No speculation needed. Steve Jobs himself mentioned it in an interview at D8, two years ago: “I actually started on a tablet first,” Mr. Jobs said. He explaine

No speculation needed. Steve Jobs himself mentioned it in an interview at D8, two years ago: “I actually started on a tablet first,” Mr. Jobs said. He explained that nearly 10 years ago, he had the idea of a keyboard-less computer where users typed on a multitouch glass display. He asked his user interface designers to build a prototype. When he saw the results a few months later, Mr. Jobs was particularly struck by one of the features in the prototype: the ability to scroll up and down at the swipe of a fingertip. “I thought, ‘My god, we can build a phone with this,’ and we put the tablet aside, and we went to work on the phone,” he said. Mr. Jobs said the tablet got back on track only after Apple had established itself as a major player in the smartphone business. “Once we got our wind back,” Mr. Jobs said, “we pulled the tablet off the shelf.” http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/first-came-the-idea-for-a-tablet-jobs-says/ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/first-came-the-idea...