Steve Jobs |
Apple re-entered the mobile-computing market in 2007 with the iPhone. Smaller than the iPad but featuring a camera and mobile phone, it pioneered the multitouch finger-sensitive touchscreen interface of Apple's iOS mobile operating system. By late 2009, the iPad's release had been rumored for several years. Such speculation mostly talked about "Apple's tablet"; specific names included iTablet and iSlate.The eventual name is reportedly a homage to the Star Trek PADD, a fictional device very similar in appearance to the iPad.[citation needed] The iPad was announced on January 27, 2010, by Steve Jobs at an Apple press conference at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.
Jobs later said Apple began developing the iPad before the iPhone,but temporarily shelved the effort upon realizing that its ideas would work just as well in a mobile phone.
Source :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPad#Prehistory