It may shock some of you to learn this, but the Apple iPad was not the first tablet PC. In fact, it’s not even close. As we teeter on the brink of yet another sacramental iPad unveiling, it’s a good time to look back at some of the less successful but still important tablets we’ve seen through the ages.
Some were never more than concepts. Others disappeared almost immediately after entering the market. A few still soldier on in the iPad’s shadow. Here are our picks for the most notable tablets, counted down by order of importance.
The 12 Greatest Tablets of All Time
12. Motorola Xoom (2011)
The first machine to run Google’s tablet-friendly Android 3.0, the Xoom (“zoom”) was in many ways superior to the original iPad. It had front- and rear-facing cameras, a higher resolution screen, a bigger display, and more powerful graphics hardware. In fact, it could do virtually everything the iPad could do. Except get people excited about it. The tablet is still available — and Xoom 3 is rumored to be coming — but it has never exactly zoomed off store shelves.
11. Etch A Sketch (1960)
Lightweight, portable, and battery free, the Etch A Sketch was one of the first tablets to enable content creation, primarily in the form of two-dimensional monochrome drawings. Its dual scroll-wheel interface was revolutionary for its time, though early models were hampered by a lack of memory and a tendency to produce a gray screen of death after being shaken.
10. RAND Tablet (1963)
Described in a research paper of the era as a “Man-Machine Graphical Communication Device,” this 10 × 10-inch tablet (aka the Grafacon) could record the movements of an electronic stylus and display them on an oscilloscope. It was a steal for only $18,000, the equivalent of about $138,000 today. Also, it looks like it came straight off the set of “The Outer Limits.”
9. Dynapad (1972)
Weighing roughly 2 pounds, this amazing gizmo featured a high-resolution screen, scads of internal storage, hours of battery life, and an always-on Internet connection. It was also a unicorn. Designed by computing legend Alan Kay, the Dynabook never became a real product — it took 20 years just to build the first prototypes. But Kay’s work inspired a generation of laptop and tablet designers, including the team behind the Apple Newton .
8. GRidPad (1989)
GRiD Systems’ pad was the first commercially successful pen computer, despite the fact that it ran MS-DOS 3.3, featured a 10-inch black-and-white screen, weighed 4.5 pounds, ran just three hours on a charge, and cost from $2,400 to $3,700. After GRiD was acquired by AST in the mid-’90s, the GRiDPad died a quiet death. Co-designer Jeff Hawkins then went on to better things, co-founding Palm Computer.
7. Tablets of Law (1500 BCE)
Created using the original write-once read-many technology, these twin tablets were more useful for displaying content than creating it. Weighing a reputed 40 seahs (approximately 400 pounds), they were far less portable than today’s models but much more readable in direct sunlight. The originals were destroyed by the developer shortly after their debut; fortunately, a backup copy was available.
6. Apple Newton MessagePad 100 (1993)
The stylus-driven handheld gizmo is most famous for three things: being the first true PDA (or personal data assistant); its notoriously poor handwriting recognition (not all that different from today’s autocorrect run amok); and the religious fervor that surrounded it (later increased by an order of magnitude for the iPhone and iPad). If the Apple cult formed when the Macintosh was introduced, then the Newton turned them into zealots.
5. Palm Pilot 1000 (1996)
The first successful PDA developed its own cult following when it was introduced three years after the Newton. Small enough to fit into a shirt pocket, the stylus-based Pilot was designed as a companion to a PC, not a replacement. And its handwriting recognition (a more advanced version of the Newton’s) actually worked, once you mastered the arcane Graffiti alphabet. Ultimately, though, the Pilot’s most useful features were subsumed into smartphones, and after multiple acquisitions, spinoffs, and relaunches , the company finally succumbed.
4. Amazon Kindle Fire (2011)
The 7-inch Fire runs a customized version of Android and is primarily designed to maximize sales of Amazon ebooks, apps, and movies. But three years and several iterations later, it remains the most family-friendly tablet, with built-in parental controls and prices starting at $99. That — and Amazon’s market power — make the Fire the tablet for the non-geeky masses.
3. The Trek Pad (1966)
You know the one we’re talking about — that slate Captain Kirk was always scribbling something on and handing to a yeoman in a miniskirt. (Our theory: He was giving her his subspace-frequency cell number.) Nobody knew what it did, but we all wanted one. Also: a tricorder.
2. Microsoft Courier (2008)
First uncovered by Gizmodo , the Courier was a dual-screen 7-inch tablet that opened and closed like a Filofax, with pen and gesture recognition, seamless connectivity, and a host of simple-yet-useful features . It was brilliant, innovative, designed years before Apple unveiled the iPad, and doomed. None other than Bill Gates condemned the Courier to an early grave . Why? Because it wouldn’t run Microsoft Outlook.
1. Apple iPad (2010)
Were you expecting anything else? After centuries of work and dozens of failed efforts, Apple finally created a tablet people actually wanted to buy. The iPad may not have been as “magical” and “life changing” as the late Steve Jobs claimed, but it created a new market for highly portable connected computers, and subsequent iPads only improved on the concept. No wonder Apple has sold more than 200 million of them.
