A lazy Sunday note: Build the thing that lasts

It was a slow Sunday afternoon. Instead of watching a random show on Netflix, my wife and I randomly opened the original iPhone keynote from 2007, and decided to watch it. Steve Jobs was on stage, wearing a black turtleneck, revealing a product that changed everything.

My wife’s a product designer. We paused often, rewinding to appreciate the tiny details. At one point, she said, “Wow. The experience still looks the same today.”

And it’s true. That launch wasn’t just exciting, it showed how to build something that really solves problems, with care put into every little details.

Steve talked about how physical keyboards were limiting, every app had to use the same keys, even when they didn’t make sense. So they got rid of the keyboard and made the screen bigger, turning it into a flexible surface that could change based on what you were doing.

He explained it with such excitement and clarity, like he couldn’t wait to show the next idea. You could feel how much they cared about the problem and how proud he was of the solution. It felt like every slide, every demo, was solving a problem you didn’t even realize you had.

They added the proximity sensor not because it is a fancy technology but because they noticed the problem with putting a touchscreen near your face during a call, such as accidental taps, or if the screen stays on, the battery will be draining. So they made it smart: the screen turns off when it’s close to your ear. A small touch, but it solved a real annoyance.

They realized the problem with small buttons and styluses, interacting with phones felt slow, awkward, and unnatural. So they solved it with multi-touch. Use your fingers to pinch, swipe, and scroll. The screen responded exactly the way you expected, with no stylus or extra tools.

There’s so much more you can take away from that keynote. Most of what they introduced wasn’t just a feature, it was a real solution to a real problem. You could feel the care in every design choice, like they had gone through every frustrating part of using a phone back then and fixed it, one by one. It was problem-solving at its most exciting.

And the best part? If it is not all, many of those solutions are still the standard user experience today.

We both agreed: it must’ve been incredible to be on that team. Not because they launched a “hit” but because they really built product. Solving real problems. Obsessing over the details that most teams skip.

Maybe it’s just our experience, but it feels rare today. So many products are built backward, starting with a story, then looking for a problem to match.

But the ones that stick: Google Search, Google Maps, the iPhone, they endure because they do one thing well: They solve the right problem, with a lot of care.

So here’s a quiet reminder to myself (and maybe to you too): Build things that matter. Solve real problems. Pay close attention to every little detail.

That’s how you build something that lasts.