How a Virtual Beer Became the App Store's First Viral Hit

Jan de Vries · 2026-09-25

In July 2008, Steve Jobs and Apple were putting the finishing touches on something the world had never seen before: the App Store. Jobs told The New York Times that "the quality and the sophistication of the applications you can write for the iPhone is in a different class." Looking back, he wasn't exaggerating. The store opened with more than 500 apps, hand-picked to show off what the original iPhone could really do. There were games, productivity tools, social networks — and, of course, a handful of apps that existed purely to make people say "whoa." Of all those early releases, one got more attention than almost anything else. It turned your phone into a glass of beer. That app was iBeer. And its story says a lot about how the modern app economy was born. ### The Magician Behind the Trick The mind behind iBeer was Steve Sheraton, a magician who built technology-based illusions. Long before the iPhone, he'd already experimented with making a mobile device look like it held a real drink. His earlier creation, E-spresso, made a phone appear to contain a cup of coffee. But the iPhone gave him something the old Palm Pilot never had: an accelerometer. Instead of just playing a video of a drink, Sheraton could make the illusion respond to how you held the phone. Tilt the device, and the liquid moved with it. Turn it far enough, and the beer seemed to pour toward the edge of the screen. Simple idea, sure — but for 2008, the effect was shockingly convincing. ### The YouTube Experiment That Came First Before the App Store even existed, Sheraton had already found an audience. He posted a video of the iPhone "beer-drinking" trick to YouTube, where it racked up millions of views. People kept asking how they could get the trick for themselves. So he started selling the video file for just over $2 (about €2 at the time). At its peak, that side hustle reportedly pulled in a few thousand dollars a day. When Apple opened the App Store on July 10, 2008, iBeer was one of the first apps available. Sheraton kept the same price, and by his own account, the app shot to the top of the charts in no time. > "The trick wasn't the beer. The trick was that people couldn't stop handing their phone to someone else." ### When the Copycats Show Up Success like that doesn't go unnoticed. Later in 2008, Molson Coors — the Canadian-American brewing giant — released iPint, a free app with a virtual beer that looked awfully familiar. Unlike iBeer, though, iPint was basically an ad for Carling beer. Sheraton and his company, Hottrix, weren't amused. They eventually took legal action, and the dispute exposed one of the stranger truths of the early App Store: you could build something tiny, reach millions of people, and suddenly find yourself in a fight with a multinational corporation. It was a clear sign that the economics of software were shifting fast. ### Why a Silly App Actually Mattered It's easy to write off iBeer as a novelty. In a lot of ways, it was exactly that. It didn't make you more productive, help you navigate, or connect you with friends. It just made your phone look like a pint of beer. But that was the whole point. In 2008, smartphones still felt new and a little bit magical. The idea that a phone could react to the way you tilted it — that your hand could control what happened on screen — was genuinely exciting. Here's what iBeer proved, and why it still matters: - A single clever idea could reach millions of users almost overnight. - The accelerometer wasn't just a spec sheet item — it was a new way to interact. - Small developers could compete on creativity, not budget. - Copying was easy, and protecting an idea was hard. - Novelty, done well, could be a real business. Apple didn't need iBeer to sell iPhones. But iBeer helped sell the idea of what an iPhone could be. It showed developers that the App Store wasn't just a storefront — it was a stage. And honestly? A phone that pretends to be a beer is still a pretty great party trick.