The Case for the Tablet Had to Be Made
Tom Warren at The Verge wrote an article this week making the case that the new iPadOS confirms that Microsoft had the right vision for tablets with its Surface from the beginning. I couldn’t disagree with him more.
Everyone seems to forget that Microsoft was on the tablet bandwagon way before Apple. But not me, because I was helping to make them while I was working at Gateway Computers in the early 2000s. And if Microsoft had the right “principles”, they could have owned the tablet market from day 1.
These Windows tablets embodied Microsoft’s principle that a tablet should be able to do whatever a laptop can do. And no one was interested in them. People were confused on what their purpose was and didn’t buy them. We sold so few of them that you would be forgiven for not even knowing that Gateway sold Windows tablet computers.
Until the iPad came along, no one wanted a tablet. Why did the iPad succeed where the Surface failed? Because it was an intimate, touch-centric device first. Even today’s iPad Pro is still a touch-first device.
No one wanted to buy the pre-iPad tablets because they saw them as cumbersome. They looked and functioned like laptops that simply had their keyboards chopped off. Everyone thought, “Why would I want a laptop that puts up a big obstacle to typing on it? I’ll just buy the normal laptop and save the hassle.” Windows tablets were so close to laptops that it was hard to see why one would ever want a tablet to begin with.
What the iPad did for the world was to give people the vision of what you gain by chopping off the keyboard. And it was the touch-first OS which made that possible. No keyboard or stylus was required. Laptop computers and Windows tablets were portable desktop machines, but iPads were intimate personal devices.
The iPad forced the market see the upside to tablets. You could get cozy in your favorite chair with a hot cup of coffee while you read the news. You work with a laptop at arms-length but you cradle a tablet into your personal space. You wanna cross your legs? No problem. You wanna carry it with you to the kitchen? No problem. Traveling salesmen who often work behind a steering wheel bought iPads in droves. Have you ever tried to use a laptop from the driver’s seat? Don’t. Doctors, pilots… on and on I could go. And now, you can even write on any iPad like your trusty Moleskine notebook.
But the real crux is that people loved the touch-first OS on the iPad. It not only made chopping off the keyboard possible, it was fun. There was something about flipping a page on your iPad by swiping your finger. It felt more natural than clicking the right side of your monitor with a mouse. And you could it anywhere.
But why was the touch-first OS so important to getting people to see the iPad tablet differently from the Windows tablets that came before? Because it forced people to see the intimate side. In the beginning, you didn’t buy an iPad with the thought of getting work done. You bought it because you wanted to watch Netflix in bed or read comic books on an airplane. It was almost like a Trojan horse invasion into laptop territory.
Had Apple originally offered the iPad as a more desktop-like OS device meant to have a keyboard and mouse, I’m not so sure it would’ve succeeded. I’m afraid it would’ve had the same problem as the original Windows tablets. People would have focused more on the loss of the keyboard than the benefits of having an intimate tablet. “Why don’t I just buy a MacBook?”
Because Apple nixed using a version of Mac OS X and offering mouse support, the buying public was forced to evaluate it differently from a laptop. Instead, they compared it to the mobile phone. It had a larger screen, more powerful processor, and longer battery life. The knock on the iPad was that it was “just a big iPhone,” but that comparison favored the iPad. People could see the advantages a tablet had to a phone rather than the negatives when compared to a laptop.
Not only is Tom Warren wrong, but if it hadn’t been for the iPad, the Surface Tablet would have never achieved lift off. The Surface Pro needed the iPad to soften the ground first. Without the iPad, there would’ve been no general appreciation for the tablet form function.
I’m on the record for cajoling Apple countless times to make the track pad work with the iPad. So I’ve been so excited to start using iPadOS 13.4 with trackpad support. But even I’ll admit that Apple did things in the right order. Whether intentional or accidental, it doesn’t matter. The case for a tablet sans keyboard had to be made first. Then the peripherals could be added once everyone understood the joy of an untethered screen.
The introduction of the iPad as a media-consumption device with a touch-only OS was key to the success of the whole tablet paradigm. It helped penetrate the crusty old view of what a mobile computer should be. And if Apple had tried to do it as Microsoft had, it never would have been embraced as it is today.
These Windows tablets embodied Microsoft’s principle that a tablet should be able to do whatever a laptop can do. And no one was interested in them. People were confused on what their purpose was and didn’t buy them. We sold so few of them that you would be forgiven for not even knowing that Gateway sold Windows tablet computers.
Until the iPad came along, no one wanted a tablet. Why did the iPad succeed where the Surface failed? Because it was an intimate, touch-centric device first. Even today’s iPad Pro is still a touch-first device.
No one wanted to buy the pre-iPad tablets because they saw them as cumbersome. They looked and functioned like laptops that simply had their keyboards chopped off. Everyone thought, “Why would I want a laptop that puts up a big obstacle to typing on it? I’ll just buy the normal laptop and save the hassle.” Windows tablets were so close to laptops that it was hard to see why one would ever want a tablet to begin with.
What the iPad did for the world was to give people the vision of what you gain by chopping off the keyboard. And it was the touch-first OS which made that possible. No keyboard or stylus was required. Laptop computers and Windows tablets were portable desktop machines, but iPads were intimate personal devices.
The iPad forced the market see the upside to tablets. You could get cozy in your favorite chair with a hot cup of coffee while you read the news. You work with a laptop at arms-length but you cradle a tablet into your personal space. You wanna cross your legs? No problem. You wanna carry it with you to the kitchen? No problem. Traveling salesmen who often work behind a steering wheel bought iPads in droves. Have you ever tried to use a laptop from the driver’s seat? Don’t. Doctors, pilots… on and on I could go. And now, you can even write on any iPad like your trusty Moleskine notebook.
But the real crux is that people loved the touch-first OS on the iPad. It not only made chopping off the keyboard possible, it was fun. There was something about flipping a page on your iPad by swiping your finger. It felt more natural than clicking the right side of your monitor with a mouse. And you could it anywhere.
But why was the touch-first OS so important to getting people to see the iPad tablet differently from the Windows tablets that came before? Because it forced people to see the intimate side. In the beginning, you didn’t buy an iPad with the thought of getting work done. You bought it because you wanted to watch Netflix in bed or read comic books on an airplane. It was almost like a Trojan horse invasion into laptop territory.
Had Apple originally offered the iPad as a more desktop-like OS device meant to have a keyboard and mouse, I’m not so sure it would’ve succeeded. I’m afraid it would’ve had the same problem as the original Windows tablets. People would have focused more on the loss of the keyboard than the benefits of having an intimate tablet. “Why don’t I just buy a MacBook?”
Because Apple nixed using a version of Mac OS X and offering mouse support, the buying public was forced to evaluate it differently from a laptop. Instead, they compared it to the mobile phone. It had a larger screen, more powerful processor, and longer battery life. The knock on the iPad was that it was “just a big iPhone,” but that comparison favored the iPad. People could see the advantages a tablet had to a phone rather than the negatives when compared to a laptop.
Not only is Tom Warren wrong, but if it hadn’t been for the iPad, the Surface Tablet would have never achieved lift off. The Surface Pro needed the iPad to soften the ground first. Without the iPad, there would’ve been no general appreciation for the tablet form function.
I’m on the record for cajoling Apple countless times to make the track pad work with the iPad. So I’ve been so excited to start using iPadOS 13.4 with trackpad support. But even I’ll admit that Apple did things in the right order. Whether intentional or accidental, it doesn’t matter. The case for a tablet sans keyboard had to be made first. Then the peripherals could be added once everyone understood the joy of an untethered screen.
The introduction of the iPad as a media-consumption device with a touch-only OS was key to the success of the whole tablet paradigm. It helped penetrate the crusty old view of what a mobile computer should be. And if Apple had tried to do it as Microsoft had, it never would have been embraced as it is today.
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