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Buying Guide: Understanding Steve Jobs' iPad 2 Launch Speech
Contents
- Understanding Steve Jobs' iPad 2 Launch Speech
- iPad 2 Is For Content Creation
Over the years, I have attended just about every speech Steve Jobs has given as the head of Apple. And one thing I have learned through this is that when Jobs speaks, there's a lot more behind his words. In fact, while most zoom in on the products he announces, I have learned to look at the nuances of the presentation itself and its strategic objectives that are implied if not spoken.
One good example of this was his speech at MacWorld in 2001. It was at this event that he introduced the iPod and some new Macs. However, he actually revealed his 10-year plan at this time. He said, "The Mac will be the center of our Digital Lifestyle."
During that year, we began to see how the Mac and iPod worked seamlessly together and Apple began to focus on the Mac's role as a central data hub that, in this first case, connected to an iPod, a digital lifestyle product. Although he left off the role of an IBM PC in his original remarks, favoring the Mac instead, what he was really saying was that personal computers would be strategic to Apple's long-term strategy. He was laying the groundwork for connecting other Apple digital lifestyle devices to PC's during this time period. Over these ten years, he has also introduced the iPhone and the iPad, which both use the Mac or PC as a central data hub.
With this in mind, I will make a prediction: Sometime this year, Steve will take the stage and layout his next 10-year plan. Of course, he will not say it that way. Instead he will most likely announce the long-rumored, cloud-based MobileMe service, and if I were to put words into his mouth, it might come out as, "Our cloud service will be the center of our digital lifestyles for the next decade." And with this, he will lay the groundwork for perhaps two or three other post PC digital lifestyle devices that will be tied to his cloud service during this time period as well. These devices, whatever they may be, will work just as seamlessly with its services as the iPod, iPhone and iPad do today.
There is another good example of these nuances that is quite current. When Steve Jobs introduced the iPad last year, you may remember that he did the demos while sitting in an easy chair and leaning back to consume the content he was showing off. This was no fluke and extremely intentional and a rather important visual cue to the iPad's initial positioning. I believe that Steve and his colleagues felt that for the first generation of the iPad to take off, they needed to emphasize its role in consumption and purposely downplayed the fact that it could also be used for content creation and useful data input. Apple's only nod to this was when Phil Schiller took the stage and briefly showed off Pages, Keynote, and Spreadsheet apps, the first real productivity apps for the iPad besides e-mail.