The Record

Peter Falk’s Lieutenant Columbo deployed the line as a rhetorical trap: seemingly done, turning to leave, then pivoting back with the question that undid the suspect. The structure — apparent conclusion, then the real point — transferred almost perfectly to a product keynote, and Jobs used it that way at multiple Apple events from the late 1990s onward. The Columbo character debuted on NBC in 1971 ↗ and ran in various forms across four decades, making the phrase widely recognisable long before Jobs adopted it.

The earliest well-documented keynote deployment came at Apple’s 1999 Macworld San Francisco, though Jobs had used the formulation at smaller product briefings before that. At its most theatrical, the phrase introduced a genuinely unannounced product at the close of a presentation that had appeared complete. The audience reaction — a particular kind of delight, louder than ordinary applause — was partly a response to the Columbo echo: the line arrived pre-loaded with comic expectation.

Rangers hockey player skating with stick near the faceoff circle on ice
Wayne Gretzky, 1997. The line about the puck is his.Photo: Wayne Gretzky 1997 · Wikimedia Commons

Attribution problems cluster here in two directions. Some sources retroactively apply "one more thing" to Jobs keynotes where it does not appear in the transcript; others treat it as an original Jobs coinage rather than a conscious or semi-conscious borrowing from television. Neither the Isaacson biography nor Jobs himself, in any documented interview, claimed the phrase as original. Walter Isaacson’s 2011 biography ↗ references the theatrical style of the keynotes without tracing the Columbo connection explicitly.

What the record shows is a phrase that belonged to popular culture, that Jobs consistently used as a structural device at keynotes, and that became so associated with him that the borrowing was largely forgotten. The phrase is real — Jobs said it, on stage, repeatedly and to documented effect. The misattribution is subtler: treating it as an invention rather than an adoption. Columbo said it first. Jobs made it a product launch ritual.

Key distinction
  • What Jobs actually said — the phrase "one more thing" is verified as a Jobs keynote device
  • What is not accurate — treating it as a Jobs coinage; it was borrowed from the Columbo television format

Neither the Isaacson biography nor Jobs himself, in any documented interview, claimed the phrase as original.

Close-up of an open book's pages showing numbered verse references in blurred focus
An open book. A quotation with a page behind it can be checked; most of these cannot.Photo: Tima Miroshnichenko / Pexels
Chronology
  1. 1971Columbo premieres on NBC; the "one more thing" device established across the series
  2. 1999Among the earliest well-documented keynote uses by Jobs at Macworld San Francisco
  3. 2011Isaacson biography discusses Jobs’s keynote theatrics without tracing the Columbo borrowing

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