What you need to know
- Input Mag has published an interview with two of Apple's original iPad designers.
- They sat down with Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno.
- They talked design, regrets and more.
Input Mag has published a new interview with Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, two of the original iPad's most important designers.
The opening to the original interview says:
While consumers pick up an iPhone for social media and communication, a Mac for work or homework, and an Apple Watch to track their fitness, the iPad remains a confounding product that most users buy and then find a use for. And yet, they love it.Regardless, the iPad is a staple of the modern tech landscape, and it's hard to remember a time when we saw it and thought, "What is that? A large phone?" Two people who've known the iPad longer than anyone are Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, the married founders of the mysterious new tech start up Humane, who met while working at Apple on the iPad and related projects. For the tenth anniversary of the iPad, Input talked to them about its strange development, its biggest feature flops, and how it has changed the world.
The interview is incredibly interesting, and in it, Chaudhri and Bongiorno discuss joining Apple, the origins of the iPad, the Apple Pencil, Android, Steve Cook vs Tim Jobs and more. The interview's pretty long but is definitely worth a read.
One of the most interesting parts is a question about regrets. When asked if they had any regrets about the iPad, Imran said:
And I think the one regret that I have is that we weren't as successful in going through and replacing the textbooks that kids have to use today in school. I think we started there, but we never could really push off on that. I think a lot of that is really driven by business decisions and the gravity of the phone and the app ecosystem being so big. But, you know, I think our vision of making it so that kids weren't lugging around massive backpacks full of books is something that I wish we were able to do, but we weren't during our time. So maybe now they will think about how to move it forward — but that would be one regret.
Bethany and Imran are now the founders of start-up Humane and said that whilst they're still operating in "stealth mode", but that we'll be hearing from then in 2020 for sure.
