Today in Apple history: Steve Jobs introduces us to the iPad

January 27, 2010: After months of rumors and speculation, Steve Jobs publicly shows off the iPad for the first time. Aside from the name, which some people joke sounds like a female sanitary product, the first-generation iPad immediately earns critical acclaim.

“The last time there was this much excitement over a tablet, it had some commandments written on it,” The Wall Street Journal quips.

When it goes on sale a few months later, the first-gen iPad quickly becomes Apple’s fastest-selling new product ever.

First-gen iPad: Apple’s quest to make a tablet computer

Although it was released after the iPhone, the iPad actually predated it as an Apple R&D project. An iPad prototype existed as far back as 2004. At that time, Apple was trying to figure out its multitouch technology for the project that eventually yielded the iPhone.

Tablets appealed to Apple CEO Steve Jobs‘ love of simplicity, and to Apple design chief Jony Ive‘s love of minimalism. Jobs liked the idea of tablets since first hearing about the Dynabook, a concept dreamed up in 1968 by Xerox PARC (and later Apple) engineer Alan Kay.

Despite this, Jobs constantly tried to throw off the press. “We have no plans to make a tablet,” he told tech journalist Walt Mossberg in 2003. “It turns out people want keyboards. Tablets appeal to rich guys with plenty of other PCs and devices already.”

Apple actually launched its first tablet of sorts, the Newton MessagePad, in the 1990s, although Jobs was outside Apple at the time. When he returned, canceling the MessagePad product line was among his first moves.

Nevertheless, folks at Apple kept brainstorming ideas for a new tablet.

In March 2004, Apple filed a design patent application for an “electronic device” that looks virtually identical to the iPad that wound up shipping. The main exception was a smaller display, which looked more like the iPad mini. Both Jobs and Ive were listed as inventors.

iPad tech

In terms of the technology involved, the first-generation iPad was a more straightforward product to develop than the iPhone or iPod. That’s because much of the tech already had been developed for the iPhone. Creating the first iPad was just a matter of scaling things up.

Interestingly — given the subsequent way the tablet market developed, thanks to companies like Microsoft — it doesn’t appear Apple ever put much consideration into the idea of scaling down a Mac to create the iPad.

Whether that will prove, retrospectively, to be a strategic mistake remains to be seen. (Rumors continue to circulate that Apple is “seriously considering” making a touchscreen Mac.) But the fact is that making the first-gen iPad its own thing was a very Jobsian decision to make. During the iPad’s development, around 2008, Apple executives were talking about netbooks. The small, inexpensive laptops were all the rage for other companies at the time.

From Apple’s earliest days, Jobs pushed against the idea of making cheap, crippled hardware. So he instinctively disliked the idea of a netbook. Ive, however, pointed out that a tablet computer could compete at a similar price point, and with similar uses, while also being a high-end mobile device.

Soon after that, Apple began to seriously experiment with different iPad prototypes. The company created a variety of concepts, including one with plastic handles like a TV dinner tray. Apple tested approximately 20 different sizes, with a variety of aspect ratios. The overall mission statement was to build something that would be akin to a large-screen iPod touch.

First-generation iPad launch becomes most successful in Apple history

Jobs’ unveiling of the first-generation iPad on this day in 2010 was unlike any of his other product reveals. “It’s so much more intimate than a laptop,” he said, showing off the device while reclining in a chair, highlighting the casual relationship users would have with the tablet.

In terms of specs, the original iPad measured 0.5 inches thick and weighed 1.5 pounds. It boasted a 9.7-inch multitouch display and a 1GHz Apple A4 chip. You could get it with storage options ranging from 16GB to 64GB of flash memory. It didn’t come with a camera. Apple started taking preorders on March 12, 2010, and the device went on sale a month later on April 3. A 3G version of the iPad followed on April 30.

Upon its launch, the first-gen iPad became a big hit for Apple. It took less than a month to sell 1 million units — half the time it took Apple to sell that many original iPhones in 2007. In the iPad’s first year, Apple sold around 25 million of them, making the tablet the most successful new product category launch in Cupertino history.

iPad continues to evolve

Since then, Apple has continued to refine the product, with faster chips and increasingly slim designs. These days, in addition to the impressively powerful “regular” iPad, tablet shoppers can choose from the iPad Pro in a couple of sizes, the midrange iPad Air and the diminutive iPad mini.

Did you buy an iPad in 2010? What are your recollections of Apple’s first-gen iPad? Leave your comments below.

Luke Dormehl

Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.