Buzzblog just recently released an interesting article about the time displayed in iPhone Ads. I never really noticed it, but surely they were right. When checking the iPad, the time displayed on its ad was 9:41, a minute sooner. After they contacted the PR department at Apple, the employee was unable to find an exact reason. However much later, Apple employee John Manning, a lead developer in Apple’s secret lab noticed this as well and identified the difference in time on the iPad.

So what did John Manning do?
He first pointed out that the ads for the iPad are actually displaying 9:41. Afterwards he decided to go talk to the guy who was actually in the ads with the device, Scott Forstall, the senior vice president of the software for the iPhone. And well… he responded alright.

So why is the time at 9:42 and 9:41 on the ads? Mr Forstall responded the following:

“We design the (product launch) keynotes so that the big reveal of the product happens around 40 minutes into the presentation. When the big image of the product appears on screen, we want the time shown to be close to the actual time on the audience’s watches. But we know we won’t hit 40 minutes exactly.”

Manning: “So you add a couple of minutes?”

“Yeah! And for the iPhone, we made it 42 minutes. It turned out we were pretty accurate with that estimate, so for the iPad, we made it 41 minutes. And there you are – the secret of the magic time.”

And there you have it!