Steve Jobs on iPhone Orientation: Fortune Photo Error
What Jobs talks about
Jobs humorously calls out a Fortune magazine photo error, noting that the woman in the image is holding her iPhone upside down. He explains the visual clues he uses to tell: the cord is at the bottom and the 30-pin connector is at the top.
He also corrects the product detail in the photo, pointing out that the white back belongs to the iPhone 3G and 3GS, not the iPod. The moment is a tiny but revealing example of how closely he noticed Apple products and how seriously he cared about getting them right.
Jobs speaks throughout.
In his words
“Fortune.”
“She's holding it upside down.”
“The iPod doesn't have a white back, only the iPhone three g and three g s does like the one in the photo.”
“Tsk tsk.”
Key points
- The magazine photo shows an iPhone being held upside down.
- The cord placement and connector reveal the mistake.
- A white back indicates an iPhone 3G or 3GS, not an iPod.
- Jobs uses the moment to correct a public misidentification of Apple's products.
Full transcript
I just wanted to point something out really quick. Fortune. Okay. And on page one zero five, I noticed this peculiar thing right here. This woman is in fact holding her iPhone upside down. As you can see, it's got a white back and, but the cord is coming down at the bottom. And if you look really closely, you can see that the I... 30 pin iPod is at the top here. So, tsk tsk. The the iPod, nuh-uh. The iPod doesn't have a white back.
Hang on. The iPod doesn't have a white back, only the iPhone three g and three g s does like the one in the photo. She's holding it upside down.
Transcribed from the audio by speech recognition (Deepgram). Timestamps link to the video above. Errors are possible.