Heartwarming reason why Apple devices always display 9:41 in adverts

If you have a really keen eye, you might have noticed a pattern when Apple unveils its new products.

This happens a few times a year, and whether it's an iPhone, an iPad or some other device, one thing is always the same when Apple shows images of the device in question - the on-device time that it displays.

This is always set to 9:41, regardless of what device you're looking at. It wasn't always this way - for years, it was set at 9:42.

Apple

Well, it turns out there's a reason for this, and it's not just a time that Apple picked out of a hat (as if anything the tech giant does is as random as that).

First, we need to wind the clock back all the way to when Apple first unveiled the original iPhone on January 9, 2007, a moment that has gone down in history as one of the most influential tech reveals ever.

It's said that around 9:42 is the minute Steve Jobs announced the iPhone - and when he did so, an image of the smartphone with that exact time popped up behind him.

Steve Forstall, former senior vice president of iOS Software at Apple, spoke to developer Jon Manning in 2010, who then blogged about the conversation.

Forstall apparently explained: "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."

Apple

Later, it was changed to 9:41 - around about the time the iPad was unveiled - and that stuck.

Nowadays, Apple events are no longer so rigid in their timings, so that reasoning doesn't really apply (since they're video productions, not on-stage events), but the legacy of this small design choice is still there.

We went back and checked the iPhone 15 reveal from September 2023, and 9:41 is indeed the time on the phone - and it's still in all the devices on the company's website.

So, this is one great example of Apple's incredible attention to detail - something that has helped it become the absolute giant it is today.