Most of the time, tech predictions turn out to be hilariously wrong – like Steve Ballmer laughing uproariously at the iPhone and Ken Olson, founder of Digital Equipment Corp., a once-major computer company, incredulously asking why on earth anyone would want a computer in their homes – but sometimes, they do hit their target with unnerving accuracy.
Funnily enough, most of these examples of prescience are demonstrated by satirists and humorists, more often than tech blogs and journalists whose job it is to cover and predict the future. For example, the fake news website The Onion, taking a look at the sheer number of blades Gillette was shoving into its shaving razors, wrote a satirized story stating that Gillette is now ramping up that number to 5. The story, written in 2004, became a reality in 2010 when Gillette, sure enough, introduced its five-bladed ShaveMate Titan 5.
In almost the same manner, Joel Watson, creator of the excellent webcomic strip HijinksEnsue drew a comic in 2012 that predicted the iPad would get a Microsoft Surface-like keyboard cover in 2015. Which it did, in the form of the iPad Pro’s matching Smart Keyboard.
The amount of detail Watson got right is uncanny. He accurately predicted the year this would happen (2015), and he almost nailed the name — he called the keyboard/cover combo “Smart Cover Touch;” in reality, it’s called the Smart Keyboard. The only real gaffe was imagining that the iPad keyboard would show up at WWDC, not a special event later in the year.
As Watson himself suggested at the time, this wasn’t really a lucky guess so much as a logical deduction based on Apple’s ages-old business strategy. It’s rarely the first in a category, but it has a knack for refining and popularizing concepts that had trouble getting off the ground before. Witness what happened with tablets, in case you need proof. Microsoft spent 9 years trying to spark demand for Windows-based Tablet PCs, only to watch the iPad take over seemingly overnight — in fact, the Surface line was a reaction to the hype surrounding the iPad. The Smart Keyboard may be far from original, but the only shocking thing about it is that some were shocked by it in the first place.
Here’s the iPad Pro with Apple’s new Smart Keyboard:
And here’s the Microsoft Surface:
Watson’s got a point, right?
