With typical modesty and restraint, Steve Jobs today downplayed the iPad hype. Pouring cold water on some of the hyperbole pundits have lavished on the device, he said:
“We think this is a profound gamechanger. We think when people look back some number of years from now, they’ll see this as a major event in personal computation devices.”
He was responding to a question about being surprised by the initial reaction. Here’s what he said in full:
Even though we’ve been using these internally for some time, you still have butterflies in your stomach the few weeks before…the night before…launch. You never really know until you get it into customers’ hands, and they tell you what they think. The feedback we’ve got has been off the charts. We think this is a profound gamechanger. We think when people look back some number of years from now, they’ll see this as a major event in personal computation devices. What’s been really great for me is how quickly people have got it. You know. I’ve gotten a few thousand emails so far from people I’ve never talked to before just telling me how much this product is…how much they think this product is going to change their life and what they do. People are getting it very quickly.
