"The seven-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone, and too small to compete with an iPad"
About this Quote
Jobs is doing what he always did best: turning a product opinion into a law of nature. Calling seven-inch tablets "tweeners" isn’t neutral taxonomy; it’s a dismissal dressed as common sense. The word carries the faint sting of adolescence - awkward, transitional, not fully formed. In a single stroke, he frames the category as inherently compromised: the phone is about always-on intimacy and pocketability, the iPad about immersive scale. Anything in between becomes a device without a clear story, and in Jobs-world, a device without a story is already dead.
The intent is competitive as much as philosophical. In 2010-2011, Android manufacturers were racing to define what a tablet could be, and seven-inch form factors were emerging as cheaper, more portable challengers to Apple’s 9.7-inch iPad. Jobs doesn’t argue specs; he argues identity. If he can convince you the middle size is conceptually wrong, he doesn’t have to justify why Apple doesn’t sell one.
The subtext is classic Apple: markets aren’t discovered, they’re authored. Jobs positions Apple as the editor of the future, not a participant in a messy ecosystem. It’s also a subtle flex about product discipline. Apple won’t chase every diagonal measurement; it will declare the "right" sizes and let everyone else look like they’re improvising.
History adds an extra twist: Apple eventually released the iPad mini. Which doesn’t negate the quote so much as reveal its real function - not prophecy, but narrative control, deployed until the company was ready to rewrite the script.
The intent is competitive as much as philosophical. In 2010-2011, Android manufacturers were racing to define what a tablet could be, and seven-inch form factors were emerging as cheaper, more portable challengers to Apple’s 9.7-inch iPad. Jobs doesn’t argue specs; he argues identity. If he can convince you the middle size is conceptually wrong, he doesn’t have to justify why Apple doesn’t sell one.
The subtext is classic Apple: markets aren’t discovered, they’re authored. Jobs positions Apple as the editor of the future, not a participant in a messy ecosystem. It’s also a subtle flex about product discipline. Apple won’t chase every diagonal measurement; it will declare the "right" sizes and let everyone else look like they’re improvising.
History adds an extra twist: Apple eventually released the iPad mini. Which doesn’t negate the quote so much as reveal its real function - not prophecy, but narrative control, deployed until the company was ready to rewrite the script.
Quote Details
| Topic | Technology |
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