“Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Microsoft’s Bill Gates locked horns on countless occasions with the former famously slating the latter for ‘ripping off his ideas,'” Lee Moran reports for The Daily Mail.
But it seems Apple owes an enormous debt of gratitude to Gates’ firm – because the iconic iPad would never have been created had a Microsoft employee not boasted to Jobs over dinner that they had a revolutionary tablet in production,” Moran reports. “‘This dinner was like the tenth time he talked to me about it, and I was so sick of it that I came home and said, ‘F**k this, let’s show him what a tablet can really be,” Jobs said.”
Moran reports, “His anger drove him to create the seven-inch touchscreen iPad – launched in April 2010 and now in its second incarnation, which has sold a combined total of 39.8 million units.”
MacDailyNews Take: Bzzt. Wrong. All iPads to date have sported 9.7-inch screens, not a “seven-inch” screen against which Steve Jobs himself famously railed a little over one year ago:
One naturally thinks that a 7-inch screen would offer 70% of the benefits of a 10-inch screen. Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. The screen measurements are diagonal, so that a 7-inch screen is only 45% as large as iPad’s 10-inch screen. You heard me right: Just 45% as large.
If you take an iPad an hold it upright in portrait view and draw an imaginary horizontal line halfway down the screen, the screens on these 7-inch tablets are a bit smaller than the bottom half of the ipad’s display. This size isn’t sufficient to create great tablet apps in our opinion. While one could increase the resolution of the display to make up for some of the difference, it is meaningless unless your tablet also includes sandpaper, so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one quarter of their present size.
Apple has done extensive user testing on tough interfaces over many years and we really understand this stuff. There are clear limits of how close you can physically place elements on a touchscreen before users cannot reliably tap, flick, or pinch them. This is one of the key reasons we think the 10-inch screen size is the minimum size required to create great tablet apps… The 7-inch tablets are tweeners. Too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with an iPad.
These are among the reasons we think the current crop of 7-inch tablets are going to be DOA. Dead On Arrival. Their manufacturers will learn the painful lesson that their tablets are too small and increase the size next year, thereby abandoning both customers and developers who jumped on the 7-inch bandwagon with an orphaned product.
Sounds like lots of fun ahead. – Steve Jobs, October 18, 2010
Moran reports, “The true inspiration behind the iPad is one of many extraordinary revelations contained in Walter Isaacson’s authorised biography ‘Steve Jobs’, published yesterday.”
Read more in the full article here.
Microsoft making anything revolutionary is laughable. But to the dunderhead at M$ who inspired Steve to hand their collective asses to them, I thank you.
How true, sir. Well said indeed.
Jobs being angry at MS employee is only part of the story: Alan Kay was long time pal of Jobs (he was the one who actually told Jobs about Lucas Films graphics division being put on sale), and Apple first tablet prototypes came in 1983.
So all of the factors played the role.
The MS employee story comes from Daily Mail, which is tabloid, so I am not sure how much it is true.
Especially as the iPad starts to chew up Netbook sales and now low end Laptops
The truly funny aspect is that this Microsoft employee had bragged to Steve Jobs 10 times about Microsoft’s “revolutionary” tablet, but yet Microsoft has barely showed anything about this revolutionary product.
What’s even more amazing is that iOS, which was initially intended for a tablet before Jobs’ employees had the idea for the iPhone, has been out for over 4 years, and yet not a peep from Microsoft on its great and wonderful tablet.
Maybe Ballmer was really smart – he assigned a Microsoft employee to so enrage Steve Jobs that Apple would develop the iPad, so Microsoft could then copy it (since Microsoft couldn’t create one on its own). Brilliant!
I could understand why you didn’t notice, but Microsoft Windows has been running on tablets for at least 10 years now. Before the iPad came out, MS loved to brag about these tablets and how soon everyone would be using them because of how awesome these tablets were. In reality, Windows tablets sucked hard and never sold well. The interface was basically identical to desktop Windows, and you had to use a stylus because of how small buttons and other GUI elements were.
Not to mention the fact that iPad is actually Apple’s SECOND shipping tablet – the first being Newton which came out over 20 years ago. Microsoft has been talking about it all this time and STILL never shipped a product.
“You compete me”
-SJ to BG
The tablet the Microshaft employee was bragging about is otherwise known as Ballmer’s Big Ass Table. The dumbshits at Microsuck referred to it as a tablet among themselves. They had no idea what a real tablet was.
That would be funny if Steve Job’s misunderstood the MS employee who was saying “table”. SJ: “I thought he was saying “tablet”.
He said “Table-ette”, it just sounded like tablet….
This book is Awsome, btw. Highly recommend it. I started read it last night and cant put it down. Woz is hilarious!
I tried to order it from Amazon yesterday. They were out of stock. I think we’re looking at a blockbuster best seller.
When did this dinner occur? Something about this story doesn’t seem quite right. Unless my memory has completely failed me, I was under the impression that Apple was planning to release a tablet before the iPhone, but then changed their mind because they saw an opportunity in the smart phone market. iOS was first planned for a tablet, and then shrunk for the iPhone. So iOS was designed from the ground up for the tablet. Android on the other hand was designed first for the smart phone and as an after thought for the tablet.
I remember it that way too. They took the iPad and decided to shrink it into the iPhone
One of Jobs’ worst quotes. While I do agree with the premise that a 7″ screen is neither here nor there, I have yet to sand down my fingers to use my 3.5″ iPhone with ease. I can touch, pinch, squeeze and do whatever I want with very little error. Just a thoughtless quote by him – one of very few
I suspect that Steve was referring to the plethora of tiny obscure icons that Word and other Windows programs require to run, and that the Windows perspective projected onto a 7 inch screen was likely to result in so many tiny icons just to function that fingers would be way too big. Apple tends to make a small number of buttons, place them logically, and use just the minimum number to get the job done. An iPod Nano is a 1 inch screen and Apples interface works perfectly on that as well: no pointy fingers or sandpaper required!
The difference is the iPhone runs a phone interface for a phone. Many android tablets were coming out with a tablet interface on a 7″ screen. A phone interface fits well on a small screen. A tablet interface does not.
Umm, actually most of those tablets were running Froyo which is not a tablet interface but a phone OS.
Or should I say Gingerbread? Either way the majority of android tablets actually running a tablet OS, Honeycomb, are larger than 7″. While I do agree the iPad’s 9.7 inch screen is better than a 7 inch screen, I believe the benefits were grossly overstated by a very charismatic salesman trying to sell his new, revolutionary and magical device. And his statement about the 7 inch screen being only 45% as large doesn’t pass muster when it come to watching 16:9 aspect ratio video. You lose so much of the iPad’s screen it might as well be 7″. Don’t get me wrong I love my iPad, and I have gotten more value out of it than any other electronic device I have ever purchased. I just don’t believe that everything that came out of Steve Jobs’ mouth was gospel.
You aren’t getting it. A phone is a compromise that we accept due to its portability. The tablet shouldn’t have the same weakness as the phone, i.e. a small screen. We accept that a tablet isn’t as portable as a phone, i.e. we aren’t carrying it in our pockets everywhere, so why have the same compromise as a phone, i.e. small screen.
Make yourself a 2×2 grid. Put screen size on one access and portability on the other. Devices should fall into two of the four squares, either small screen with high portability or large screens with less portability. Making a small screen with less portability is just the worst of both worlds. That’s what Steve was getting at. A tablet should be a no-compromise device, no sanding required.
Agreed but…I can type and use my 3.5″ phone perfectly well, no sanding required. His analogy is just ludicrous.
And he is not talking about Windows tablets or Android tablets necessarily. He’s implying that even if an iPad were 7″ you’d have to file down your fingers to be able to use it, which is simply wrong. Most tablet apps are very similar to phone apps.
you hold a iphone & ipad in a different way bongo
Let the revisionist history begin … again.
seven-inch iPad? what a moran…
I do believe one part of the story… the part about the MS employee claiming they have a revolutionary tablet coming.
I believe this 110% because that is MS true to form.
The is just one big advertisement that says “We have a revolutionary product coming”
…. and that is the last you hear…
The Jobs quote about a 7 inch screen being too small is totally disingenuous. The iPhone screen is ¼ that size and works fine. Jobs routinely would make statements about not wanting to make this or that and then a year or two later Apple would release just such an item. For how many years did Jobs deny that Apple wanted to make a phone? The Jobs quote was a smoke screen. A 7 inch iPad mini IS on the way. Maybe in 2012, maybe 2013.
“Moran reports, “His [Jobs’] anger drove him to create the seven-inch touchscreen iPad – launched in April 2010 …”
HELLLLooo – the iPad has a 9.7″ touchscreen. Since day 1 – yes?
What is the definition of an idiot?
No surprise the details are wrong – the Daily Mail is one of the worst tabloids out there and has been for the best part of a century (they supported the facists in WW2 – that’s how fair and balanced they are). Plus it’s aimed at an older, conservative age bracket (the sort they can scare easily with tales about muslims and immigrants eating swans, Facebook selling all your details to gangsters, technology being the devil, that sort of thing) so I suspect the general gist of the story is that the iPad is just another thing that’s bad because they didn’t have it in the 1950s.
Maybe the guy was talking about their “big ass Table” tablet. That’s revolutionary, you can play twister on it and browse the web at the same time !
“Moron reports, “His anger drove him to create the seven-inch touchscreen iPad…
TechTardiness abounds. I have to wonder what drugs TechTard journalists are on these days. Plus, it takes all of 30 seconds to verify the screen size of an iPad via the net. Lazy AND Tardy. (o_0)