Steve Jobs on iPhone and Tablet Origins: The Secret
What Jobs talks about
Jobs describes an early tablet concept that came before the iPhone, centered on getting rid of the keyboard and typing on a multi-touch glass screen. He says the breakthrough was realizing how to make touch input usable without a stylus.
He argues that stylus-based tablets were constrained by PC assumptions: precision, weight, battery life, and software built for a pencil. In his view, once you remove the stylus, you have to rethink the operating system from the ground up.
He also explains how work on the tablet informed the iPhone, and later fed back into the tablet again. The clip is valuable because it shows how Jobs thought about product development as a chain of discoveries and tradeoffs.
An interviewer prompts Jobs, and Jobs speaks most of the time.
In his words
“If you need a stylus, you have failed.”
“We have to do this from the beginning”
“I will tell you a secret.”
“Actually, I started with a tablet first.”
“We spent the next few years making the iPhone.”
Key points
- The tablet idea came first, before the iPhone.
- Jobs wanted a device with no keyboard, using multi-touch on glass.
- He believed that if you need a stylus, you have already failed.
- Stylus-based tablets were too tied to PC limitations and PC software.
- A finger-based device needed a completely different operating system.
- Work on touch, inertia scrolling, and gestures helped shape the iPhone.
- Apple later returned to the tablet using what it had learned from the phone.
Full transcript
I will tell you a secret. Okay. Okay. Actually, I started it with the tablet first. We have never been involved in the poncel business in any way. So, they took a big step and decided to trust us to do the right thing on the poncel. And it worked out very well. So, we can change the rules of the game in the same way on the tablet. Yes, talk about it. What I remember when I told you about the tablet is that handwriting may be the slowest input method ever found and it will definitely fail. Well, what we try to do is to rearrange the tablet. In other words, I think Microsoft does a lot of interesting work on the tablet.
What we have done is not comparable to what they have done. We rearrange it and what we do is really different from what they have done. You know, they are fully stylus-based. We have a PC tablet that they have had for 10 years. No. You know, and what we said at the beginning is that if you need a stylus, you have failed. So, let's talk about it. And that's what drives everything. That's what drives everything. Their PC tablet is PC-based. No. It has all the PC costs. It has the battery life of a PC. It has the weight of a PC. It uses a PC operating system that really needs precision like the tip of a pencil.
No. Well, once you throw away the stylus, you can't get that precision. You have precision like a finger, which is much worse. Because of that, you need a completely different software. So, you can't use a PC operating system. And you have to accept the reality and say, we have to do this from the beginning because all PC applications will not function without rewriting. So, we build something very different. So, when you build this OS, a multi-touch gesture OS for fingers, you don't do it directly on a tablet. You do it on a pencil. What do you mean? Are you considering making a tablet when making an iPhone, or is it just a natural development? iPhone is out.
I think it's a big success. I will tell you a secret. Okay. Okay. Actually, I started with a tablet first. And... I had the idea to get rid of the keyboard, type on a multi-touch glass screen. And I asked people, can we make a multi-touch screen that I can use to type? I can put my hand on it and really type. And about six months later, they called me and showed me this screen prototype. And it was amazing. And I gave it to one of our people. This was in the early 90s. I mean, early 2000s.
And I gave it to one of our very brilliant UI people. And he called me back a few weeks later, and he said that inertia scrolling works, and a few other things. Well, at that time we were thinking of making a pencil. And when I saw rubber bands, inertia scrolling, and a few other things, I thought, oh, my God, we can make a pencil out of this. And I put the tablet project on Rack because the pencil is more important. And we continued and spent the next few years making the iPhone. So, and then? And when we got our spirit back and thought we could do something else, we took the tablet from Rack, took everything we learned from the pencil, and started working on the tablet again.
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Transcribed from the audio with OpenAI Whisper. Timestamps link to the video above. Errors are possible.