How Long in the Works Was the iPad?

Ken Segall:

My point is, Apple has always demonstrated tremendous common sense. It’s just hard to believe they’d choose the name iPhone OS if iPad was already on the drawing board. My inner Sherlock tells me iPad wasn’t even a twinkle in Apple’s eye until well after March, 2008.

There’s no argument about it that “iPhone OS” no longer makes sense as the name for this OS. The iPad HIG and developer documentation is chock full of features and APIs and guidelines that do not apply to the iPhone (or iPod Touch). So there are features in the iPhone OS which do not apply to the iPhone.

I still say the iPad has been in the works for a long time. Many, many years. Certainly not the iPad exactly as it was announced, but the general idea — the final design of an Apple product is the result of non-stop iteration. I could be wrong, and Apple, of course, isn’t going to say. But I’d say the awkwardness of the “iPhone OS” name is proof only that Apple picks names from the gut — names that feel right rather than think right. “iTunes” is exhibit A.

★ Friday, 5 February 2010