We’re back with another Amazing Apple Anecdote. This week we learn how Marc Andreesen, a web browser pioneer, questioned the lack of a keyboard on the iPhone prototype. He was out to dinner with Jobs at the time, and the latter quickly dismissed his worry.
Marc Andreessen, Internet browser pioneer turned venture capitalist, recalls a double-date he had with Jobs a few months before the iPhone was unveiled. “In the fall of 2006, my wife, Laura, and I went out to dinner with Steve and his brilliant and lovely wife, Laurene. Sitting outside of the restaurant on California Avenue in Palo Alto waiting for a table to open up, on a balmy Silicon Valley evening, Steve pulled his personal prototype iPhone out of his jeans pocket and said, ‘Here, let me show you something.’ He took me on a tour through all of the features and capabilities of the new device.
“After an appropriate amount of oohing and aahing, I ventured a comment. BlackBerry aficionado as I was, I said, ‘Boy, Steve, don’t you think it’s going to be a problem not having a physical keyboard? Are people really going to be okay typing directly on the screen?’ He looked me right in the eye with that piercing gaze and said, ‘They’ll get used to it.’”
Apple has sold more than 250 million iPhones since 2007 and it’s one of the top-selling smartphones in the world.
People sure did get used to it, as Steve Jobs’s accurate predictions were again on show. That’s it for this week, but we’ll be back soon with more. For now tough, enjoy!
