[While it didn't lead to traditional PCs being replaced by tablets, as some analysts predicted at the time, it did catch Microsoft off guard. Or, as former Windows president Steven Sinofsky put it, Microsoft was "blindsided" by Apple's direction.

On the occasion of the iPad's 10th anniversary, Sinofsky posted on Medium and revealed some interesting facts about the Windows team's perspective at the time. It's a quick read, but it's enough to speculate that the iPad had a direct impact on the origins of Windows 8, including Microsoft's insistence on the Microsoft Store.

When the iPad came out, Windows 7 had only been available for a few weeks. Content consumption did not exist as it does today, and Microsoft was convinced that the iPad would be a version of the Mac. Essentially, it was merely a productivity tool.

"The endless rumors of an Apple tablet clearly *meant* a Mac-based pen computer. Why wouldn't it? The industry has been chasing this for 20 years. That was our context," Sinofsky explains.

This notion was reinforced by media articles pointing out how Apple did not have an answer for netbooks, which are low-cost (and poorly performing) laptops. Sinofsky admits that netbooks were "just a way to capitalize on the struggling effort to make low-power, fanless Intel chips for cell phones"; it was better to have an Atom processor in a netbook than to have one taking up space in a warehouse. [But the iPad was different. [It] didn't have a stylus or a pen. How could you type and be productive without them? "The PC's brain was bound by the options of keyboard, mouse, and pen, so the idea of being productive without them seemed fanciful. Also, instant standby, no viruses, rotatable, long term quality maintenance ......" Sinofsky said of his thoughts at the time.

That same year, Microsoft introduced dozens of Windows 7-based tablet PCs that were "extremely overpriced and marketed essentially as niche products for executives."

The iPad was so different in concept that it essentially The iPad was so different in concept that it essentially destroyed Microsoft's brainchild. Microsoft needed to come to grips with the fact that the iPad was blazing a different trail.

"The iPad and iPhone were a veritable existential crisis for Microsoft's core platform business. Without a platform that Microsoft controlled and that developers wanted, the soul of the company was 'missing,'" Sinofsky said.

Sinofsky doesn't say it outright, but reading between the lines, it seems certain that the iPad directly influenced Microsoft's decision to build Windows 8. As he points out, "The PC was overrun by browsers, and it took a decade to change. [Knowing that iPhones and iPads run a robust OS with a completely different "shell," interface model (touch), and app model (API and architecture) was critical to being a major platform provider for computers ", Sinofsky explains.

Windows 8 was a failed attempt to merge tablets with traditional PCs, but years later, the Microsoft Store remains, although "without the birth of the iPad, the Microsoft Store may not have existed," as it probably would have, The iPad seems to have accelerated Microsoft into the inevitable.

In any case, Sinofsky's recollections provide an interesting perspective by the person best qualified to reflect on how the iPad impacted Windows.