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On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs walked on stage at Macworld and told the room Apple was shipping three new devices: a widescreen iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator. He repeated himself. Then he said they were one device. The room screamed.
That campaign has not let up in nineteen years. Apple's iPhone ads are a masterclass: shot like films, edited like poems, scored with music you cannot shake. I have watched the ones I could find. The focus has shifted six times. This is a map of how.
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The six eras above are our editorial slice, not Apple's. We grouped the slogans by what each one was actually selling. The bold word in each scene is the focus: device, what you do with it, the body, the camera, values, the chip. The year breaks are where the language shifts. Other cuts of this material are defensible. This is ours.
The 2019 Shot on iPhone Challenge winners. Apple picked them from Instagram, paid the photographers, ran them on billboards in twenty-five cities.
Photographs from Apple Newsroom, February 2019.
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Sources: Apple Newsroom, iSpot.tv, the History of Apple archive, ASCAP. Built by sheets.works. The Data Drop, No. 059.