After 15 years of the iPhone’s existence, the clownfish wallpaper from Apple’s infamous 2007 presentation is finally making its way to the devices — at least for some developers using the latest iOS 16 build. Twitter user Jack Roberts shed light on the background and share a screenshot of the Clownfish option under the Collections section in iOS 16 Beta 3. The tweet subsequently gained a lot of attention after it was retweeted by Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman†
The magic photo of a baby and an adult clownfish living inside a green anemone is the first image ever presented during Steve Jobs’ unveiling of the original iPhone and its glorious 3.5-inch screen, but oddly enough, Apple never got it. as a built-in background image. The full version of the image was later released on the Mac: for example, in the 2009 Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard release, it was located under the Nature folder in Desktop & Screen Saver.
Some users seem to be seeing a new Clownfish wallpaper in iOS 16 beta 3. This is the wallpaper Steve Jobs used when the original iPhone was announced in 2007 – but it never actually came with an iPhone. Here we are 15 years later. https://t.co/OLTvb1KVJG
— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) July 6, 2022
No word on whether the clownfish wallpaper will make its way into the upcoming iOS 16 beta public release, and those with access to the developer version won’t be getting it either, as it appears to be rolling out in phases. It’s certainly something to look forward to now that it’s also improved over the higher-resolution original. And as demonstrated by Reddit user ActorVMU, it also has a cool swipe-up parallax animation.
If you want a copy of the macOS version of the clownfish wallpaper, it was archived in 2018 by Evgenii Bogun, an art student at the time who started collecting every Mac wallpaper, and you can get it here.
