surprised at the fierce oposition in big companies against slides that contain anything less than the content of the entire presentation. Always know your audience beforehand! [1] [link] [2] [this video]

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