Yeah it hits differently after what he said. My first impression after reading the "Sent from my iPad" was it was some sort of tongue-in-cheek joke, but it's the default signature so it was added automatically! It's a good growth hack.
It’s fairly well documented that the iPad was what he’d wanted to have for a while, well before the iPhone existed. IIRC biographies put his first concept of what became the iPad around when the iPod was released.
The iPhone was just a happy accident, something they decided to do with the cool tech they were playing with when working on the iPad, before it was ready.
The IPad was described as a glass keyboard when it was still a secret. It was inspired by an argument with a Microsoft employee who argued apple should license the windows tablet OS and make tablets.
The whole company was more focused on making a phone however. And three secret internal movements converged into what is the IPhone today. Best thing is it was kept secret from Steve Jobs. But once he saw it, he shelved the iPad and worked on the iPhone.
The iPhone's predecessor was the Motorola iTunes phone. Which was a combo of the ipod and phone.
A bit of compiled history.
Edit: iPad was a development concept because he believed tablets should not have a stylus. And got angry at Microsoft employee for suggesting it should.
i don't know, after a list of things he didn't do that he's thankful for, containing something he was responsible for in this way is a subtle nod to what he did create.
Its powerful because (a) he probably didn't explicitly add it, and (b) it references his impact on the world and (c) the iPad is obviously important but no where near as important as mathematics or medicine, and its not included on the list, just a helpful nod to its ability to help him reflect on this list.
The auto-marketing footer sullies the rest of his letter. The content recognizes all of the great achievements of human civilization and then at the end there is an advertisement. Which relies on it's continued inclusion in emails by stroking the human ego, so not very Buddhist, either.
