It’s crazy that the iPad has been around for 14 years. By now, I’m sure many people don’t remember that this wasn’t even the first tablet. Decades of science fiction had us dreaming about the concept of a true portable computer, and many companies tried and failed to build some version of such a computer throughout the ’90s. We could believe that Microsoft poured all its resources into its tablet vision back in 2002, but it turns out that even that ideal was ahead of its time.
After years of rumors, Apple finally took the plunge on April 3, 2010, shortly after Steve Jobs gave one of our favorite keynotes on January 27. I even remember the moment he said these words: “This question came up recently; is there any room in the world for third category devices? Something between a laptop and a smartphone.”
The first-generation iPad performed well below many people’s expectations, which may have been the secret to its initial success. After years of rumors, Apple’s first tablet is the complete opposite of what Microsoft launched more than a decade ago. Many expected this to be a tablet version of the Mac, but it turned out to be more like a larger iPhone. Obviously, this idea sounds ridiculous today, the iPhone 15 Pro Max has a 6.7-inch display, but in 2010, the iPhone 3GS had less than half that amount of floor space.
I remember one day Steve Jobs defended this approach from initial criticism. Like the iPhone, this new tablet isn’t actually as powerful as a computer, but it doesn’t try to be. It’s designed to provide a better solution for the millions of people who don’t actually need a laptop to perform basic tasks like browsing the web or replying to emails. The idea is really to bring all the convenience of the iPhone to a larger canvas. We even learned later from Steve himself that the original project was an iPad, until he realized that starting with a phone first was a better strategy.
I even think its initial price made it clear that Apple never intended to compete with PCs. $499 is a lot less than many expected, and far less than the price of a tablet. Rather, the real goal is to provide users with a better alternative to the now-discontinued netbooks, which, as Steve once said, were not better in any way.
The first iPad launched months before we even knew what a Retina display was. Since FaceTime doesn’t actually launch until June, it doesn’t have a camera. Even the Apple Pencil had to wait another six years since Steve Jobs was completely against the concept of a stylus. This base launch price gets you a meager 16GB of storage, a basic speaker, and a 30-pin connector that many people may not remember. Regardless, the iPad is a companion device that does some things better than others, but isn’t necessarily meant to replace them.
Another famous interview also delves into the situation, even seeing Steve Jobs compare computers to trucks and boldly claim that the future market will rely more on post-PC devices such as iPads or iPhones. Like trucks, PCs will still exist, but as more specialized equipment develops, the need for them will diminish significantly.
Interestingly, during the initial run, Steve’s thought process proved to be correct. iPad sales far exceeded expectations, so much so that Apple launched the iPad 2 just 11 months after the original, a move completely out of character for Apple. The convenience of this simpler tablet was so powerful that we soon saw Motorola launch the first Android tablet, among other things.
You might think that by now our world would be filled with cars and fewer trucks, but the reality is that the ideal didn’t last long. After a few years, iPad sales began to decline, not to mention how poorly sales of Android tablets began. At this point, I’m not sure Steve is ready to see phablets become so successful with devices like the Galaxy Note that even Apple has to follow the trend a few years later. Things get complicated once you consider having a big phone that can do things that a tablet can do without the tablet being powerful enough to replace your computer.
That being said, the last thing I expected was that the A4 chip Apple pioneered in the first iPad would turn out to be the company’s best long-term strategy ever, as Apple Silicon became the paradigm shift that reinvigorated the Mac. We may not necessarily be in the post-PC era that Steve envisioned, but Apple Silicon has moved the market in a direction that finally gives consumers thin and light portable computers that traditional PCs could never achieve. We spent years wondering why Apple continued to equip the iPad with such a powerful A-chip, until we realized that the iPad was a test bed for the M reality we have today.
2023 is an interesting year, though, as it’s the first time Apple isn’t launching any iPads at all – although some new models are expected to launch later this month – and we expect the company to finally launch a major overhaul this year . Categories are required from day one. In the 14 years since the iPad was born, the series has evolved in many ways, to the point where it really makes you question whether you even need a computer. We now have more iPad versions than ever, but I still think iPadOS is the middleman that gets us to agree with Apple’s new idea of what a computer is.