…about the first iPhone
Steve Jobs used sleight of hand at the first iPhone presentation.
The first iPhone presentation happened six months before the iPhone was set to hit the market.
At that time, the phone was too buggy to use, so Steve Jobs often had to switch phones behind his desk.
Otherwise, it would run out of RAM and crash.
The engineers and managers were downing Scotch in the fifth row of the Moscone Center as Apple's co-founder demonstrated an aspect of the iPhone.
Through trial and error, engineers came up with the golden path, where an iPhone would survive to the end of the demo without crashing, but only if everything was shown off in the right order. Tap the wrong app by mistake and the phone would freeze or switch off completely. Although it looks like Jobs is casually scrolling through the phone's functions, he is carefully demonstrating each for just a few seconds to avoid overworking the handset.