It's time to say Happy Birthday to Apple's iPad, which just turned 10 years old, and while we're excited about the possibilities of the iPad and iPad Pro in 2020, let's take this opportunity to look back at five big moments in iPad history.
The five biggest moments in iPad history include.
In 2010, when Apple CEO Steve Jobs came out on stage to introduce the iPad, he sat in a cozy leather chair and spent quite some time using it. The Apple CEO said, "It's much more intimate than a laptop," and positioned the iPad as a device for consuming content, not for creating content.
The closest thing to an app that could be created was an email app. Oh, how things have changed. In the beginning, it was compared to a sanitary napkin.
In order for the iPad to become the super screen it is today, it had to get one of the best features of the iPhone. The resolution jumped from just barely HD to 2048x1536, which is over Full HD, and the pixel density doubled from 132ppi to 264ppi.
While this change may have been unavoidable, it was more than necessary to position the iPad as the best tablet available, as the iPad is primarily used for watching TV and movies. The screen clarity is also greater when reading e-books, and text is rendered more clearly.
The original iPad Pro was Apple's big trick to get us to rethink tablets, and was released along with the Apple Pencil stylus and Smart Keyboard Cover case for artists and writers. This is like Apple saying, "It's not just for Netflix." Also new is a faster A9X processor and a larger storage option of 256GB (the largest Apple has ever offered).
Also, its 12.9-inch screen is simply larger than any iPad Apple has ever released, making it more attractive to those who draw or use large spreadsheets.
For its first seven years, the iPad started at $499. But in a 2017 press release, Apple announced a 34% reduction in that price, to $329.
In 2018, Apple will further lower the price for the education market, to $299. The holiday season saw the regular 10.2-inch iPad drop to $229 thanks to a brief Black Friday sale.
The 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro, the best iPads ever, came with more attractive designs, ProMotion screens for smoother scrolling, and many other upgrades. Writers and artists will appreciate the second-generation Apple Pencil. This Apple Pencil charges by snapping magnetically to the top edge, rather than "plugging down" in an incredibly inconvenient way.
This is the current iPad Pro design, and honestly, I don't see much reason for Apple to change it. Rumors speculate that they will move to a triple camera design like the iPhone 11 Max. There is also an expectation that Apple will offer another super-fast processor, perhaps the A13X or A14X.
Yes, 2019 brings a specialized version of iOS, the iPadOS, but only time will tell how important this new branding will be for the tablet. how much can the iPadOS grow on its own, the rules of what happens on the iPhone? Can it throw them out?
This update brings new multitasking tricks and a few other nice features, but it still comes closer to iOS than before. We look forward to the next iteration of iPadOS to see how Apple will make the iPad thrive.
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