Apple has been working on such a Swiss Army knife tablet since at least 2003, according to several former employees. One prototype, developed in 2003, used PowerPC microchips made by I.B.M., which were so power-hungry that they quickly drained the battery.
“It couldn’t be built. The battery life wasn’t long enough, the graphics performance was not enough to do anything and the components themselves cost more than $500,” said Joshua A. Strickland, a former Apple engineer whose name is on several of the company’s patents for multitouch technology.
Another former Apple executive who was there at the time said the tablets kept getting shelved at Apple because Mr. Jobs, whose incisive critiques are often memorable, asked, in essence, what they were good for besides surfing the Web in the bathroom.
Oh god I hope he really said that.
I also hope Steve jumped to that (fairly practical) conclusion about the primary function of a tablet, for the sake of the anecdote. But I’ve been thinking a little about this lately. I’m a big, big proponent of the tablet taking over in a big way, but I’ve been stumped as to how to say why. And this post jostled my brain a little:
I want a tablet because I want to touch the screen of my laptop. It’s as simple as that.
