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Moda is the AI design agent with taste
Moda's viral launch hit 4.4 million views in two days. Tens of thousands of professionals signed up. Startups, agencies, forward-thinking brands and top firms are now using Moda to create brand-aligned slides, ad creative, reports, social carousels and more.
Most AI tools tend to create what we call "AI slop": repetitions of the same colors, layouts and fonts. And when you try to fix it, you get stuck in a loop of re-prompting.
Moda is different. Drop in your website URL, and Moda learns your brand from the ground up: your colors, your fonts, your visual language. Then it helps you generate pro-quality slides, docs, and marketing assets.
The best part? Every layer is fully editable on a real canvas, and exports to powerpoint, PDF and more.
A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR, MASTERS OF TRIVIA
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—— ON THIS DAY ——
JUNE 29, 2007
Apple Stores across the United States
18 years ago
Steve Jobs presenting the original iPhone at the Macworld Conference, January 9, 2007 — the moment he announced 'an iPod, a phone, and an internet communicator' as one revolutionary product, changing the trajectory of mobile computing.
On June 29, 2007, Apple's original iPhone went on sale at Apple retail stores across the United States. People had been queuing for days. The starting price was $499 for the 4GB model and $599 for the 8GB model — expensive by any measure, requiring a two-year AT&T contract, and selling on the strength of a product demonstration that had taken place five months earlier, on January 9, when Steve Jobs had announced it at the Macworld Conference.
Jobs' January announcement had been extraordinary. He introduced it by saying Apple was introducing three revolutionary products: 'An iPod. A phone. And an internet communicator.' Then: 'These are not three separate devices. This is one device.' The audience at Moscone Center understood what it meant seconds before he said it, and the reaction was immediate. What he held up was a touchscreen smartphone with no physical keyboard — in a market where most phones still had physical buttons and Blackberry was the dominant business device. Steve Ballmer of Microsoft was asked for his reaction the same day and said, 'Five hundred dollars? Fully subsidized? With a plan? I said that is the most expensive phone in the world and it doesn't appeal to business customers because it doesn't have a keyboard.'
—— MARQUEE EVENT ——
The Apple logo — symbol of the company that launched the iPhone on June 29, 2007, transforming mobile computing and creating a platform economy worth trillions of dollars.
The iPhone was not the first smartphone. Palm, Handspring, Blackberry, and Nokia had all produced devices that could be called smartphones in various respects. What the iPhone did was different: it integrated a genuinely usable web browser, a touchscreen interface that worked without a stylus, a multi-touch gesture system, and a music player in a device that was fast enough to make all of these functions genuinely enjoyable to use. The browser was the critical innovation: it rendered full websites, not mobile-optimized versions, for the first time. People saw the real internet on a phone.
The App Store — launched in July 2008, a year after the phone — transformed the iPhone from a product into a platform. By making it possible for any developer to write software that could be sold to every iPhone user worldwide, Apple created a platform economy that now generates over $1 trillion in commerce annually. The developers who built the apps that made the iPhone indispensable — WhatsApp, Instagram, Uber, Spotify, countless others — created the ecosystem that has made the iPhone the most economically significant product launch of the twenty-first century.
The second-order effects of the iPhone's launch are still being assessed. The photography industry was transformed as smartphone cameras replaced point-and-shoot cameras. The music industry's economics were reshaped as streaming replaced download purchasing. Social media's growth was massively accelerated by smartphones. Taxi and food delivery were disrupted. Navigation was changed. The concept of 'apps' entered the cultural vocabulary. The attention economy — the business model of capturing and monetizing human attention — was given a vastly more efficient delivery mechanism. Whether the net effect on human wellbeing has been positive is one of the major unresolved questions of the present moment.
—— WHY THIS MATTERS ——
The iPhone created the smartphone era that has fundamentally reshaped human social, economic, and political life. More than half the world's population carries a smartphone. The implications for communication, commerce, news, relationships, and political organizing are still being worked through. The iPhone launched what is probably the most consequential technological transition since the automobile.
The App Store model created a new form of economic platform that has dominated the digital economy for fifteen years. The iOS App Store and Google's Play Store (which followed) control the gatekeeping of software distribution to billions of people. The power this gives Apple and Google — to approve or remove apps, to take 30% of in-app revenue, to determine what software is permitted — is a form of private infrastructure authority with no clear historical precedent.
Steve Ballmer's immediate dismissal of the iPhone is the most famous example of incumbent market leader misreading a disruptive technology. Microsoft dominated mobile operating systems in 2007. Blackberry owned the business market. Nokia was the world's largest phone maker. All three essentially missed the smartphone transition. The iPhone's success is a case study in how established leaders fail to see threats that violate their existing mental models.
—— THE TAKEAWAY ——
On June 29, 2007, Apple sold a $499 phone with no keyboard. Microsoft's CEO laughed. Over 2.3 billion iPhones have been sold since. The photography industry, music industry, taxi industry, navigation industry, and social media industry have been transformed. Whether humanity is better or worse off is still being determined.
—— QUOTE OF THE DAY ——
"Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything."
— Steve Jobs, introducing the iPhone at Macworld, January 9, 2007
—— OUR QUIZ OF THE DAY ——
How much do you know about the original iPhone's technical innovations, the App Store's transformation of the platform economy, Steve Ballmer's famous dismissal, and the second-order effects of smartphone adoption on human behavior and industry?
