Why does every iPhone related ad, whether it be it on TV or in print, show the time set to 9:42 on the device? Many people have wondered and many people just didn’t look that close at it, but there’s actually a reason behind that specific time. The specific reason is revealed by former Apple executive Bob Borcher:
if you ever see an Apple ad, print or TV, you look at the time and it’s always going to be 9:42 and 9:42 is when we launched the iPhone.
Also, if you noticed, the time on the iPad and iPhone 4S is always 9:41. To that, Apple VP Scott Forstall stated:
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.
Sounds like a very small detail but this just goes to show how Apple really does pay attention to the smaller things.