The iPad Awkwardly Turns 10
As someone who worked on the iPad v1, I can tell you, it was a product built in search of a problem. It was going to compete against the, then, growing Netbook market. Steve Jobs thought Windows was going to win that market and hastily threw a team together to answer for it. However, during several all-hands, no one except SJ seemed even remotely excited about the product.<p>&quot;These things will probably sell in the educational market or something.&quot;<p>&quot;Developers will always surprise us, they will come up with use cases for us.&quot;<p>During development Amazon was proving that people wanted E-Book readers. So when it was clear the iPad didn&#x27;t yet have a coherent story from Apple, iBooks was thrown together at the eleventh hour and then SJ went on the attack against Amazon to push back against the growing Kindle market.<p>And then Windows 8 happened! People asked Apple (And Tim Cook), will we see touch-screen Macs? And instead Apple trapped itself in a corner by doubling down that the iPad was going to forgo running full macOS because something about people not wanting to touch their laptop screen. So here we are, a product that launched without a vision, and then hamstrung by ego.<p>It&#x27;s true that people who love their iPads, LOOOVE their iPads. So it&#x27;s a nice product. It&#x27;s definitely well made and I love reading the news on mine. It&#x27;s a great device to travel with, for sure, yet I agree with Gruber, this thing will never flourish outside of the niche markets its found itself in.