When Apple introduced the iPad in 2010, I was sitting in the third row of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco auditorium. I had been aware of the development of this product but only knew the exact details at its introduction.
At the time, many types of tablet-like devices had been introduced by companies like Microsoft, The IBM ThinkPad 2521, Compaq Concerto and the Palm Pilot. Even Apple had the Newton MessagePad during the early days of tablets. However, none of them really took off for a myriad of reasons due to underpowered and underperforming technology, OS, and UIs.
However, the iPad became a game changer thanks to its touch screen, intuitive UI, and highly portable form factor.
Now that new, more powerful iPad models have been released, 14 years after the original, it’s essential to examine Jobs’ original vision and goal for the device.
In August of 2021, I wrote about his vision and quoted Jobs’ exact comments and positioning for his new tablet computer –
“Apple CEO Steve Jobs often compared the transition from desktop/laptop PCs to tablets with the transition from trucks to cars. Just as trucks waned in popularity with the urbanization of America, Jobs theorized, so, too, would desktops and laptops with the advent of the tablet. When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks because that’s what you needed on the farm,” Jobs said at the D8 conference in 2010. “But as vehicles started to be used in the urban centers, cars got more popular. Innovations like automatic transmission and power steering and things that you didn’t care about in a truck as much started to become paramount in cars. PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of ten people.”
At the iPad launch in 2010, Steve Jobs truly believed that tablets, especially the iPad, would someday take over the PC role at some point.
Last week, when Apple introduced its new iPad Pros with its newest M4 processor, it surprised many people. In the past, Apple has always introduced its newest, most powerful processor in its Macs, never in an iPad.
This move is highly intentional and signals what I consider an essential statement: Jobs’ vision of a tablet that can do as much as a laptop is moving forward and getting closer.
In Jobs’ vision, he never said it would replace PCs. But he was clear that “PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of ten people.”
That part of the vision is stretching it as 14 years later, PCs and laptops still outsell tablets significantly. According to TechInsights, global laptop sales in 2023 were just over 200 million units.
By contrast, around 128.5 million tablets were shipped worldwide in 2023, with shipments reaching over 36.8 million units in the year’s final quarter.
A more challenging number to find is how many laptop owners also use a tablet. For years, as I have traveled, I have mainly observed people using laptops on planes. Now, when I travel, I seldom see someone using a traditional laptop; most use some form of tablet or even smartphone instead.
As I said in the article I wrote in 2021, I primarily use my iPad now, especially when I travel, and I use my laptop when I need to do more complex apps.
In addition to the new OLED screens already found in some laptops and more powerful companion chips capable of powering AI apps, iPads are getting closer to accomplishing most of what a PC can do.
Indeed, the demos of how many new graphics programs are enhanced by the M4 processor and the intense screen imaging on the dual-panel OLED make it a creation tool that, in many ways outperforms most laptops.
It is too hard to predict whether Jobs’s ultimate vision for iPads replacing 90% of laptops will ever be achieved. But these new iPads, with the M4 processor, dual-panel OLEDs, and companion chips, bring them closer to emulating most of what can be done on a laptop.
I think Apple is committed to fulfilling Jobs’s original vision for the iPad, and under Tim Cook’s leadership, it appears to be closer to making it happen.
Disclosure: Apple subscribes to Creative Strategies research reports along with many high tech companies around the world.
