Five years ago this week — February 27, 2010 to be precise — Steve Jobs put sneaker to stage to show off what he himself considered to be one of the most important products of his life. The Mac had been introduced decades before, the iPhone only a few years, yet on that stage, at that event, Jobs would make the case that there was room between them for a new category of device. One that, in order to exist, had to be not only better at certain key tasks, but significantly better at them.. It had to be the iPad.
No one knew what it really was or would mean that day, not even Apple. It would take until the next year and the iPad 2 for it to begin to crystalize. Yet everyone with vision for the future of mainstream computing knew it would be something.
For some it became the accessible, approachable, understandable window into apps and the internet they’d been waiting for their entire lives.
Today we have bigger iPhones and lighter MacBooks, and an iPad Air 2 that’s as usable as the former and almost as powerful as the latter. And we seem on the cusp of something… next.
Relive the original introduction by watching the video above and then let me know what you think about the iPad now, five years later.