David Wolf, a well-known China business expert, author and blogger at Silicon Hutong, nailed not only most of what the iPad turned out to be, he also actually suggested the name “iPad” in a post he wrote in 2007.
We checked with Wolf before writing this up to make sure it was real, and he assured us that it was. It’s really extraordinary stuff. He starts out by saying, “What I will do…is frame out the device that I want Apple to deliver..I will call it ‘iPad’”.
Getting the name down is amazing enough, but Wolf goes onto basically nail most of what the iPad is today (and frankly the things he says the iPad should have and it doesn’t are the main complaints about the iPad). Paraphrasing this would do it injustice, so here it is verbatim:
The iPad would be a tablet Macintosh, running OS X Leopard and all of my critical software. It will not only have superior pen input options, it will also have the multi-touch interface from the iPhone. Mouse? What mouse? Use the pointing device G-d gave you. Want to type? Click an icon and a touchscreen keyboard pops up on the lower half of the screen, allowing you to type away directly.
The device would be no more than 1″ thick, and probably thiner – maybe 25mm – so it would be comfortable to tuck under our arm. iPad would have a 40gb solid-state hard drive (no moving parts, low power drain, fast startups) for the operating system and your applications, a standard 120gb hard drive (usually spun-down) for saving files, and a DVD-ROM drive. Write on it. Draw on it. Watch movies on it. And count on 4-5 hours of battery life. Carry it all with you into a meeting, use it the same way you would use a legal pad.
iPad would be a communications monster, with bluetooth, wi-fi, and a 3G mobile phone built in so you are connected by every conceivable means, and the device will serve as a voice communicator as well. Underneath the long-life battery would be a spot to slide in a SIM card so you can use the operator of your choice when you travel. A built-in camera and all of the usual connection ports would be there as well, of course.
Really, we dare anyone to write a post today that will be more accurate in three years time about a product that might not even have been in Steve Jobs’ mind then – for all we know, Jobs might have even read this at some point. What do you think, should Wolf get a cut of iPad sales?
This guy guessed the correct name in 2001 ! http://bit.ly/dz2JLL
Cool, but I think that Wolf’s imagining of the entire device still takes the cake. But thanks for making us all remember the Newton!
Errrr… the only thing he nailed was the name. :/
The iPad does NOT run OS X Leopard or have pen-input or have a standard 120GB HDD or a DVD-ROM or 4-5 hours of battery life or a camera or “standard connection ports”.
He nailed – multi-touch, thin, 40GB solid state (ok, so it’s between the 32GB and 64GB, but really that’s close enough), connectivity, battery life – we’re talking 2007 here, 5 hours ROCKED. Most everything else (except the pen input and DVD drive) as I mentioned highly wanted features that people want in future iPads – not his fault Apple didn’t make a complete product first go around.
Sweet! Now all he has to do is let me in on some lotto numbers 3 years down the road and he’ll be a true prophet in my eyes! ;)
And if the iPad had the features that were outlined by Mr. Wolf the first time around, Apple would have no expandability and would have no real leg to stand on in marketing longevity. What may be more impressive is that in 2-3 years, we may see an iPad with the features the current one has omitted that mirrors Mr. Wolf’s very intuitive outline.
believe it or not china has done a great job to make the world wonder great work china in the field of electronics
I’m confused as to how this “nails” the iPad features.
As Waisybabu already stated, the iPad:
- does not run OS X leopard
- does not run all his Mac applications
- does not have pen input
- does not have a 40 GB solid state drive “for the OS”
- does not have a 120 GB hard drive
- does not have a 4-5 hour battery (it lasts 10, and Chad, the original iBook got 6.6 hours of battery life in 1999 and my PowerBook G4 from 2005 got 5 hours)
- does not have a DVD drive
- does not have a built-in camera
- does not have “standard connection ports”
Literally the ONLY thing he got right is that it was multitouch and had 3G– which was obvious given that the iPhone had already come out, and was initially looked down upon for not having 3G.
This is just a bunch of current laptop features (not even imaginative ones, at that) crammed into a “multitouch tablet” — an idea which had been around, and has already existed in several forms, for more than three years at the time he was writing this. Frankly, I’m really surprised this is considered a story.
Just as a casual prediction:
in three years an iPad (or something like it) will last for 24 hours on a charge, will have up to a 500 GB ram chip (but will likely have a lower-end model with far less), will have an always-on cellular connection that is NOT billed through a cell carrier, will automatically create ad-hoc networks with other devices in order to simplify file sharing and communication, and will be convertible into a desktop computer by sliding it inside a larger standalone display. On the productivity side, this device will be based around an intelligent assistant that you interact with in normal English and which can aggregate and (somewhat) directly parse information in order to give you the exact materials you need, right when you need them. This will be based on mature versions of the tech currently used in Siri.
Now that’s a prediction!