Paul Graham on the Future of Tablets

In his latest essay, Paul Graham considers the impact that tablets will have on society in the future.

iPads at Sam's Club

iPads are now on sale at Sam's Club stores in the U.S. From the photo, the store looks quite spacious.

I absolutely hate visiting the Apple Store in the Eaton Centre because it's always a crowded MADHOUSE. And the one in the Sherway Gardens doesn't seem to be any less crowded from second-hand accounts.

I wish Apple would get a bigger place for their store (the neo-classical building at Yonge and King, which currently sells mattresses, would make a nice location).

History of Tablet Computing at Apple

Tablet computing began at Apple in 1979. By 1985 all the technology necessary for a portable tablet was available and for $20M Steve Jobs promised the Apple board that he could deliver a tablet. He was turned down and soon ousted.

After a few more design iterations, The Newton Messagepad was ready in 1991 but didn't ship until 1993.

It wasn't until 2004 that Jobs began working on a tablet again, which detoured to the iPhone (released in 2007) and finally the iPad in 2010.

The Past Week's Disappointments

Two things happened this past week: on the 18th, Apple reported its quarterly earnings and on the 20th, Apple announced some new products.

The first disappointment was with lower-than expected sale of iPads (4.19M sold in the quarter, averaging about 1.4M a month or about 46,000 a day) reported. The analysts who had predicted close to 5M were disappointed.

The second disappointment was a personal one. Before the product announcement, rumours had predicted an 11.6" MacBook Air. I was expecting that the MacBook Air would actually be an iPad running iOS and that it would have a detachable keyboard. Sadly, we got a $999 netbook.