Introduction

When the iPad was introduced in 2010, Steve Jobs took the stage at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco with the job of convincing the world the tablet deserved to exist as its own category of device. After spending the better part of the past decade turning their laptops into class-leading, aspirational machines, Apple wanted to convince us there was a spot in our lives for a device smaller than our laptops, but bigger than our phones. Jobs described seven things that, in Apple’s mind, this device needed to not only be good at, but be better than both a laptop and your new iPhone. Those seven things were :I

• Web browsing
• Email
• Photos
• Video
• Music
• Games
• eBooks
  

I wonder if anyone at Apple back then would’ve imagined they’d still be justifying the device’s existence 14 years later. If we assume for a moment that the original iPad succeeded at being better at these tasks back then, does the same still apply today? Is the iPad still better at these key tasks than a laptop or a smartphone? Was it ever? As a day one tablet convert, I’m going to attempt to answer these questions about each of the seven tasks.

Web Browsing

The killer app for iPad is, and has always been Safari. Period. But to this point, the experience of browsing on a laptop has probably the gold standard. So, how could the iPad possibly provide a better web browsing experience? As it has been from the beginning, the key is in the intimacy. For the same reason people can browse mindlessly for hours on their phones, there’s something about removing the keyboard and trackpad that makes reaching out and touching the web incredibly immersive. When I received my original iPad, browsing the web was the first experience I had on it that made me go “wow”.

Browsing with an iPad or other tablet in portrait can offer an amazingly immersive experience, while still being incredibly capable. Apple’s efforts behind adding “desktop-class browsing” to iPadOS have greatly improved the experience over the past couple of years. This is largely, but not completely, by telling websites that iPad is a Mac, and it (mostly) gets the job done. You will still run into sites that have some issues, but at this point I feel like that might be more of a WebKit issue vs. an iPad specific one.

Browsing on a smartphone is fine, but I can’t say it has ever been anywhere near as immersive as an iPad or laptop. That could be because the mobile web is kind of a mess these days. But I think it’s more about the screen size. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good experience, but not great. That’s why apps remain as popular as they are on mobile unlike the desktop or laptop where most people work in the browser.

On a laptop, the keyboard distances you from your content. You lose that direct connection that makes modern touch devices so compelling. Touchscreen laptops don’t really make this any better.

On the other hand, laptops generally over users a wider range of browsing choices. While this is slowly starting to change, most iPad users are currently limited to Webkit browsers. Unfortunately, the web is increasingly being built for a Chromium world. For example, on my work laptop, I end up using Microsoft Edge since its a Chromium based browser, I know I likely won’t run into many compatibility issues, and I’m supporting another alternative to Chrome (I’m using the term “alternative” very loosely).

For me, the compatability issues are few and far between on Safari, but I recognize that other’s may not be so lucky.

When introduced, was the browsing experience better than a laptop and smartphone: YES.

Is the experience currently better than a laptop and a smartphone: YES

Email

For Email, I’m going to look at this using the built in mail app as a lens. There have always been3rd party email apps that were better than Apple’s own, which is how things should be in a healthy ecosystem.

Looking back at the original keynote, it seems like the point of the email segment was how simple Apple’s email client was to use. At the time, that would have been true when compared to a laptop, but it certainly wasn’t when compared to a smartphone. The simple fact that the interface shows you more things at a time makes the app more complicated than the focused smartphone experience. In recent years, Apple has made an effort to update their mail client at the same time across iPad, iPhone and Mac, so the feature differential is shrinking over time.

From a functional perspective, I don’t see how multitouch improves the email experience in any meaningful way. As I recall, the biggest improvement Apple demoed was the ability to have your inbox in a column on the left, and the message content on the right. So….the experience is more productive than a smartphone, but not really any better than a laptop. You could say that its maybe even a little worse. There were certainly features on the desktop Apple Mail client that weren’t on the iPad when it launched. Things like server-side search and some advanced mailbox management features were missing for years.Even with these continued improvements, its hard to see how the iPad mail app is any better than the macOS Mail app. Better than the iPhone version? Sure, just be virtue of having more screen real estate.

Using a webmail client on iPad has never really been meaningfully better than on a laptop or smartphone. After years of suffering through being directed to the mobile version of a particular e-mail service, there’s really no benefit here beyond being able to use touch. If anything, because of Apple’s relatively slow adoption of web standards, the experience has arguably been worse here than on a laptop, and maybe equal to a smartphone experience.

Regardless, email has never been a key selling point for iPad, in my humble opinion.

When introduced, was the mail experience better than a laptop and smartphone: NO.

Is the experience currently better? NO

Photos

When looking at photos, you need to separate viewing and sharing photos from photo editing. From the viewing perspective with a large screen you can rotate and pass around, that is a really engaging and social way to view your photos. And I think that’s still true today, although many people seemingly have no issues passing their phone around or using something like AirPlay to . This is a case, similar to web browsing, where the combination of a larger, more immersive screen than a phone, and the removal of a keyboard deck still provides a rich Photos experience.

The photos experience could get even better if iPadOS gains support for Standby in iPadOS 18. The larger iPad display just begs to be used as a photo frame when not in use. One of the key demo points from the original iPad keynote was showing how you could use the built in slideshow in the Photos app for an even better viewing experience. Come to think of it, its not really been a use case Apple has pushed since then. 🤔

I respect that current iPhone has a “better” display than iPads or Macs (if you consider OLED to be the best screen technology). But like many things, the small screen size limits the quality of experience you get here. Even the Plus and Pro Max models are still a pretty constrained photo experience.

In the days since the original iPad was released, photo editing has become more of a primary use case on a tablet (at least an iPad). The reason for this is a combination of direct manipulation of not using a keyboard, and the performance and high quality displays used on iPad. Especially on the 12.9 inch iPad Pro which now offers reference display mode for even more accurate colors while editing photos. I wholeheartedly admit that there are likely more powerful tools for photo editing available on a laptop, if for no other reason than laptop operating systems have existed for much longer and having more legacy software available for them.

When introduced, was the photo experience better than a laptop and smartphone: YES.

Is the experience currently better than a laptop and a smartphone: YES

Video

If there’s one thing people do more of on their tablets than browsing the internet, it’s watching video. Whether it’s YouTube or your favorite streaming service, iPad excels as a video player. I don’t think it’s even a competition here with a laptop. iPad makes watching video on a MacBook look clunky with the keyboard you can’t fold back and is just always…..there. A 2-in-1 PC would be better here, but those devices generally have ginormous bezels and look terrible, and are super thick when you fold the keyboards around.

iPad has always had one big knock against it for video, and that’s its aspect ratio. The device has generally used a more square 4:3 aspect ratio, vs. a more widescreen aspect ratio most media is produced in. The net effect has been that videos have always had large black bars on the top and bottom of the content, unless you want to zoom in and cut off significant parts of the video.

This is a category where I wonder if maybe the smartphone hasn’t pulled ahead of both the tablet and laptop. When the iPad came out, the iPhone had a what would now be comically small, 3.5 inch LCD display. And while its never been a bad video watching experience, back then, it probably wasn’t the screen you reached for when you wanted to catch up on your favorite show. However, times have changed, and tastes have changed. The most common iPhone screen size sold today is 6.1 inches, and its reasonable to assume the average is around that size that or larger for Android phones. Between bigger screens and larger, higher quality and higher resolution displays, watching video on your phone actually isn’t so bad. Most people I know actually prefer watching video on their phones, because a). they always have them and b). they can hold it closer to their face than a central living room tv. Our video habits have changed. Its less about sitting down to watch movies with others, and more about watching YouTube or Tiktok, Instagram Reels by yourself. (BTW, I’m told that if you do prefer watching video on a living room TV, that does make you old. You’re welcome). The point is, for many, video watching has moved from being a shared social experience to becoming more individual and personalized. And in that scenario, maybe its the smaller screen that wins over the larger ones.

In recent years, the smartphone has often been on the bleeding edge of consumer display technology. Again, this assumes you view OLED displays as the “best”. And I know there are people that can’t tolerate the Pulse-width modulation technique (PWM) used with these displays. Regardless, OLED displays have heavily proliferated the smartphone market, to the point that they aren’t even a premium option, they are the standard. For larger computers, like tablets and laptops, there are some OLED options, but they have been more the exception than the default. There was an article a few years ago that reasoned Apple was waiting on OLED for iPad and Mac until OLED color accuracy was better for larger displays. I don’t know if that’s been the case for other device manufacturers, but we’re only now starting to see this be more common in the tablet and laptop markets.

Better video watching experience than a smartphone and laptop at launch? YES

Better video watching experience than a smartphone and laptop today? Smartphone: NO, Laptop: YES

Music (Audio)

I’m going to rename this point “Audio” in this section, so that I can also fold in Podcasts. For those that weren’t around back then, the iPad initially shipped with an app called iPod. That app handled everything the iPods of the day did, including music, video, podcasts, and audiobooks. Over the years, Apple has leaned more into discrete and more specialized experiences for these functions. On some level, that makes sense. The needs of a music app and the needs of a podcast app can be very different. I do, however, sometimes miss when I could have my music and podcasts in the same playlist on roadtrips. I suppose that’s an advantage Spotify has over Apple today.

What makes one music listening experience better than another? From the original iPad keynote, the presented benefit was in the enhanced, tablet-optimized version of the Music app the iPad brought. The benefit, again, was that you could see a lot more information than you could on the iPhone. On the laptop side of things, iTunes 🤮 was the most popular music player at the time. By the time the iPad was released, techies had started turning on it. As they should have, because it was already starting to get terrible.

To me, music listening hasn’t ever really been a huge part of the laptop experience. Mostly because the iPod and other MP3 player exploded in popularity. Burning CDs? Sure. Using it as the core of your DJ setup? Makes sense. But really, the core feature your device needs is to be able to play Music in the background while you work. You could argue that with iTunes app already starting to feel creaky by 2010 that the iPod app “felt” better, but that’s not really a quantifiable measure.

Today, that’s not even an afterthought. But we forget, that the original iPad launched without third party multitasking. So, the only Music app that could play in the background was Apple’s (then called the iPod app). One could easily argue that feature alone made a laptop a better music listening device, since not everyone used iTunes for their music and podcasts. But thanks to the iPod revolution, music had already gone mobile by the time the iPad came around, and it doesn’t feel like Apple has put much effort into the laptop music experience since. The only area where the laptop really pulls ahead today, would be a speaker quality. And that’s where it should be better, since there’s a lot more room for larger speakers and bigger resonance chambers. The MacBook Pros have amazing speaker quality. The iPads are no slouch, and the iPhone….I wish they could meaningfully improve this, somehow.

Better music listening experience than a laptop or smartphone back then? : No, I’d say tied

Better music listening experience than a laptop or smartphone today? : Smartphone – Yes, Laptop – No, tied at best

Games

The mobile gaming landscape has changed drastically since the days of the original iPad. After the initial novelty wore off of having games better than Snake on your phone, the industry quickly devolved into a minefield of low quality, free-to-play, in-app purchase ridden titles. But the business model shift worked, and mobile gaming remains an incredibly lucrative business today.

Judging which device is better for games is incredibly subjective. You could very easily argue that the Mac should just win, or at least be in its own category. Why? Because even though the Mac is famously game starved, the games is does get are generally higher quality PC ports. Because of the somewhat predatory business model many mobile games tend to follow, its not uncommon for games to look at mobile games as “lesser”, instead of games that just happen to run on a mobile device. Apple has arguably trying to elevate this experience with Apple Arcade, but its still a bit of an outlier in the overall mobile gaming landscape. Its fair to say at this point, that the Mac gets significantly fewer, but higher quality games, on average.

Benefits for iPad gaming are:

Comfort level

For games with virtual joysticks, the larger iPad screen is nicer because you’re less of the screen is blocked by your hands. That benefit has limits, based on the size of tablet you’re using. The benefits are negated on something as large and as heavy as the 12.9 inch iPad Pro.

There’s a similar, but smaller benefit for games they utilize motion controls. Having a larger canvas as your tilting and moving the device in space makes it easier to stay immersed in your game. But if your device is 1.5 pounds vs .5 pounds, you’re going to be able to play for longer on the lighter device without getting fatigued.

With a larger thermal envelope, the iPad should be able to provide better graphics than the iPhone. And initially, this was true. Over time, we are unfortunately seeing developers targeting the iPhone and essentially blowing up their games to the iPad (and sometimes Mac) screen size. That means iPad games often use lower resolution assets which makes games look blurry and sad.

Between developers not providing higher quality assets on their mobile games, and pc and console developers largely skipping mobile and tablet (with a few notable exceptions) it’s kind of hard to feel like the iPad, today, provides a better gaming experience than either a laptop or smartphone.

Better gaming experience than a laptop or smartphone back then? : Yes

Better gaming experience than a laptop or smartphone today? : No

eBooks (and news?)

It’s hard to believe today, but back in 2010, there was a bit of a craze around e-ink e-readers. Yes, techies were excited about one of the most boring classes of device. iPad was positioned as a better reading device than Amazon’s Kindle because it could:

• display colors
• Display video
• Work with the standard epub file format
  

Putting aside ereaders for a moment… the tablet form factor has always been well suited to reading. You don’t have the obnoxiousness of having a keyboard sticking out or folded behind the screen while you’re reading. And the screen is significantly larger than your standard slab smartphone (foldables are another story). A two page landscape interface doesn’t really work on the narrow smartphone display. On a non touch laptop, you don’t get the same visceral feeling of turning pages that you do on a touchscreen tablet. Its possible you get more scaling and font options on a laptop, but I really haven’t spent any significant time reading ebooks on a laptop. Like video, it just doesn’t seem like an ideal form factor for this use case.

In addition to Apple’s ebooks ambitions, there was also goals around “saving” the newspaper industry. It’s no secret that news organizations have struggled to transition from the physical print era into the digital world. We as a society have long been conditioned that everything you find online should be free, so getting people to pay for news has been hard. I imagine the thought was that users have been conditioned to pay for apps, and with the then recent introduction of in-app purchases, Apple provided a mechanism for news companies to sell access their content in a recurring fashion. Those who weren’t around then may not know that Apple partnered with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp to create a special app/digital magazine called The Daily. I think both companies had ambitions of revolutionizing the digital news experience, but that in no way panned out and the effort was closed within a couple of years.

Better ebook experience than a laptop or smartphone back then: Yes

Better reading experience than a laptop or smartphone today: Yes

What Does This All Mean?

Overall, there are more areas where the iPad is not better than a laptop or smartphone. Is that really a problem? Nope, not really. For one, its easy to argue that iPad was never better than a laptop and smartphone at some of these tasks. Secondly, this evaluation is obviously pretty subjective. The iPad, once having to justify its existence through the lens of these seven tasks, has evolved into a more capable, general purpose multi-touch computer. It ends up being good for many things beyond the initial list. Maybe not the best, but laptops and smartphones are also not the best at some things. So while some continue to question why the iPad is even a thing, the rest of us are busy using our iPads to get work done, or relax and enjoy some media.