📱 Apple: The Birth of the Modern Keynote

📜 Macworld - 2007

While the entire presentation is over an hour long, for the sake of this issue of Signpost, we will look at how Jobs introduced the concept of the iPhone in the first few minutes of Macworld 2007.

Here is the text that we will be analysing from the keynote, verbatim from The Next Web, with specific words and phrases highlighted for semiotic analysis below:

1️⃣ What was happening?

A few years prior, Apple had had a big hit with the iPod, and a subsequent software hit with iTunes. The work of design tsar Jony Ive had already found widespread critical acclaim with the iPod and iMac. Apple’s star was in the ascendancy.

Despite this, Apple’s singular foray into phones was a partnership with Motorola on the forgettable Motorola ROKR E1, an ugly candy-bar style phone launched in 2005 that was compatible with iTunes, yet had a 100 song limit. This was a considerable step down from Apple’s original iPod, which was famously advertised as ‘1000 Songs in your Pocket’.

After the failure of the ROKR E1, Apple insisted on going it alone to develop a communications device that spoke from Apple’s own aesthetic. In January 2007, nearly two years after their ill-fated Motorola partnership, at the company’s annual Macworld event, Apple announced the very first iPhone right at the end of their session.

2️⃣ Who wrote this and to whom?

Macworld was by this time a regular fixture within the tech news media. Jobs had already announced previous hit products and services over the years, including iTunes and the latest iMacs. Every year, Apple was consistently rumoured to launch a phone. But it was only in 2007 when Jobs referenced the device on stage that the people in the audience, and the world’s assembled media, knew Apple was delivering something unprecedented. Even today, listening to the cheers and whoops from the audience as Jobs teases the device is exhilarating.

DECONSTRUCTING THE TEXT

🗝️ Unlocking Meaning

Jobs used both specific language (“widescreen iPod”) to explain exactly what the device was, but also vague phrases (“breakthrough internet communications device”) to indicate just how ahead of the curve this technology was. By anchoring it in something people knew (iPods) and stretching it into the future, Jobs was able to extend the meaning of the device beyond simply being the latest iPod.

Jobs reiterated this by first framing the launch as three separate devices, before shrinking it down to a single device. This primed people to view each device separately, creating meaning of the size and scale of each challenge. Like a magician, Apple then revealed their final trick up their sleeve, by saying that they have managed to take these three, major, difficult, cutting edge challenges and crammed them into a single device. Immediately, the meaning created was one of Apple’s technological expertise, almost magic-like reality bending abilities through their products, reiterating their “revolutionary” language.

👑 Power Play

The iPhone single-handedly ushered in a paradigm shift for smartphones, making ‘pocket computers’ and ‘styluses’ relics of previous tech generations. The iPhone also set the new standard of what people expected from their personal, pocketable devices — basically everything. It also turbocharged cutting-edge manufacturing practices across China, cementing the nation’s undisputed position of the world’s factory (read Apple in China for more on this).

And while the impact the iPhone has had on smartphones, consumer technology, YouTube videos, social media, ride-hailing, search, design, photography, the app economy (and more) is too much to fully explore here, the launch of the iPhone is now widely considered one of the greatest keynotes of all time.

Jobs’ use of language, text, speech, images, meaning, and structure of message has become the default standard for every single tech keynote that has followed ever since. So much so that every tech company now insists on keynotes, even if there is no real need for one. It has defined how the tech industry communicates with the wider world, and has in turn influenced how all corporate communication takes place globally.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

NEXT WEEK ON SIGNPOST

Thanks for checking out this short detour on Signpost with Texts That Shaped The World. It is possible that I will revisit this series occasionally, especially during weeks when inspiration is low. Thankfully, next week we will be back to our regularly scheduled programming on how language creates meaning and enables power through trust in current events.

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