Yesterday was the 10 year anniversary of the announcement of the iPad. I remember watching the announcement with great interest but it wouldn’t be until the end of 2010 when I bought my first iPad. Oddly, I can’t easily find any photos of my first iPad in Photos, but I did run across a photo of me and my very first iPhone back in 2008.
There wasn’t an app store back then, as the plan was “apps” would be served through HTML5 web apps on Safari. Looking at the photo, two things quickly catch my eye: I had awesome sideburns (in ginger!) and the row above the dock had a right justified app icon, something you can’t do today on the iPhone or iPad.
I found an early screen shot from my iPhone 3G, after apps had been introduced to the ecosystem.
There’s plenty of familiar apps on that screen, albeit with ancient icons, but I don’t remember off the top of my head as to what “Zite” did.
** One moment.
A quick DuckDuckGo search reveals that Zite was an aggregator: news magazines, videos, blogs, and the like all came together in one app called Zite.
I still don’t remember it.
So I started this blog entry by remembering the 10 year anniversary of the iPad. Once I had an iPad I remember it took a little while for me to warm up to it. At the time I was still quite much in love with my Macs and iPhone and the iPad seemed like an intermediate device. Maybe extraneous.
Fast forward 10 years and my 2018 iPad Pro is my primary computer. I have it in tow all the time and I keep tweaking and making my personal experience better. I honest believe tablet computing, when does as well as the iPad, which is far and beyond anything else currently offered, is the future. My mom has an iPad as her primary device, my husband has an iPad, my nephew has an iPad. We don’t really need huge laptops anymore. For basic computing, when it comes to browsing the internet, tweeting, email, Facebook, and chatting with others through the various channels, iPads fit the bill, it’s simply a matter of thinking outside the box.
Happy birthday, iPad! I wish I could find a photo of my original iPad because I’ve been quite delighted since I first laid my hands on you.
