Now I will openly admit that I was wrong about the iPad. When Steve Jobs stood up and announced the iPad I considered it to be a flop from the start. Why would anyone want to spend hundreds of pounds on a product which did nothing new? Coming after the un-precedented success of the iPod in its many guises and then the iPhone, the iPad seemed to me to be something of a mis-step.
Previously Apple had been at the forefront of understanding consumer demands. When we all went mad about MP3 players, they gave us the best. When the same happened with smart phones again Apple stepped up and delivered a product which at the time had no real competitors in terms of quality and user experience other than the business-centric Blackberry. But then they revealed the iPad and did the opposite. Rather than waiting for consumers to realise that what they always wanted was a tablet computer Apple came along and forced their prodcut under the nose of the consumer and shouted "Buy It" at the top of its voice.
But surely you say, there is no way that one company (or even just one man) could fool the world into buying a product it neither needed or wanted. What a fool you would be for thinking that, just as i did when i saw the announcement. Apple had become so powerful in the world of consumer electronics that it and Steve Jobs had suddenly started to rewrite the rules. These rules helped Apple not only to corner the Tablet market but also to almost single handedly create the market in the first place. Now there are those who will talk about how tablet computing was not created by Apple and this is entirely correct, however it was Apple who truly made them the product that they are today.
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