Starfleet Tablet: The 'Star Trek' Padd Before The Apple iPad
Need A Better Tablet? Try earning your pips to use a Starfleet PADD
Before we carefully weigh the merits of a miraculous Starfleet device vs a highly marketed, overpriced Apple device - full disclosure: I like my PADD way better than my Apple iPad.
If ya visit my pad, I’ll be busy working on my PADD - got it? Good.
In truth, I find myself using my PERSONAL ACCESS DISPLAY DEVICE far more than Apple’s premier tablet. Why? Because Starfleet Command issued it to me to help me fulfill my important duties as an active Starfleet professional. Tell me honestly, don’t hold back now; wouldn’t I be completely remiss if I didn’t make full utilization of this fantastic technology? You know I’d certainly be deducted points during my monthly Starfleet performance review if I was found to be neglecting my PADD use.
Computer, End Program.
That was fun. I dearly love using my holodeck time, but fear not, I’m back to operating in our own mundane reality. Pardon my daring dip into the glorious galaxy of fanciful tech found in Star Trekdom. I wish I could use a PADD daily, because the Starfleet professionals on Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s Starship employed them all the time. Captains Sisko and Janeway’s crew mates depend on PADDs for much of their data crunching needs. Even Quark and his Ferengi utilize PADD devices in their business dealings.
Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced us to the PADD in 1987. The Apple iPad was released in 2010. So, it is clear that unless a time warp around the sun was used, the Starfleet PADD came first.
Later, when Apple released its version, fans and Star Trek art department employees such as Mike Okuda and Doug Drexler found more than a passing resemblance between the two. As Drexler put it during an interview with Ars Technica, “We always felt that the classic Okuda T-bar graphic was malleable, that you could stretch and rearrange it to suit your task, just like the iPad," he said. "The PADD never had a keyboard as part of its casing, just like the iPad. Its geometry is almost exactly the same—the corner radius, thickness, and overall rectangular shape."
Gee, Apple, looks like you were simply inspired. Even Data’s humanoid alter ego, Brent Spiner said that Steve Jobs/Apple stole the iPad idea from Next Generation.
Power Pad
Sure the cool factor is completely confirmed. We would all love to own a fully functional Starfleet PADD, and to show it off every chance we got. Just imagine the looks we’d get hanging out at the internet cafe! But just how powerful is this futuristic device?
Besides taking notes or allowing a user to do some internet like research on the Federation databases, what can it actually do? In an article on Ars Technica, according to ST:TNG art director, Mike Okuda, these PADDs can literally do everything an Enterprise bridge console could do,"We realized that with the networking capabilities we had postulated for the ship, and given the [hypothetical] flexibility of the software, you should be able to fly the ship from the PADD," Okuda said.
Could one fly the NASA Space Shuttle with only an iPad to guide it along? How about that Amazonian Amazon Jeff Bezos flying his Blue Origin with merely a fresh, fruity tablet? Nah. Never gonna happen. So, it appears the fabled PADD takes the win on the flexibility front alone.
Buying an Apple iPAD is easy enough in our real world. Go to an Apple store, buy one off Amazon or a retailer like Walmart or Target. It all boils down to plunking down our gold pressed latinum in the right amount. Owning that other PADD, the Starfleet variety, that’s not so simple. Earning the privilege to carry and use a PADD is something altogether different. Yes, it’s part of a fictional, sci-fi world, but for me, and apparently for the creators of Trek’s tablet, the speculative vision of it felt so authentic we now take our real world tablets for granted. Once again Star Trek fuels the sci-fi imagination, thereby powering the inventive creators of real world tech.