What Does The 'I' In iPhone Stand For? Here's What Steve Jobs Had To Say

The Apple iPhone is among the most popular consumer electronics products to ever exist. Its introduction at Macworld 2007 is widely regarded as a watershed moment in the history of smartphones, and consumer electronics in general. The iPhone has played a pretty key role in the way the smartphone industry has evolved since then. Many features that modern-day smartphone users take for granted — including things like capacitive touchscreens pinch-to-zoom, desktop-class apps, and a one-stop app store — owe their existence to the iPhone.

While its legendary status as a groundbreaking device isn't up for debate, something argued about is how Apple arrived at the name "iPhone" for its first-ever smartphone. After all, it is a rather simple name, an "i" followed by a rather mundane word: "phone."

There's a whole debate about what Apple and its then CEO Steve Jobs meant the "i" in iPhone to stand for. This is interesting in itself considering that the iPhone was not the first Apple device to get the "i" moniker. But then it is, without a doubt, the most popular product in the company's lineup today,

Nevertheless, we decided to investigate and figure out what the "i" in iPhone— and the rest of the products in the Apple lineup actually mean.

Given the iPhone popularity, many people assume it to be the first Apple product to bear the "i" prefix. Nothing could be further from the truth. The first use of the "i" prefix on Apple products predates the iPhone by nearly a decade — when, in 1998 — Steve Jobs announced a brand-new lineup of desktop computers called the iMac.

The iMac was among the first devices launched under Steve Jobs', who returned to Apple in 1997 after being fired in 1985. Nevertheless, it was during the unveiling of the first-generation iMac in 1998 that Steve Jobs first mentioned what the "i" in the iMac stood for. In his launch event speech, he touted the iMac as a device designed to give consumers the best possible internet experience.

In the late 90s, the internet was a very new phenomenon, and there was a demand from consumers to easily access it. In his keynote address, he made it clear that the "i" in iMac represents the internet. It was evident from the promotional tagline for the iMac — "The excitement of the internet. The simplicity of Macintosh".

While that effectively settles the argument, something interesting happens a few seconds later when Jobs goes on to add how the "i" also represents several other things for Apple. A slide shows the words "individual," "instruct," "inform," and "inspire," along with "internet" effectively indicating that the "i" in iMac could take any meaning the consumer wants.

Ultimately, Apple would go on to use the "i" moniker on many of its future products, and Apple consumers still feel a special connection to the brand.

The 1998 iMac was the first of many Apple products and services that would go on to use the "i" prefix. In 1999, barely a year after the iMac, the developed the Apple iBook, a series of laptop computers that were the precursors to modern-day MacBooks. Apple pulled the iBook lineup in 2006 when the company started using Intel processors.

The iBook was followed by one of Apple's most iconic products ever before the iPhone era. In 2001, Apple came up with the iPod, a portable music player that revolutionized how we listened to music. The iPod saw several generations of the product and was on sale continuously from 2001 until Apple decided to pull the plug on the product line in 2022. In its 22 years, Apple sold an estimated 450 million iPods.

Two years after the first iPods burst onto the scene Apple came up with the standalone iSight web camera in 2003. Apple continued to use this name for the integrated webcams across its devices well into 2010, until Facetime replaced it.

As outlined earlier, 2007 saw the debut of the iPhone, which went on to become the most popular product Apple has ever made. Three years later, Apple came up with the iPad, its first-ever tablet. Apple continues to sell several variants of the iPad to this day.

Besides these hardware products with the "i" prefix, Apple also had several services and software products that use a similar naming scheme. Some of the notable ones include iMovie, iCloud, iMessage, and iTunes.