Opinion
10 years, 1 day: The Swiss and their iPads
by Dominik Bärlocher
The iPad turns 10: The most useless piece of technology celebrates itself
27.1.2020
Translation: machine translated
Pictures: Thomas Kunz
Exactly ten years ago, Steve Jobs presented the iPad to the world. Ten years later, disillusionment reigns. Nobody is interested in tablets. So let's take a look at the decade of what was probably the most commercially successful pipe-dream.
It should have revolutionised the world. It should have ushered in a new age of computing. It should have changed the world the way the iPhone did two years earlier. Instead, the iPad is collecting dust. And for Apple, it's collecting money. Because everyone has one. The word "iPad" has become synonymous with "tablet". The iPad has won. It has won in a market that nobody is really interested in, but which somehow still makes money. Completely incomprehensible.
It is exactly ten years ago today that ex-Apple CEO Steve Jobs stood on stage and proudly showed the world the iPad.
A decade of disillusionment followed. And my tirade about uselessness and "Happy Birthday".
Of the uselessness
With the iPad, Steve Jobs has achieved at least one thing: he has really shaken up the technology industry. Steve Jobs stands there in a black jumper and jeans without a belt, showing the iPad with the words "This is what it looks like. Very thin". He gives it a little squeeze. Days later, every manufacturer from here to Shenzhen launches its own tablet on the market.
In the midst of all the hustle and bustle, nobody asked whether we needed tablets at all.
But Apple stuck to its guns. The iPad Air, The New iPad, the iPad Mini and the iPad Pro followed. The devices are generally met with a shrug of the shoulders. "Best ever" may still be true, but "most awesome"... it's been a while since a tablet has enraptured anyone. Nevertheless, the iPad is selling like hot cakes. For whatever reason. Most successful ever? Definitely.
The other manufacturers have either given up on the device or on themselves. Samsung occasionally launches a tablet on the market without much fanfare. With One UI and Bixby. Nobody cares. Huawei has been chipping away at a new Mediapad for ages, or not. Where every detail of smartphones is hotly debated online, a tablet happens during a smoke break. Samsung dares to charge over 800 francs or euros for a tablet, Apple lowers its prices. Lenovo is asking around 150 for its new flagship, as if the manufacturer simply made one because it was expected to. And now Lenovo is probably hoping to break even.
Source: Thomas Kunz
Buyers end up with a piece of technology at home that doesn't really fit in anywhere. Too weak for gaming. Too sluggish to work with properly. Typing on the screen is a nightmare. Pens cost extra. Handwriting recognition is slowly getting off the ground - ten years after we needed it. Too garish and too heavy for eBooks.
The good news is that if you buy a tablet, it will still be just as useless in ten years' time. You'll still be able to watch YouTube in 2030. That's the only use of a tablet: media consumption. For 800 bucks. YouTube, Netflix and Pornhub are good, but don't you dare put a comment under a video. Just typing the word "Geil" takes what feels like twelve hours and in the end nobody gets anything out of it. Who reads YouTube comments anyway?
Apple is always trying to find new use cases for the iPad in your home. So semi-new you can turn it into the Apple Home Hub. What exactly is supposed to be different about this than when you use Apple Home as normal is not clear to anyone. But hey, Home Hub. Apple. Ecosystem. Great.
Even as a Home Hub, the device collects dust, just like any other tablet. Because you can now watch YouTube on a larger screen on your TV. Netflix works everywhere and Pornhub reports in its Insights Blog that just 7.1 per cent of all users accessed the site with a tablet in 2019. However, an overwhelming 76.6 per cent did so from a mobile
Today, the tech world is not looking back on a decade of revolution, but on a decade of disillusionment. To a device that the world never needed and doesn't need.
Where the iPad is useful after all
So why does this useless piece of technology still exist? Why is Apple investing time and money in developing the iPadOS specifically for the iPad? Someone must think it's good, right?
Restaurants. The iPad has really tidied things up there. Where the waiter or waitress used to take your order in barely legible handwriting on a pad of paper with "Möhl" written at the bottom, the apron now has a wide pocket for an iPad. It runs a POS app, Square for example. In other words, the moment you finalise your order, your waiter presses "Send" and the cash register knows that table 4 has just ordered food and drinks for 56.80. The kitchen immediately knows what your order is and gets to work. Your waitress, on the other hand, doesn't scurry into the kitchen and stick the Möhl note on a pinboard in the hope that the chef can read it.
Tattoo artists and other creative minds of all kinds sit there with a pen in their hand and a tablet on the table. They can draw as they would on paper, but with layers and brushes that provide fixed patterns. This has led to completely new creative outlets and techniques for tattoos. A quick photo of the arm on which the tattoo is to be applied and then the muscle structure can already be taken into account in the design.
And then the laptops
But the big winner of the decade that was given away is laptops. Because around halfway through the decade, laptop manufacturers realised that their devices might be a bit old hat after all. People were still buying tablets, even though a laptop is objectively more useful and versatile.
Touchscreens are already part of it. Even the technologically outstanding Macbook is criticised for still not having a touchscreen. Windows has developed an okay tablet mode for 2-in-1 devices, which is built into Windows 10. Pens are also making inroads and a laptop with stylus support is even recommended for schools with a creative focus.
Well then, let's drink to a technological inspiration that was once hailed as the return of the computer innovation Jesus, but ten years on has turned out to be a pipe-dream. Which for some reason is making a pile of money.
Happy birthday, iPad.
The voices of the Community
I spoke, and then it was your turn. The comment column showed: You like the iPad. Me too, by the way, as a dust-collecting home hub.
Thus: Happy birthday, iPad, not only from digitec but also from the Community.
Journalist. Author. Hacker. A storyteller searching for boundaries, secrets and taboos – putting the world to paper. Not because I can but because I can’t not.
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