10 guesses for what the ‘i’ in iPhone stands for and I bet you get them all wrong.
We’ve all been there, lying awake at night trying to go to sleep but our minds are wandering, pondering the all-important questions in life; what came first the chicken or the egg, has the water we’re drinking been touched by dinosaurs or what does the ‘i’ in iPhone stand for?
No? Just me? Well, if you have ever wondered how the iPhone came to be named, this is your lucky day.
The first iPhone was released in 2007 and it’s logo was the first thing to catch people’s eye – like, what’s the deal with the apple?
Many have speculated it could be a reference to Adam and Eve in the Bible or the apple that fell on Isaac Newton’s head – though graphic designer Rob Janoff has claimed those suggestions are more of a ‘wonderful urban legend’.
With that in mind, many of us haven’t probably considered where the ‘I’ originates.
However, many have flocked to social media to speculate as to what the ‘I’ could mean – and there have been a lot of good guesses out there.
The likes of ‘intelligent’ and ‘indispensable’ have been mentioned, while one social media user even suggested that it simply means ‘I’ in terms of ‘my phone’.
Thankfully, the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs revealed what the ‘I’ stands for back in 1998 – and it’s many more words than you may think.
According to Reader’s Digest, Steve Jobs confirmed that the ‘I’ stands for ‘internet, individual, instruct, inform and inspire’.
However, he did add that the ‘I’ ‘didn’t have an official meaning’, adding that it could also refer to ‘I’ as a personal pronoun or ‘instruction’ for teaching Apple’s employees.
People were surprised to finally have the meaning (sort of) confirmed – with many sharing what they thought the ‘i’ stood for.
In a TikTok and YouTube video about the topic, someone wrote: “I thought it was i for myself,” while another thought it meant ‘intelligent’.
A third said: “i thought it was because os iOS.”
While on YouTube, one person commented: “I guess you could say, “i” didn’t know this before.”
And another wrote: “This is what i wondered last night when i was trying to sleep…”
Same here social media user, same here.