Twenty-eight years after Steve Jobs first teased Apple’s return to profitability with a ‘one more thing,’ the phrase has become both a marketing legend and a cautionary tale.
Steve Jobs introduced the tradition in 1998 with a dramatic pause before announcing Apple’s return to profitability after near-bankruptcy. “I forgot something. There is one last thing I gotta tell you,” he said, signaling a new era for the company.
"I forgot something. There is one last thing I gotta tell you."
The 2000 MacWorld event featured two ‘one more things’: the Aqua design of Mac OS X and Jobs’ official appointment as CEO. The same year, the Power Mac G4 Cube was unveiled as a visually striking but commercially failed product due to high pricing and performance limitations.
In 2005, the iPod Shuffle defied expectations by removing a screen entirely, lowering the price point and succeeding in the market.
The 2006 MacBook Pro introduced Intel chips, MagSafe, and a built-in iSight camera, marking Apple’s shift to Intel-based hardware.
Tim Cook’s first ‘one more thing’ in 2014 was the Apple Watch, presented theatrically under his sleeve. The 2017 iPhone X revolutionized the iPhone with an all-screen design and notch, influencing the entire smartphone industry.
The 2020 Apple silicon Macs (M1) marked a full transition to in-house chips, though the event didn’t explicitly use the phrase.
2023’s Vision Pro, Apple’s first mixed-reality headset, reportedly underperformed commercially despite being framed as a paradigm shift.