Random Apple Memory

The original iPad launch.

In 2009, rumors emerged that Apple was working on a tablet computer. By the end of the year it was the talk of the industry. Not the computer industry — the publishing industry.

Adobe helped Condé Nast mock up its tech magazine, Wired, on a touchscreen, while Bonnier, publisher of Popular Science, and design studio Berg produced a widely shared video of what it called “Mag+.” Interactive magazines, like CD-ROMs in the 1990s, were to be the next digital content revolution.

On January 27, 2010, a visibly unwell Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, although it was two months from shipping. Highlighting how users of iPhones and MacBooks were using them for web browsing, music and video, games and e-books, he proposed a “third category of device” that was “better at these tasks” — unlike the then contemporary netbooks, which Jobs pointed out weren’t “better at anything.”

Confirming the name “iPad,” which many had dismissed as unintentionally amusing, Jobs showed off “the best web browsing experience you’ve ever had” and the full-size on-screen keyboard, “a dream to type on.” Later, Jobs said his first inspiration for the iPad was imagining typing on glass. Work on the device had started in the early 2000s, eventually spinning off into the iPhone.

Software chief Scott Forstall took to the stage to explain how the iPhone OS (later iOS) had been adapted to the big screen. But no publishers were invited to unveil their interactive concepts. Jobs had reacted angrily to Time, Inc.’s premature demonstration of a digital Sports Illustrated for the anticipated Apple tablet. With Wired and Popular Science, this would become a top-selling digital edition — but the iPad never did transform publishing. Instead, just as Steve had predicted, its versatility and simplicity made it the new consumer choice in portable computing.

The iPad was seen as the future of publishing. Things didn’t quite turn out that way.