The iPad is Already in Its Final Form

In the run up to any Apple product announcement, rumors and linkbait abound like in few other situations. A number of articles and videos heading into Wesnesday's iPad 3 announcement are about what the thing will look like.

The answer is quite simple: a lot like what the iPad 2 looked like. The iPad 2 itself largely looked like the original iPad, with only the only drastic change being the introduction of a white face plate option. Unless more colors come down the pipeline, all future iPads will look roughly alike.

Think about it: the external iPad hardware is just a touchscreen with a home button and a couple of cameras. The models with cellular connectivity have an extra black stripe at the top of the back for the antennas. That's it, and that's all it's really ever going to be.

The iPhone has changed form several times, but it has far more constraints than the iPad does because of its smaller size. It will probably keep evolving over time as the company comes up with new ways to deal with those constraints. The iPad doesn't have those same constraints. Everything crucial can fit inside with plenty of room to spare for an enormous battery.

Other Apple products have hit the design wall, so to speak, in this same way. The iPod Classic hasn't changed since 2007. The fourth and fifth generation iPod Nanos were basically the same thing, and the seventh generation introduced in 2010 wasn't updated for 2011. The Mac Pro's external design basically hasn't changed since it was introduced as the Power Mac G5 in 2003.

The iMac was once the company's big showpiece for design. The original iMac G3 had a bulbous and translucent case. The iMac G4 was the famous sunflower design, a radical change from the G3. The iMac G5 was yet another big change, packing the whole computer behind the screen. The basic form hasn't changed since the G5's introduction 2004, except that it now is made of aluminum and glass instead of plastic and comes in different screen sizes.

While the iPods and Macs took time to hit their end-of-design phase, the iPad basically launched that way. When the product design is "just a big ol' screen", where do you go from there? Until and unless the aluminum backing gets replaced by another material (carbon fiber? liquidmetal?), it basically is what it is.

The iPad will continue to grow and evolve over time, but it won't be the external look and feel doing that changing.