Page 195 - The Apple Experience

CHAPTER 13

Rehearse the Script

It’s the intersection of technology and liberal arts that
makes our hearts sing.

—Steve Jobs

On March 2, 2011, Steve Jobs introduced the iPad 2, the second generation

of its pioneering tablet. The first iPad had sold 15 million units the previous

year and was hailed as the most successful consumer product ever launched.

Although his health was declining, Steve Jobs took the stage because as he

told the audience, Apple had been working on the product for a long time

and he didn’t want to miss it. Although the iPad had a 90 percent market

share and was one of the fastest-selling consumer products in history, Jobs

had an even better model ready to roll.
The iPad 2 trumped its predecessor in three ways: thinner, lighter, faster.

Those three adjectives provided the script for Jobs’s presentation as well as all

of Apple’s marketing, advertising, and in-store materials. Jobs spent seven

minutes revealing the benefits of the iPad 2 in more detail:

 “The first thing, it’s dramatically faster.” Jobs described the new A5 chip as a

dual-core processor whose overall performance was twice as fast as the
original iPad and ran graphics nine times faster. “A5 is quite an
achievement. It’s twice as fast on CPU performance, nine times faster

graphics, and the first iPad was no slouch,” Jobs said.
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