The iPad Launch: Can Steve Jobs Do It Again?
It is a gorgeous spring day when I arrive at the coolest address in the universe: 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, Calif., where Apple has been headquartered since 1993. The campus, for such they call it, is enormous yet not big enough to contain Apple's current rate of expansion.
Context & Ripple Effects
This Time piece arrives on launch-eve for the iPad, closing out a run-up that began in earnest when the New York Times reported in late January that the device would only deliver if Apple closed media deals for books, video, and news. By this week the pieces are falling into place: the first batch of iPad apps is live in the App Store days before Saturday's sale, and early reviews have been glowing enough that Reuters and the Times both ran their own takes on what is inside the sealed device.
The launch also lands against a backdrop of Apple operating at full tilt — the report notes 1 Infinite Loop, the company's home since 1993, is already too small for its pace of expansion — and with the iPhone business healthy enough that JD Power finds customer satisfaction flat at a high level while the lead grows. The open question Time frames is whether Jobs can manufacture a third hit platform, not just a second.
First-order effects
- Developers are racing the Saturday release date: Flurry data shows iPad project starts continuing to soar, and Apple has made the first wave of iPad apps live in the App Store days ahead of launch.
- Media partners face the deadline set out in the January reporting — content deals were the named precondition for the iPad delivering on its promise, so holdouts decide in days, not quarters.
Second-order effects
- The iPad's lack of Flash support redirects publisher and video-site engineering budgets toward HTML5, giving Apple leverage over web-format choices Adobe had assumed were settled.
- Early impressions flag the new app catalog as plentiful but expensive versus iPhone norms, forcing developers to test whether tablet buyers accept premium pricing or drag the App Store toward the iPhone's low-price equilibrium.
Third-order effects
- If the launch lands, the tablet becomes a third Apple-gated platform alongside the Mac and iPhone, shifting more software distribution onto App Store terms and away from the open web.
- Sustained growth at the pace the report describes puts physical strain on a campus sized for a smaller company, making facilities expansion a quiet structural cost of the platform strategy.
The trend: Apple is converting each hardware launch into a platform event that pulls developers, media partners, and even web standards onto its terms — the post-PC playbook Jobs began with the iPhone.