The original iPhone was rather underpowered even at the time for what it tried to do, but it was so crazy focused and the vision of what it would allow you to do so exciting, that you were willing to look past it. It didn’t matter that it didn’t have 3G or the best camera. Now we’re in literally the opposite scenario, devices ridiculously overpowered that we wish we could figure out something to do with. Best chip, best camera, best number to write on the back of the box. Boring.
As an aside, I am increasingly certain that the sad truth of the iPad today is that a majority of sales are probably the cheaper models used as Envoy terminals, POS devices, and conference room check-ins. If I count iPad’s I see day to day, it’s incredibly lopsided to these uses. What a waste.
With Steve, you could draw a straight line from the original Mac to the iPad. You could see one relentless mission to tame unusable hardware into a friendly machine through software. You could imagine Steve wanting something like an iPad even with the original Mac.
What’s the narrative of the hodge-podge of devices we have now? Vague speeches about “health” and “AR”, always troublingly highly reliant on the hope others will make use of these technologies. Apple used to lead by example, the first party software set the bar for what others should do. Nowadays there’s just the hope that Adobe bringing Photoshop to the iPad will breathe new life into it. Meanwhile, Apple has not released a new flagship app for the iPad since its original release with iWork and Garageband. It’s been 8 years! Apple can’t figure out a single new app that can take our breath away? If they’ve run out of ideas of how this thing can be used, it doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence.