Why 9:41 AM is always the time displayed on iPhones and iPads

http://www.tuaw.com/2014/04/14/why-9-41-am-is-the-always-the-time-displayed-on-iphones-and-ipad/

by anderzole • 12 years ago

279 90 12 years ago

Sharlin4• 12 years ago

I wonder if it's a coincidence that 1, 4 and 9 are also the squares of the first three natural numbers. And, consequently, of course the relative dimensions of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolith_%28Space_Odyssey%29

logicallee• 12 years ago

Yes, of course it is a coincidence. If it weren't - 1:49 is a time too...

Someone• 12 years ago

<nerdy>And prime, just like 941, 419, and 491 (only a time in late 18th century France). With one even digit, this is the best one can do. I don't think you can do better with three odd digits, either unless you cheat with the triple (1,1,3)

If you stick to squares, 01:49 is the best, though, with the squares of the first four natural numbers, in order.<nerdy/>

Sharlin4• 12 years ago

I'm honestly a bit surprised by the downvotes. 1:49 would obviously not fit the other constraints involved, and seeing how Apple is known for their eye for details and the pop-cultural significance of the 1:4:9 ratio, I'm surprised if someone didn't at least think of this when choosing between 9:40, 9:41 and 9:42...

raimue• 12 years ago

HTC used to have an iconic clock on their Android handset, for which they always used 10:08 in marketing materials.

This probably stems from a tradition in advertisements for analog watches. They are usually set to some time between 10:08 and 10:10. Not only is this setting symmetric and therefore pleasing to the eye, but also any printed brand name is clearly visible and unobstructed.

cschmidt• 12 years ago

The New York Times had a whole article on why watch ads are at 10:10:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/28/business/media/28adco.html

001sky• 12 years ago

Also, rendering 10.10 is inelegant in many fonts, whilst 9.41 has alot more balance and variety purely from a typesetting perspective. That's a good article on the analogue side, though.

Orangeair• 12 years ago

An interesting note about 10:08 is that on a 12 hour digital clock, it represents the most bars which can be simultaneously illuminated.

Patrick_Devine2• 12 years ago

10:00 would also work, but doesn't seem as visually interesting.

EtienneK• 12 years ago

What about 08:08? Or won't the clock show the first 0 then?

Crito• 12 years ago

re: 10:08-10:10 on watches in advertising:

Numberphile video with a collection of dozens of such advertisements: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOClr_bew38

dfc2• 12 years ago

Caveat Lector: Crito's description "collection of advertisements" is so accurate that it is almost misleading. I was expecting some advertisements plus some numberphile commentary, I was let down. The video really is just a bunch of pictures from watch advertisements.

Aloha2• 12 years ago

TMYK - I love stuff like this :-P

jarjoura2• 12 years ago

Why was this comment down-voted?

dang• 12 years ago

Probably for not being substantive, made worse by abbrevs and smilies.

HN users tend to punish throwaway one-liners, unless they show signs of thought having been put into them. It's arguably too harsh, because some of these comments are innocuous. But the same immune reation also keeps more malignant things from taking over, so overall it does more good than harm.

netcan2• 12 years ago

Imagine having to reprint brochures, reshoot something or even have to tinker around with the clock so all your screenshots are 9:41.

There are cute quirks and there is attention to detail. But at some point or another it becomes a cultish bureaucracy no one knows the origin of demanding that all clocks alway show 9:41 for some long lost reason.

im3w1l• 12 years ago

In my experience people love quirky details performed for long lost reasons. They are central to our culture and identity creation. Take Santa Claus on Christmas dressing in red and saying hohoho, and entering through the chimney. Why not a blue woman squeezing through a tiny crack in the wall and saying neeneeneeneenee?

EDIT: Didn't downvote you btw

AznHisoka2• 12 years ago

it's cute, but pointless. probably contributes close to nothing in terms of revenue.

ecdavis• 12 years ago

Ah, yes, quirky Santa Claus who dresses in red and white for some long lost reason...

"The Santa Claus we all know and love — that big, jolly man in the red suit with a white beard — didn’t always look that way. In fact, many people are surprised to learn that prior to 1931, Santa was depicted as everything from a tall gaunt man to a spooky-looking elf. He has donned a bishop's robe and a Norse huntsman's animal skin."[1]

"Close your eyes and think of Father Christmas. What do you see? A jolly, fat man, with rosy red cheeks, a fluffy white beard and a red suit? Well close your eyes again and try and imagine him with a green suit rather than red...

Difficult maybe, but that is how the British Father Christmas should be dressed. In the 1930s a certain American soft drinks company decided Santa should be dressed in red as part of a marketing campaign and that has stuck."[2]

[1]http://www.coca-colacompany.com/holidays/the-true-history-of...

[2]http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/york/hi/people_and_places/histor...

netcan2• 12 years ago

I guess its all context. When you do it yourself, it can be fun. When you do it as an homage, that can be nice too. When you do it because someone else wants you to do it for some reason they themselves don't know or care about, it's not fun. I suppose that is the origin of cultural memes but in the context of a big company workplace, my mind tends to go the other way. I'm not a perfectionist so I guess I don't relate to this from the start.

PS: This is perhaps the most disliked comment I've ever made on HN. I'm genuinely confused. Did this seem like trolling?

jack-r-abbit• 12 years ago

Surely they'd just alter the time in Photoshop (or what ever they use).

evan_• 12 years ago

Or, for a photo shoot, set the time and take a screenshot and then display the screenshot full screen.

hippoman• 12 years ago

Advertising standards in some countries forbid digitally modifying photos of the products. I'm not sure how they define the grey areas like adjusting constrast/etc. though.

205guy2• 12 years ago

I think you may be downvoted (wasn't me either) because you assumed a negative consequence and negative reason without even trying to think of positive ones.

I would assume that they don't reprint or reshoot things, they just have a style guide so all affected people know to set the time right. As I wondered in my other comment, maybe they have tools to help them do this. And if there is a mistake (somebody forgot to set the right time), they probably fix it in photoshop.

As to why this is done, I think a company that displays so many interfaces containing a clock of some sorts, and that is known for attention to detail might try to remove any possible negative view of their ads. We often rely on the devices they sell to tell the time, so our eyes are naturally drawn to the time display in ads. If it were something odd like 3:33am or 11:12pm that might make the viewer wonder why, and get distracted from the message of the ad.

I also think that 9:41am is a positive time. It's when most people are alert and productive, feeling like they have a whole day ahead of them. I would not overlook such touchy-feely effects in advertising.

EC12• 12 years ago

Anywhere else I have ever worked has pretty much always used 4:20 in the UI as a joke. When I started work as UI/UX lead at a bank a year ago, all the process work that was done with the previous team had some arrangement of 4:20 worked in everywhere haha.

userbinator• 12 years ago

I've done the same with 13:37.

pxlpshr2• 12 years ago

Not exactly original.

And depending on who's looking at the material, it could be considered offensive. If you get away with it, great but some companies like USAA require all employees and contractors pass drug tests so suggesting the universal stoner hour might not be the best decision.

There's a reason designers use lorem ipsum in mockups – it's because once upon a time a designer thought they were clever with their fake text, and an account manager had to deal with a pissed off client because of what it said.

jsmthrowaway2• 12 years ago

And depending on who's looking at the material, it could be considered offensive. If you get away with it, great but some companies like USAA require all employees and contractors pass drug tests so suggesting the universal stoner hour might not be the best decision.

Just to be clear, you're saying that:

    - The time "4:20" might be offensive to a reader,
    - I should, for some reason, care about this,
    - USAA's decision to drug test employees is relevant.

Did I misinterpret you there? You're basically advocating for removing the 13th floor from elevators because someone might get scared or have their feelings hurt. Or designing a system that applies a penny discount to subtotals that end up at $6.66, $66.66, and so forth (I have heard of this).

4:20 is just a time. And I'm suspicious of your explanation for Lorem Ipsum's usage, as well, given how long it has existed and how long it has been in use.

dokem• 12 years ago

And depending on who's looking at the material, it could be considered offensive.

Must be rough getting offended twice daily.

tommorris• 12 years ago

I had a colleague once who set the salutation for the welcome email to the product to "Yo motherfuckers".

Basically as a way to guarantee that a copyeditor would rewrite it before it went to users and it wouldn't have copy written by developers.

An early beta user got an email calling him a motherfucker. Fortunately, he was good humoured about it.

tripzilch2• 12 years ago

If some Christian designer would use 3:16 as the time on all their documents and designs, would that also be offensive?

Or, some mystical Qabalist (or Jewish) designer could use Gematria to work all kinds of message in numbers into the designs and nobody would even be able to tell! :)

Another one, quick question, say you see someone being extremely fond of the number "88" in their designs, on a scale of one to six million, how offended would you be?

elsamuko• 12 years ago

Another story, why casio watches are always at 10:58:50

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=casio+digital&tbm=isch

http://mygshock.com/wiki/Trivia#Why_do_all_Casio_promotional...

205guy2• 12 years ago

I think the article missed some very interesting aspects of this story. First of all, why bother setting the time in the first place? I think it's because having many different times in different ads/websites/docs looks sloppy. There's also the chance of someone working late (2:00 am) or having a strange time such as 20:02 or 11:11. These are very minor but could be distracting in high-profile ads or consistent docs. Much simpler to just say that all time displays will be a simple 9:41 (time 0 in the age of the iPhone, essentially).

I would be more interested in how they implement this. I assume there is an internal style guide somewhere mandating the use of 9:41. But are people who make the images (photographers, marketing, web team, doc writers) supposed to set the devices (or their clocks) manually? Do they have corporate photoshop scripts for setting the time in "post-production?" Maybe there are test settings (later removed for shipped code) that allow the time to be "frozen" so all screenshots look natural at the desired time. Can anyone inside Apple tell us?

dinkumthinkum2• 12 years ago

That just seems too anal retentive, though, doesn't it?

borski• 12 years ago

This is Apple we're talking about. Anal retentive is what they're all about, down to the last pixel. It isn't a bad thing.

ekianjo• 12 years ago

I doubt they take actual screen pictures on their promo materials. This is usually something done in post-production, where you integrate the screen on the frame of the device. Or you make a 3D render altogether.

mrtksn• 12 years ago

Actually, I recall a short documentary about the production of the Apple ads and as far as I remember Apple uses real photos of products, not CGI. But probably because of the difficulties of capturing photos of LCD screen(white balance, polarization, luminescence intensity and so on) they may be replacing screens with screenshots.

ChrisClark• 12 years ago

Google also uses specific times in their screenshots. But the times match up with the version of Android it is running.

msoad• 12 years ago

Wow! You are right http://www.android.com/versions/kit-kat-4-4/

plorg• 12 years ago

That only appears to go back a couple versions. For example, times in ICS screenshots are all over the place: http://www.android.com/versions/ice-cream-sandwich-4-0/

echeese• 12 years ago

Holy crap: http://www.android.com/new/images/banners/meet1-1200.jpg

cowls• 12 years ago

One clock on that page says 4:30. I wader if they reused an image from an earlier version?

ISL• 12 years ago

How better to version the screenshots? Clever.

_nedR• 12 years ago

IMHO, this is indeed a much more of a real and clever usage of the clock in screenshots. But since its not related to the brainchild of Apple or Steve Jobs, your observation is most likely to languish in the comments section of this article rather than the front page of Hacker news.

anonymfus2• 12 years ago

Nokia usually uses model numbers. 9:20 for Lumia 920, for example.

sebbean• 12 years ago

can someone answer why 4:20?

mcphilip• 12 years ago

Drug culture reference:

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/420_(cannabis_culture)

Stratoscope• 12 years ago

My favorite 420 reference is California Senate Bill 420.

The bill was introduced by John Vasconcellos, who was certainly one of the coolest heads in the State Senate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Senate_Bill_420

Ellipsis7532• 12 years ago

Hehe. Interesting and kind of strange. If it's so important that the screen-shot shows the current time when it is displayed why not just have it show the correct time with a program? It doesn't seem like that would be terribly difficult.

lostlogin• 12 years ago

There is a poster on the wall of the shop I walk past occasionally. This is in print media too, and having the same advert on TV, print and web probably is something Apple likes.

Ellipsis7532• 12 years ago

Fair enough. Yes. I guess I guess I can understand it being nice to always use a standard time.

It would be really awesome if whenever there was an advert on TV if the iPhone showed the current time. However with the scheduling of TV ads I don't think this is really possible.

leccine• 12 years ago

Mine has 4:20PM all the time. Does anybody know how to fix?

brokentone• 12 years ago

I once setup all of the times in our app screenshots to be the octal representation of our company name.

i.e. 1:02 - b 1:14 - l 1:01 - a 1:32 - z 1:05 - e

adnrw• 12 years ago

Here is a 2010 article, also on TUAW, about the same thing: http://www.tuaw.com/2010/04/12/9-41-9-42-the-secret-of-apple...

lukashed• 12 years ago

I love these little details. I remember walking past the billboard in front of a not-yet-opened Samsung store that showed the Galaxy Gear and some other Galaxy Smartphones. All devices had different times on them.

parisidau• 12 years ago

Our original blog post, if anyone is interested in the original source: http://www.secretlab.com.au/ipad-day-941-am

jarjoura2• 12 years ago

Actually, OS X releases up until Snow Leopard the clock was set to the version of the OS. 10:10 for OS X 10.1 for example.

lugg2• 12 years ago

I don't see anyone has discussed it yet, could it be an advertising technique? You can create a cognitive bias in this fashion, by showing a high number like 941 the customer is less likely to balk at a sale price in the high hundreds. Where if they were pre-exposed to a low number say 3.15 they will probably find a 900 dollar price tag too much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_bias

Another thought is maybe that 9.41 is a lot of peoples reading in bed time, or taking notes in a meeting at work time. Easy to picture yourself using one at those times.

Or maybe its just a clean number that shows the correct orientation of the tablet/phone if you read it upside down

a3_nm• 12 years ago

Similarly, Free (the ill-named ISP and mobile phone provider run by Iliad in France) uses "13:37" on most ads as a geek joke (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet).

ozh• 12 years ago

and "Rock n' Roll" is the welcome message on the device. Gotta love that :)

Why 9:41 AM is always the time displayed on iPhones and iPads

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