The original iPad was important enough that the late Steve Jobs introduced it live on stage. It was such a revolutionary idea that it predates the iPhone and we could have been using Apple's first tablet in 2007 if Steve Jobs hadn't brought the technology to a pocket-size format.
After its January 27, 2010 launch, the world, for a time, seemed to revolve around Apple's iPad, a silicon, glass and metal device so innovative that it created its own story in the then wildly popular Modern Family TV series (actually it was like a 22 minute commercial with a lot of jokes).
It's a different story for the iPads we expect on May 7. Instead of a big live event, Apple will launch the tablets (and likely a new Apple Pencil) virtually. That means a pre-recorded event, hosted by Apple CEO Tim Cook, that will show off four or more new devices with deep dives into new display technology (OLED?), new designs (thinner than ever!), charging wireless (oh, please do it that way) and a completely renewed Apple Pencil.
It will be exciting, in a way, but also anticlimactic.
The first and best true tablet.
14 years ago, I sat in the audience as Steve Jobs explained his vision of a post-PC world and the need for a device that would sit between the then-popular Netbook laptops and his successful iPhone. Jobs didn't just explain this: behind him, the word “iPad” dramatically materialized between a netbook and an iPhone.
Jobs, a tiny figure in front of the screen, held up the iPad to applause.
From then on, Jobs immersed himself in the demo, showing us photos, maps, newspapers and apps on the 9.7-inch iOS screen (there was no iPadOS back then). As radical as the introduction of the iPad seemed, Jobs knew we already understood the product. With 75 million iPhones and iPods sold, there are, Jobs said, “more than 75 million people who already know how to use the iPad.”
Like the showman he was, Jobs did not hold back on the hyperbole and declared: “Our most advanced technology in a magical, revolutionary product at an incredible price.” Like the iPhone before it, the iPad started at a relatively affordable price of $499 and has only gotten more expensive since.
A new age
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Months later, at the AllThingsD conference, Jobs said: “PCs will be like trucks. They will still exist.” [but] One in x people will need them.” He later added: “We like to talk about the post-PC era, but when it actually starts to happen, it's uncomfortable.”
I praised Jobs as an “oracle” and the numbers backed it up. In 2011, Apple reported 15 million iPads sold and held 90% of the tablet market share.
However, Job was wrong, and in the intervening years, sales of the iPad declined and it was transformed through iPadOS updates and keyboard accessories into another ultracomputer option. It is a tablet but also a personal computer or “PC”. There is no post-PC world, just a world of laptops and tablets racing towards the middle.
While the iPad, with Magic Keyboard and mouse support, has become more laptop-like, traditional Windows laptops have adopted tablet features like touch screens and stylus support.
The question for this next generation of iPads is whether they will further blur the line between PCs and tablets or restore the distinction. It was a self-contained slab that could do it all, without accessories.
In addition to describing access to a full-size virtual keyboard (and, yes, a hardware keyboard that was nearly unusable because it placed the iPad just millimeters from the top row of keys), Steve Jobs in 2010 illustrated how countless entertainments. , content and productivity tasks through a touch screen. He positioned the original iPad as the best reader for books and newspapers (The New York Times was a partner on launch day), but also as a fantastic gaming platform. It could be your word processor and your spreadsheet manager. It was lighter than a Netbook but much nicer and much more fun to use.
Is it a computer?
Today's iPad, iPad Mini, and especially iPad Pro are tablet-like laptops. With Apple Silicon (up to the M2 in the iPad Pro), they match the performance of the latest generation MacBook Air. Surely the new models will have M3 chips.
I'm not sorry that the post-PC idea is dead. When Jobs published it, I was working at a publication that had “PC” in the name. He also knew that consumers might not care as much about those technology labels. They loved the original iPad because it did many things that a device of that form factor had never done (at least well) before. It satisfied his craving for content and entertainment, and to his surprise, it was built to last.
Apple iPads sold 8 or 9 years ago still work, which of course is part of the problem. You can't publish anything if the products last forever.
For the iPad line, the potential to alter the trajectory of computing has disappeared, but the opportunity remains to reestablish its place in the mobile technology market. Let's see if Apple chooses a new path.
