You can thank Steve Jobs' pettiness for the iPhone Stocks app icon

You probably don’t open it all that often and some might forget it’s there. Others might have deleted it ages ago, but did you know that the iPhone Stocks app has a hidden secret?

That secret is all about how it came about that famous icon. The one that shows a stock going up and the blue line pinpointing a very specific point at the crest of a wave. You know the one, right?

Well, did you know that the icon shows the point when Apple’s share value surpassed that of Dell way back when? Well, now you do.

You’ll never guess why

I’ll fess up because I didn’t know that either. But according to Mac Life and designer Andres Storm, it’s the case. And that isn’t the end of it, either.

The story goes that Dell founder Michael Dell famously suggested that Apple be sold off, saying that the best course of action would be to « give the money back to the shareholders. » Apple wasn’t doing great in 1997, see. But when things turned around Jobs didn’t forget.

So when Apple’s share price surpassed that of Dell’s in January 2006, Jobs remembered what Dell had said. And it’s that point in time that’s reflected in the icon that appears on every iPhone around the world.

Without that point in time, we likely wouldn’t have everything we have today. No iPhone 15 just around the corner, and the best iPhone would probably be a Motorola ROKR. And that would just be sad, wouldn’t it?

Unless of course, this is all just the thing of myth and legend, in which case it’s even better. Because let’s be absolutely honest here, what makes this so brilliant is that we could all absolutely imagine Jobs having someone make the Stocks icon this way just to annoy Michael Dell.