Alan Kay: Apple's iSlate Will Rule the World

When it comes to computers, Alan Kay knows just about everything. After all, he invented notebook computers. His opinion holds so much weight that Steve Jobs even asked him what he thought about the iPhone when it was launched several years ago. What Kay told Jobs may now be playing out.

Kay said:

“When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it’s the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you’ll rule the world.”

Jobs actually owes a lot of his success to Kay, the man who invented the notebook concept and had a hand in designing the graphical user interface that Jobs fell in love with during a visit to Xerox PARC and then used on the Macintosh computer.

When interviewed by GigaOM last year, while rumors of an Apple tablet were still swirling, Kay predicted success for the tablet. He also commented:

“I bet a thousand dollars that they had a five-by-eight-inch version for the last couple years in house.”

It will be interesting to see if the iSlate will, in fact, "rule the world."