When Apple first launched the iPad, many made fun of its name, but safe to say that Apple has had the last laugh as not only did the iPad help made regular folks want a tablet (whereas before it was seen as mostly an enterprise tool), but for many years Apple continued to dominate the tablet market and make tons of money off it.However for those interested in a little history, did you know why Apple made the iPad? During an event held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, former Apple exec Scott Forstall revealed the reason behind the creation of the iPad, which on hindsight sounds a bit petty, but we’re sure Apple probably isn’t too fussed about the whys.
According to Forstall, “iPhone had a very circuitous route by itself. We’d been working on a tablet project, which has a really odd beginning. It began because Steve hated this guy at Microsoft.” This is in line with Walter Isaacson’s biography on Jobs in which he wrote, “This dinner was like the tenth time he talked to me about it, and I was so sick of it that I came home and said, ‘F**k this, let’s show him what a tablet can really be’.”
It also turns out that the iPad was actually in the process of being made even before the iPhone was conceived, and it was only after Jobs and other Apple execs realized that phones could end up making iPods redundant (which they have) that they decided to work on a phone instead, where is where some of you guys might be familiar with the story of how Jobs had asked Forstall and Tony Fadell to each come up with an operating system that would work on a smaller device.
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