What the iPhone did for telephony, the iPad did for tablets.
Until last year, that area of computing was in hibernation, as users shunned early attempts by Microsoft and its partners to make tablet-laptop hybrids. Apple, during Jobs's exile, had also tried and failed to innovate with the Newton in 1993. But the iPhone's success blazed a new trail for Jobs, who adapted its multi-touch screen and app-based OS to bring a new level of portability, versatility, and ease-of-use, to tablet interfaces.
Most notably, we have Jobs to thank for the iPad's 9.7-inch form factor -- as he once pointed out, anything smaller wouldn't do iOS justice. "7-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad," Jobs said.
As usual, the Apple CEO's sense of what users really wanted from tablets outweighed the conventional wisdom that anything that wouldn't fit in a coat pocket could never be a smash hit. The only question users and fans have for Apple today is, "What's next?"
