We already know what an iPad in 1996 would've looked like:
The
Apple Newton, iPhone and iPad's great-grandaddy.
This WAS what the technology was capable of at the time. IGZO displays didn't exist; Color LCDs didn't even exist with the level of quality we see today. So you'd have a black and white LCD screen.
As mentioned above, the web didn't exist yet, but there was rudimentary forms of Internet access, and cellular networks of the time supported a crude, slow dialup type of service (slow even for dialup). There was also the
DataTAC network, which had low bandwidth data capabilities for basic messaging and such.
But the Newton had things the iPad doesn't. Like Faxing! And receiving text pager messages!
It also had an IR beaming function, so if other Newton users were nearby, you could "beam" them items if the two devices were line of sight to each other.
What else... there was no camera, no FaceTime, no capacitive touch screen. It was pressure sensitive though, and you had to use a stylus. But, the Newton could do handwriting recognition... sorta.
People complain about the iPad Air's 1GB of RAM... try 640
Kilobytes on the Newton, total, to share between active "apps" and your data. Oh, and it was volatile memory too: if you let your batteries run down for too long, the memory would wipe. You
could add external memory cards though... up to 4 Megabytes.
And the starting price was $699 back in 1993 when it was first introduced. Adjusted for inflation, that's $1,129.75 in 2013 dollars.
Anyway, this was what the tech was capable of at the time. Making something exactly like the iPad Air in 2013, or even close to it, would've been impossible. The battery technology didn't exist, the processor technology wasn't there yet, the high capacity RAM and Flash storage wasn't even possible to make with the manufacturing equipment of the time. Even a non retina iPad 2 display would've been impossible to make at the thinness required. All the money in the world couldn't buy you an iPad Air in 1996.
