First Mention: iPhone

Transcript

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

This fight between law enforcement and Apple seems like the right moment to dip into our feature...

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: First mention.

SHAPIRO: To discover when NPR initially spoke the word, iPhone.

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

We first talked about the iPhone on NPR's air on December 29, 2006. It came in the answer to a question by host Madeleine Brand on our former program Day To Day. She was interviewing reporter Janet Babin about run-in Apple had at the time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

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MADELEINE BRAND, BYLINE: Well, what's next for the company, then?

JANET BABIN, BYLINE: Well, analysts are very optimistic. They say, you know, Apple's expected to sell 15 to 16 million iPods for the December quarter and 1.7 Mac computers - a lot of sales. And then, on January 9, Piper Jaffray expects apple to debut its long-awaited product, the iPhone, that combines the iPod with a phone. And that's expected to keep the company's popularity and profits up.

SHAPIRO: A little more than a week later, on January 9, 2007, there was Steve Jobs on stage to make a big announcement for that combination iPod and cell phone.

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STEVE JOBS: And we are calling it iPhone.

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JOBS: Today - today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.

SHAPIRO: Later that June, Apple released its first iPhone.

SIEGEL: Well, in a First Mention feature, normally we'd stop right there, but we need to go to 1998. You see, there was another so-called iPhone introduced then. The company that brought it to the world was called InfoGear.

SHAPIRO: It had the lowercase I and the uppercase P, just like Apple's later invention. In this 1998 iPhone, the I stood for information, not Internet. And on December 11, 1998, eight years before NPR mentioned the Apple iPhone, Science Friday host Ira Flatow was taking Christmas gift suggestions from listeners.

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IRA FLATOW: We're talking about high-tech gifts and toys and stuff this year. Let's go to Newton, right outside Boston, to Debbie. Hi, Debbie.

DEBBIE: Hi. How are you?

FLATOW: Hi there. You've got a suggestion for us?

DEBBIE: I do - something called an iPhone lowercase I, phone - all one word. And what it is is it's a telephone and it - that gets you onto the net. It's about the size of a telephone with an answering machine - that kind of a size.

FLATOW: So you do away with the whole big PC and everything?

DEBBIE: You don't need a PC. You don't need a computer.

FLATOW: Well, it's probably in there and you don't even know it.

DEBBIE: Well, it is in there. You have a keyboard. You can get and receive email. You can get - do web browsing. You know, you can get onto the net. It has a lot of phone features. It has a speakerphone and caller ID.

FLATOW: Have you used this, Debbie?

DEBBIE: I have. I bought it a week ago. And I originally signed up for unlimited - you know, you have options for limited access. It's so user-friendly, it's hard to believe.

SIEGEL: Yes, hard to believe, and safe to say that this iPhone did not change the world.

SHAPIRO: But a decade later, Apple picked up the name. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.