---
title: "Which came first, the iPhone or JavaScript?"
description: "the iPhone vs JavaScript: JavaScript came first, by 12 years — 1995 against 2007. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/iphone-vs-javascript/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, the iPhone or JavaScript?

**Which came first, the iPhone or JavaScript?: JavaScript**

1995 — 12 years before the iPhone

JavaScript came first, by 12 years. Brendan Eich wrote it in ten days for Netscape Navigator.

## Side by side

|  | the iPhone | JavaScript |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 2007 | 1995 |
| Date | 2007-06-29 | — |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | The first iPhone went on sale after a January announcement. | Brendan Eich wrote it in ten days for Netscape Navigator. |

## the iPhone

Announced on 9 January 2007 and on sale from 29 June, the first iPhone had no app store, no copy and paste, no 3G and no video recording. The App Store arrived over a year later in July 2008. Android Inc. had been founded in 2003, four years before the iPhone, but the first Android phone shipped fifteen months after it.

## JavaScript

JavaScript was written in about ten days in May 1995, shipped in Netscape Navigator 2.0 later that year, and was called LiveScript until December, when Netscape renamed it as part of a marketing deal with Sun. It has nothing to do with Java beyond some borrowed syntax. Standardisation as ECMAScript followed in 1997, and the language spent a decade being treated as a toy before it became the most widely deployed programming language in the world.

## Common questions

### Which came first, the iPhone or JavaScript?

JavaScript, by 12 years — 1995 against 2007.

### When did the iPhone start?

2007. The first iPhone went on sale after a January announcement.

### When did JavaScript start?

1995. Brendan Eich wrote it in ten days for Netscape Navigator.

## Related pages

- [the Great Pyramid of Giza or the iPhone?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/great-pyramid-vs-iphone/)
- [Apple or JavaScript?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/apple-vs-javascript/)
- [the internet (ARPANET) or JavaScript?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/arpanet-vs-javascript/)
- [the internet (ARPANET) or the iPhone?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/arpanet-vs-iphone/)
- [email or JavaScript?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-javascript/)
- [email or the iPhone?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-iphone/)
- [Java or JavaScript?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/java-vs-javascript/)
- [JavaScript or Microsoft?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/javascript-vs-microsoft/)
- [JavaScript or the Macintosh?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/javascript-vs-macintosh/)
- [JavaScript or Windows?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/javascript-vs-windows/)
- [JavaScript or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/javascript-vs-world-wide-web/)
- [JavaScript or Python?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/javascript-vs-python/)

## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]