Watching the 2007 iPhone Keynote With Kim Gyeong-tae

The second of Kim Gyeong-tae’s books on Steve Jobs appeared in 2008. It takes apart the Macworld keynote in San Francisco in January 2007, when Apple introduced the iPhone. I came to it after the first volume, wanting to see what changed when the product itself was unfamiliar to nearly everyone in the room.

Decide What One Slide Has to Do

The book keeps returning to the job of a slide. One message, large enough to read, leaves room to listen. A very large number can become meaningful if you translate it into a scale the audience knows. A simple shape can make the point of a table visible without asking people to read it from a distance.

Make Time for the Audience to Notice the Change

Kim pays attention to the quiet before a highlight and to the work of moving from one slide to another. He also looks at demos, humor, guests and fallback plans. When I watched the keynote again, the pauses did not feel empty. They gave the previous point time to land before the next one arrived.

I thought of the phrase “One more thing” again when Tim Cook later used it in the Vision Pro presentation. The phrase is familiar enough to be an Apple cue on its own. What still matters is whether the thing that follows it deserves the attention.

Watch the Macworld 2007 keynote