The Shift

The iPad’s journey beyond the PC is only just getting started, argues DAVID CHARTIER, and Apple is in it for the long haul.

- David Chartier

BACK IN 2007, after Jobs walked off the stage from unveiling the iPhone, one of the people he spoke with was Alan Kay. A pioneer of early computers and also the first graphical interface, Kay famously told Jobs: “Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you’ll rule the world.”

Once Apple debuted such a screen in 2010 with the iPad, it initially coined the term “post-PC device” to try to contextualize the iPad’s progressive, though at times nebulous, place in technology’s landscape. More recently, Apple has started making a direct pitch for the iPad as a PC replacement. Of course, there is still plenty of work to do toward that goal. But I think a number of Apple’s recent moves have laid the foundation for some significant evolution to come, and probably soon.