A 10 years challenge: Where does iPad stand now? | TechTree.com

A 10 years challenge: Where does iPad stand now?

Ever since the launch of the iPad, no other tablet device has come anywhere as close to the level of success the iPad has enjoyed.

 

In 2009, exactly 10 years back, Steve Jobs introduced a mobile device with a totally new form factor. He hinted about the dawn of a new era of devices by introducing the iPad which sat somewhere between an iPhone and a MacBook. Back then, it was just supposed to offer better browsing, gaming, email and multimedia experience than other portable devices. Jobs, during the launch, even ridiculed the idea of Netbooks, a device his competitors hoped could do all these easily.

Ever since the launch of the iPad, no other tablet device has come anywhere as close to the level of success the iPad has enjoyed. Though initially, many considered the iPad as yet another costly device that Apple aficionados can show off. It was considered to be just an enlarged iPod Touch or at best, an oversized iPhone.

Honestly, for the initial few years a large section of tech enthusiasts felt that the iPad was just another device that one would use to kill time as it would not solve any practical purpose. It surely wasn’t usable as a phone and for your regular office-related tasks you still needed a device with a large display, a proper keyboard, and day-long battery life.

One of the primary reasons behind this was the lack of important applications that could natively support a large display, limited storage options and the fact that the iPad wasn’t best suited for multitasking. Though the access to the App store would mean that almost all the applications than you had for an iPhone were available for the iPad, which was a good head start. Even with these limitations, users embraced the new device wholeheartedly and iPad sold like hotcakes back in 2013.

In the recent few years, we’ve seen Apple putting a lot of focus on making the iPad a totally independent and extremely capable device that can do much more that it could initially do. The year 2015 saw the introduction of the Pro version of the iPad as well as the Apple Pencil. These alongside new features at the OS level meant that Apple was taking giant steps towards giving iPad its own much-needed ecosystem.

The recent iPad Pro has hardware that could beat most computers black and blue in terms of sheer performance, battery backup and portability. Professionals who do not like to carry a bulky laptop everywhere and still want to get the job done without compromising one bit on the quality, now have a good excuse to pick up the Pro. Mind you the regular iPads are no slouch as well. The addition of Apple Pencil and more importantly iPad OS is the exact steps that outline Apple’s focus on this category of devices.

In fact, this focus is what clearly highlights the reason behind the success of iPad and failure of almost all Android-powered tablets, barring just one or at max two. Over the past 10 years, iPads have evolved to the extent that they’ve wiped the entire Netbook line of Windows-powered budget laptops and its closest competitors the Android Tablets, out of the market.

iPads are right there getting better with each passing year cementing their position as an ultra-portable and ultra-powerful device that can help you do most of the tasks on the go. While we have not yet reached the level where one can replace the regular laptop with an iPad but heck, these were never supposed to do that in the first place. Isn’t it?

 


TAGS: iPad, Apple, Steve Jobs

 
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