Where the iPad stands in Steve Jobs’s famous “cars and trucks” analogy in 2025

When the iPad debuted in 2010, there was a lot of discussion about the “post-PC era.” With tablets and smartphones filling roles previously only possible by a laptop or desktop computer, there was a lot of chatter about the future role of the iPad as a disruptive device. Two months after debuting the iPad, Steve Jobs was interviewed at the D8 conference, where Walt Mossberg asked him about this. Here’s a piece of Jobs’s reply:

When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks because that’s what you needed on the farm. But as people moved more towards urban centers, people started to get into cars. I think PCs are going to be like trucks. They’re still going to be around, they’re still going to have a lot of value, but they’re going to be used by one out of x people. And this transformation is going to make some people uneasy because the PC has taken us a long way. They’re really brilliant, and we love, you know, we like to talk about the post-PC era, but when it really starts to happen, I think it’s going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people.

So in this analogy, the Mac was the pickup truck, and the iPad was the family sedan. Looking back on this conversation fifteen years later, it’s clear that the “post-PC era” hasn’t emerged as quickly as Jobs thought it would. The Mac and Windows PCs have remained the primary computing platform for college students and the professional class. Trucks, as it turns out, are quite popular. Funnily enough, this maps pretty well onto the automotive market too. When Jobs proffered this analogy in 2010, most people had a sedan as their primary vehicle. But truck sales have increased significantly since then, and the sedan is now a nearly extinct vehicle class.

The iPad hasn’t gone extinct since 2010. Far from it. But it certainly hasn’t supplanted the PC as the primary computing platform for most users. Could it? Maybe. It’s ability to do so was always predicated on it becoming capable enough to do everything the average Mac user can do, plus the unique benefits an iPad provides, like the tablet form factor and direct manipulation via touch.

We’re not there yet, but we’re closer than ever with iPadOS 26. I think the better analogy for the iPad in 2025 is the compact crossover SUV. These now make up a huge percentage of new vehicle sales in the U.S. They’re built on a unibody platform to have car-like rides. They have car-like fuel economy. They’re not built primarily to be off-road vehicles, but they have some amount of off-road capability.

With its support for Mac-like windowing, a menu bar, and advanced keyboard and mouse support, the iPad can’t yet do everything a Mac can. But it’s getting to the point where it can do most of what a Mac can for a larger and larger percentage of users.

We’ll always have trucks (Macs), but I’m still bullish on the future of the iPad as an alternative device.

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