Lessons for the iPad from the iPhone

In a few short weeks, the iPad will be released, and with it the inevitable backlash that follows every major Apple product debut. Some, behind this backlash, have prepared reasonable arguments intended to dissuade individual consumers from buying the iPad in favor of a competitor's product more suited to their needs. Others will attempt to argue, without having used an iPad, that it should never have been developed or sold in the first place, and that its very existence is a giant misstep by a dominant company. This latter group is mostly composed of those who cannot remember back to 2007, when the iPhone was released amidst very similar complaints. 

Here are some lessons that we can learn from the iPhone's release in 2007

• Any issues you might have with the iPad's current feature set and price point will be resolved within sixteen months. Remember back in January 2007, when you were complaining how the iPhone needed 3G and GPS and cost too much at $599? All devices evolve to meet the desires of their user base.

• Any complaints you have with the appearance of enlarged iPhone applications on the iPad's screen will be 95% resolved by this summer. It's not like there's a billion-dollar mobile application industry bursting with tens of thousands of developers stumbling all over themselves in a frenzy to make their software look attractive on a newly announced 9.7-inch screen.

• If you're going to argue that Apple just can't make a tablet computer and dominate a market that others have inhabited for a decade, that's certainly a valid point, but it's also shortsighted. Remember Palm's CEO Ed Colligan's famous quote regarding the iPhone before it was announced, two years before he stepped down as CEO:

We've learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone. PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in.

• If you think anyone who purchases an iPad will look like a douche carrying one around because it is prohibitively expensive and shiny and has a silly name, remember, again, you thought this about the iPhone in 2007, but now look at how much cultural acceptance that product has received. Even though it is just as shiny and costs more than $2,000 with an AT&T contract. 

  It is important to be constantly aware of the fact that technological innovation is insidious and unstoppable, and will work its way into the bloodstream of our zeitgeist until it eats us alive.