The Software Civil War
On stage, the iPad’s software looked like a perfectly scaled-up version of the iPhone's, a decision that now seems obvious. But the man behind it, iOS chief Scott Forstall, represented just one side of a fierce internal debate. Forstall, a Steve Jobs protégé, was the champion of skeuomorphism—the design philosophy that made the Notes app look like a yellow legal pad and the bookshelf in iBooks appear like polished wood. It was a friendly, familiar look for a new device category. But this aesthetic had a powerful opponent: Jony Ive, Apple’s legendary head of hardware design. Ive favored minimalism, clean lines, and authenticity of materials. He reportedly despised the faux-leather and fake-felt textures Forstall’s team was coding into the software.
At the time of the iPad launch, Forstall was winning the war. He had Jobs’s ear, and his vision defined the product. Had the power dynamics shifted just slightly, or had Jobs sided with Ive sooner, the first iPad could have launched with a radically different, flatter interface—much like the iOS 7 redesign that came years later, but only after Forstall was famously pushed out of the company. The entire first impression of the iPad hung on this aesthetic battle.
The Ghost of the 'iPod Father'
Another key figure was conspicuously absent from the iPad story: Tony Fadell. Known as the “father of the iPod,” Fadell was a hardware guru who had been instrumental in Apple’s portable device strategy for years. He was involved in the earliest conceptions of an Apple tablet, long before the iPhone even existed. However, Fadell left Apple in 2008, two years before the iPad was unveiled, after a period of reported friction with other executives, including Forstall. His departure created a vacuum that reshaped the iPad project. Fadell was a hardware-first guy. His vision for a tablet likely would have been more akin to a specialized, ultra-portable computer. Instead, the iPad project was effectively rebooted under the leadership of the software-focused Forstall and the iPhone hardware team. It became, in essence, a giant iPod Touch. Had Fadell stayed and won the political battle, we might have seen a device more focused on professional creation from day one, potentially with a different chip architecture and a more complex operating system—a very different beast from the simple, content-consumption slab that conquered the world.
The Battle Over the Brain
The single biggest decision that defined the iPad was its operating system. Internally, there was a serious debate about whether the tablet should run a modified version of Mac OS X or a scaled-up version of the iPhone’s OS. A Mac-based tablet would have been more powerful and capable, appealing to the “pro” users who wanted a laptop replacement. It would have run Photoshop, had a real file system, and pleased the tech critics who dismissed the iPad as a toy. Steve Jobs made the decisive call to go with the iPhone OS. His reasoning was strategic: it was simpler, more stable on a touch-based device, and had a battery-friendly architecture. More importantly, it had the App Store. This decision fundamentally defined the iPad as a new category of device, not just a different form factor for a Mac. It was a gamble that infuriated power users but delighted millions of mainstream consumers. Had the other faction won, the iPad would have been a niche product for techies—a sophisticated but ultimately failed competitor to Windows tablets, rather than the category-creator it became.
The Project That Almost Died
The most significant “what if” is that the iPad almost never happened at all—at least not in 2010. The tablet project at Apple, codenamed “Q” or “Safari Pad,” actually predated the iPhone. In the early 2000s, engineers were experimenting with a multi-touch screen device. But when they developed a prototype that showed the potential for pinch-to-zoom, Steve Jobs saw a more urgent opportunity. He realized that technology could revolutionize the mobile phone industry. He made the executive decision to shelve the tablet project and divert all resources toward creating the iPhone. It was a classic Jobsian move, focusing the company’s entire energy on a single, transformative product. The tablet idea went dormant for years. Only after the iPhone became a runaway success did Jobs and his team feel confident enough to resurrect their original tablet concept, now with the massive advantage of the mature iOS platform and the App Store. Had the iPhone failed, or even been a modest success, the risk-averse move would have been to scrap the tablet idea for good.
