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	by augustl 2648 days ago
	I was also curious about that. In other stories I've read, I've heard it referred to as a big ugly box with a touch screen embedded on top of it, which is what I imagined most people worked on. But this just looks like a normal iPhone with a large breadboard connected.

3 comments

95014_refugee 2648 days ago

Since the iPad display is much larger than the phone display, sitting it on the board like this wasn’t practical. There was an iPad dev board that looked a lot like this, but there were also ‘acrylics’ - chassis made from cnc’d Acrylic sheeting - that supported the screen connected to the board by a flex.

Most engineers wanted nothing to do with the display units; they were bulky and relatively fragile and desk space is always at a premium.

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ianhowson 2648 days ago

I always imagined that the iPad came about because some engineer had a Retina iPhone prototype on a standard 72dpi screen and figured it might work to replace a laptop.

Take the old eMac software, and bam, iPad.

(100% speculation)

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saagarjha 2648 days ago

I believe “iPad” was actually being developed prior to iPhone and was put on pause while multitouch and other technology was lifted from the project to support iPhone.

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sjwright 2648 days ago

That's how Steve Jobs tells it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5f8bqYYwps&t=2233

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rvense 2648 days ago

The iPad was actually conceptualized before the desktop workstation was common:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook

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ddalex 2648 days ago

The iPad was conceptualized as a thin touch screen no-keyboard slate since at least 1992 in Star Trek TNG [0]

[0] https://i1.wp.com/www.techdigest.tv/star-trek-tablet.jpg?res...