It must be tricky business when one of your company’s board of directors members also happens to be CEO of a company that will ultimately compete with yours. And so Steve Jobs, apparently annoyed with Google’s rip-off of multi-touch or pinch-to-zoom, hid iPad development from former board member and then-CEO of Google Eric Schmidt.
According to Business Insider:
Jobs was angry because he felt that Android was ripping off the key features of the iPhone, and wondered why Google was getting into the phone business when Apple didn’t get into the search business.
Eventually, the increasing competition in mobile forced Schmidt to step down from Apple’s board in August 2009. About six months later, Apple unveiled the first iPad.
We’ve heard plenty about Apple saying that it isn’t competing with Google in the search business, but we’ve also heard the iPhone maker saying that Google is intending to beat them in the smartphone game with Android — and Apple isn’t going to let them. We’ll see how that plays out.
In the meantime, there is no arguing the success or dominance of the iPad. There is no other manufacturer or platform out there right now that can even give the iPad a run for its money. Will the upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook give it a go? Or perhaps one of the new Galaxy Tab models running Honeycomb?
It’s going to take a lot more than fancy new hardware and a new version of an OS to take a stab at the huge market that the iPad commands. Android, BlackBerry and webOS are going to need a more rich and diverse app ecosystem to really lure in customers.
[Via: Business Insider]