15 Years of the iPad

A tale of caution and celebration — This week marks 15 years to the day since Steve Jobs took to the stage at the Yerba Buena Centre for Arts in San Francisco and revealed the iPad to the world. With development pre-dating that of the iPhone, a tablet computer had been the end goal of Apple’s secret touch interface team for years before it looked like phones would challenge the iPod in the music sector. For years prior it had been Jobs goal to design a ‘computer book’ accessible enough for the everyday citizen. The iPad was then the end result of that dream, a device that bridged the gap between Laptop and iPhone.

Although considered by many customers to be something of a consumption device, the iPad was out of the gate released with productivity in mind. Day one ports of key Mac apps such as Pages and Keynote and an accompanying Keyboard dock meant you could just as well bang out a novel on it as headbang to your music. Ever one to upsell some accessories, the iPad launched with a dock adaptor that let photographers download images directly from a camera or SD card to preview and edit on the move.

It wasn’t all work though. The largest phone you could buy in 2010 was an iPhone 4 so that 9.7" display was a welcome respite from trying to read web pages or documents on a small display. The slate-like form of the iPad leant itself well to reading books and magazines with 3rd party app…