“For once, the initial reaction was not a Hallelujah Chorus. The iPad was not yet available (it would go on sale in April), and some who watched Jobs’s demo were not quite sure what it was.
An iPhone on steroids?
“I haven’t been this let down since Snooki hooked up with The Situation,” wrote Newsweek’s Daniel Lyons (who moonlighted as “The Fake Steve Jobs” in an online parody).
Gizmodo ran a contributor’s piece headlined “Eight Things That Suck about the iPad” (no multitasking, no cameras, no Flash . . . ).
Even the name came in for ridicule in the blogosphere, with snarky comments about feminine hygiene products and maxi pads. The hashtag “#iTampon” was the number-three trending topic on Twitter that day.
There was also the requisite dismissal from Bill Gates. “I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen and a real keyboard—in other words a netbook—will be the mainstream,” he told Brent Schlender. “So, it’s not like I sit there and feel the same way I did with the iPhone where I say, ‘Oh my God, Microsoft didn’t aim high enough.’ It’s a nice reader, but there’s nothing on the iPad I look at and say, ‘Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.’” He continued to insist that the Microsoft approach of using a stylus for input would prevail. “I’ve been predicting a tablet with a stylus for many years,” he told me. “I will eventually turn out to be right or be dead.”
Excerpt From: Isaacson, Walter. “Steve Jobs.” iBooks.
Frankly, I also thought it was an enlarged iPod when I first saw Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad. It wasn't until I got my hands on it before I experienced the magic. You cannot experience the intimacy that it brings about, between you and the Internet, between you and your photos and videos, between you and your books, until you hold an iPad in your hands.
So the iPad was put down and was sneered at, following the iPhone. You have to find the courage to press on.
This is tenacity.
photo credit: Dennis Burger via photopin cc
