Phil Schiller Talks About iPad Creation in New York Times Retrospective

Want more retrospectives from the decade that is saying goodbye? For the New York Times just published one of the most interesting: in a long interactive article entitled “The Decade Where Technology Has Lost”, the journalists of the publication list the most important technological events of the last ten years, listening in each case to people close to the subject.

In one of the coolest sections, the NYT highlighted the creation of iPad j named by TEAM as one of the gadgets of the decade and heard no less than Phil Schiller, one of Ma's top executives (and one of the most involved in essential tablet genesis).

According to Schiller, the iPad project began with Apple executives and engineers thinking “in the future of computing under $ 500,” breaking the head on how to incorporate Apple's quality and typical expertise into such a device. It was the Steve Jobs and his class realized that the solution would be to start removing things from the product.

Very quickly, the team and Steve realized, “Well, if we want to get that price, we need to aggressively pull things out.” So goodbye folding design, goodbye separate keyboard. Therefore, it would be necessary to type on the screen.

This whole process, it should be noted, took place in the mid-2000s, long before the iPhone was even revealed to the public. It was during this period that the designer Bas ording presented a touch-based interface concept that respected the laws of physics ie scrolling a list, it moved up and down realistically, with acceleration and "real" speed. It was the glimpse of the future.

Schiller continues:

Parallel to all this, the iPod had taken off. We knew of the risk that one day a cell phone could play music and that you would no longer carry two devices, but only one. We decided to take care of it and solve it. So we decided we needed to make a phone, a phone that could replace the iPod.

And that's the story of how physics's law-based multi-touch interfaces, originally created for (what would become) the iPad, came first to the iPhone. Only when the smartphone was already in its second generation did Apple turn its attention back to the tablet, launching it in April 2010.

Walt mossberg

It is also worth mentioning the testimony of Walt mossberg about the iPad release. The celebrated tech journalist, a friend of Steve Jobs, was invited by Apple's co-founder of his tame for an exclusive preview of the tablet.

I try never to be positive or negative until I have actually tested something. But I was impressed. I was struck by the thickness of it. In particular, he (Jobs) was careful to show me that this was not just a bigger iPhone.

Mossberg also recalls that Jobs asked him to try to guess the price of the future iPad. The journalist kicked $ 1,000, and got back a wicked smile from the CEO, who did not reveal the real value of the tablet Jobs said only that it would be "far below" that.

The price of the iPad was, in fact, one of Apple's big marketing moves: Before its release, rumored sources speculated that the device would cost between $ 800 and $ 1,000. When Apple announced that it would be starting at $ 500, the company raised to itself a huge buzz It is a good thing without lowering the price you had in mind since the beginning of product creation.

Fun, isn't it?

via MacRumors