Steve Jobs Was Wrong - Slate Magazine

Jobs thought 7-inch tablets were too small. Apple's user testing had revealed that "there are clear limits of how close you can physically place elements on a touchscreen before users cannot reliably tap, flick, or pinch them," Jobs said. As a result, these tiny tablets would need to be sold with sandpaper, he predicted, "so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one-quarter of their present size." He wasn't finished: Because most tablet owners also have a smartphone, people would find that these tiny tablets didn't offer anything they couldn't do on their phones. "The 7-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone, and too small to compete with an iPad," Jobs said. As a result, they "are going to be DOA."