Apple Had No Idea What The iPad Was Going To Be Used For When It Launched

Here's a cool tweet from Marc Andreessen about the launch of the original iPad.

He says that he met with a top officer at Apple just before it announced the iPad. This officer didn't really know what to do with the iPad:

@BenedictEvans I met with a top Apple technical official right before the launch. His best use case was watching Hulu while cleaning garage.

- Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) March 9, 2014

Andreessen was responding to a tweet from Benedict Evans, who said that new products go through a period of "utility discovery" where people try to figure out what they're supposed to be used for. Evans is predicting the same thing for an iWatch whenever that happens. (Both Evans and Andreessen are a part of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz.)

It's cool to see that top executives at Apple weren't entirely sure how the iPad would be used. They knew they had something great on their hands, but it was unclear how people would use it.

Disclosure: Marc Andreessen is an investor in Business Insider.