Mazhar Mohad
3 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2012–2019
2:01 · 776K views · Jun 7, 2007
A compilation of the first four iPhone commercials from the June 2007 launch. The ads walk through using the device and stress real web browsing.
Cited as a reference for how Apple's early iPhone advertising was product-focused and used usage walkthroughs.
3 comments from Hacker News
This new commercial underscores Apple's major competitive advantage in a crowded market: customer service. Apple spent a good part of the last decade winning on design and usability, an early iPhone commercial underscores this: this video Crisp, product focused, and delighting in the uniqueness of the product. But with smartphones now having ubiquitous feature sets, Android tablets fast competing on hardware, etc I think that Apple, under Steve or not, is right to be iterating their messaging. In my own experience I've watched non-techie family members fumble with chopped-versions of Android under different carriers. It would be a huge relief to just be able to say "Schedule an appointment @ the Apple store" So smarmy or not, I think that Apple's new ad-strategy is on point message wise, if not perfect in execution.
> ts web browsing ability wasn't much better than what you could already get on keyboard-based phones like Nokia, Blackberry and Samsung. On the iPhone you did pinch to zoom, and on the other smartphones, you were served the WAP version of the page, or you could browse the full page with the scrollwheel. That's a very revisionist version of events. Much of the initial disillusionment around the web on featurephones came from WAP being (mis)sold as the Internet on a phone. If you go back and watch the original iPhone demo you can see that people were genuinely wowed by being able to browse the Internet ('the real internet') on a mobile. In fact, 'it's not a watered down version of the internet' was one of the tag lines of one of the first iPhone commercials this video
The very first iPhone commercials featured usage walkthroughs[1]... seems they've done OK to me. [1] this video