Gavin Newsom recounts Steve Jobs giving him and Google's founders an early peek at the first iPhone
Marijan Murat/picture alliance via Getty Images; Gavin Newsom and Steve Jobs
- Gavin Newsom writes in his new memoir that Steve Jobs showed him the iPhone before its public unveiling.
- He says it happened in a San Francisco hotel suite alongside Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
- "We were quite aware that he was sharing something akin to a state secret," Newsom wrote.
Gavin Newsom saw the first iPhone well before the rest of us did.
That's according to the California governor and potential 2028 presidential candidate's new book, "Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery," which was released on Tuesday.
Newsom wrote that when he was serving as mayor of San Francisco, he found himself in the penthouse suite of the Fairmont Hotel with several tech leaders, including Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, along with Steve Jobs, then the CEO of Apple.
"I was the only one in the room dressed in a suit and tie," Newsom wrote. "Sergey and Larry were wearing T-shirts. I want to say that Steve was dressed in his blue jeans and black mock turtleneck."
In Newsom's telling, Jobs beckoned him and the Google co-founders over, where he pulled out "a sleek device that none of us had ever seen before, a solid piece of glass with no keyboard that could be held in one hand."
"He swiped the screen and we said, 'Whoa,'" Newsom wrote. "He let each of us swipe it, and I repeated, 'Whoa.'"
Newsom went on:
We were quite aware that he was sharing something akin to a state secret, something that was proprietary in the fullest meaning of the word, something that might even make him a billionaire many times over. But Steve didn't seem to give a damn about any of that. He simply wanted us to understand how its inner workings worked. He wanted to share the creativity that had gone into its elegant design and maybe engage in a bit of showmanship. The old art history student in me wondered if what was taking place in San Francisco at the turn of a new century was perhaps the same spirit of Florence on the eve of the Renaissance.
The iPhone famously introduced the world to multitouch technology, which quickly became the norm in the smartphone industry.
The device is now Apple's biggest money-maker, accounting for more than $85.3 billion of its overall $143.8 billion in revenue last quarter.
Newsom recounted the episode as he discussed the rise of the tech scene in San Francisco, much of which coincided with his own political rise from local politician to mayor.
"We began our maturations at the same time and in the same place," Newsom wrote. "We began with the same mentality of nothing to lose."
He also wrote that he gained "more than a few lessons" from his friends in the tech world.
"To believe that the city of San Francisco could solve its problems by sticking to the same old vision would be to miss the magic that was tech," Newsom wrote.