Featured Image Credit: Michael M. Santiago / Staff via Getty
Tim Cook had a brilliant response after an 'iPhone' appeared to show up in a painting made more than 300 years before Apple’s smartphone existed.
The iPhone is one of the most recognisable objects in the world. First unveiled by Steve Jobs in 2007, it has since become a defining piece of modern technology and a product used by billions. You would think, then, that Apple’s chief executive would be fairly confident about when the iPhone was invented.
However, Apple CEO Tim Cook joked that a visit to an Amsterdam museum had made him question everything.
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Cook, who has led the company for well over a decade and is preparing to step down as chief executive, reckons he no longer has a clue, and it is all down to a painting that predates the smartphone by nearly 350 years.
The confusion set in during a chat at the Start-up Fest event in Amsterdam on Tuesday, where Cook sat down with former European Commissioner Neelie Kroes to talk through everything from health to the future of television. The pair got onto an anecdote from the night before, when Kroes had taken Cook on a trip to the city's Rijksmuseum.
“Do you happen to know Tim, where and when the iPhone was invented?” Kroes asked Cook on stage.
Cook, playing along, explained that one of the artworks had stopped him in his tracks because the subject appeared to be holding an iPhone.
“You know, I thought I knew until last night. Last night Neelie took me over to look at some Rembrandt and in one of the paintings I was so shocked. There was an iPhone in one of the paintings,” Cook jokingly explained.
When Kroes pulled up a slightly blurry photo of the piece, Cook replied: “It’s tough to see, but I swear it’s there."
The painting was not actually a Rembrandt at all, but a 1670 work by Pieter de Hooch titled "Man Hands a Letter to a Woman in a Hall". The letter being passed between the two figures and held at just the right angle, looks uncannily like someone checking their notifications.
“I always thought I knew when the iPhone was invented, but now I’m not so sure anymore,” Cook said.
You might be surprised to know that this isn't the first time a modern object has been spotted in an historic painting. Art lovers have previously been left baffled by what appeared to be 'Nike shoes' in a 400-year-old painting displayed at the National Gallery in London.
