Look at any advert for Apple’s iPhone 6, and the time is ALWAYS 9.41 on screen.

This is not a coincidence, and you’re not having an acid flashback.

Question-and-answer site Quora.com threw light on exactly why this week – and it’s all down to Steve Jobs’ perfectionist, control-freak side.


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When Jobs first announced iPhone, he wanted the phone to be ‘frozen’ at the time he announced it on stage at MacWorld.

Quora writer Brian Roemmele says, ‘On January 9, 2007 at 9:00 a.m. Steve Jobs took the stage at the 2007 Macworld Conference & Expo and just about 35 minutes into his presentation he said, ‘This is a day I have been looking forward to for two and a half years…’



‘And at just about 9:42 a.m. Steve announced the iPhone. Thus frozen in time is the near exact time the iPhone was officially announced.’

Since that time, Apple presentations have got a bit shorter, and newer iPhones such as iPhone 6 were announced at 9.41 – hence the time on screen.

Former Apple software engineer Scott Forstall said, ‘We design the product launch 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. 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.’