TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

In the process of requesting iPad application startups, Y Combinator made an interesting argument as to why the iPad is important:

Most people think the important thing about the iPad is its form factor: that it’s fundamentally a tablet computer. We think Apple has bigger ambitions. We think the iPad is meant to be a Windows killer. Or more precisely, a Windows transcender. We think Apple foresees a future in which the iPad is the default way people do what they now do with computers (and some other new things).

Programmers may never want a computer they don’t control, but ordinary people just want something cheap that works. And that’s how the iPad will seem to them. Many will never make a conscious decision to switch. They’ll get an iPad as well, then find they use their Windows machine less and less. When it dies they won’t replace it.

That’s right, or at least that’s Apple’s longterm strategy with these post-PC devices. Jobs believes that the future is in mobile, non-PC computing devices, and Apple wants to own this market. The PC’s reign is over.

That’s why Apple has been so aggressive with iPhone and iPad prices. Unlike the PC market, where Apple only seeks to dominate small parts of the market (creative professionals and students primarily),1 Apple wants to control the post-PC market. And they’re doing this by selling the iPhone and iPad for low prices.

Apple has ceded the PC market to Microsoft and the commodity-PC manufactures. They want to dominate the next twenty years. That’s Jobs’s legacy.

1. As a result, they seek higher profit margins, rather than market share. [↩]