List: 6 greatest events in the history of the iPad

It has been 12 years since the iPad was launched, firmly placed between two camps where one believed that the iPad was the new Iphone while the other camp believed that it could never live up to the hype. After a couple of dramatic early years, the iPad itself has become a company that brings in about $ 30 billion a year in sales. It’s not the next Iphone, but in terms of Apple’s platforms, it’s about the size of a Mac.

What were the defining moments in the iPad’s 12-year history? What were the main events that led there? Here are the top moments ranked:

Honorable Mention: Ipad Introduced to the World (January 2010)

Before we get started, I must admit that the announcement of almost any product is perhaps its most important moment. But I do not intend to include that day in January 2010 when Steve Jobs sat down in a comfortable armchair and flipped his finger through the front page of the New York Times.

It was one of Jobs’ amazing demonstrations, literally reclining on stage to show off a silvery narrow plate. When I watched the launch at home again, I turned around and discovered that my five-year-old son was staring at the screen, straight into Steve Jobs’ field of reality distortion. “Oh, I want it, I want it, we have to get it,” he said.

He was not wrong.

5. M1 Ipad Pro (April 2021)

For years, we’ve seen Apple’s iPad Pro hardware seem so powerful that software could not really use all its power. Faster Ipad models seemed almost unnecessary as no one complained that the Ipad lacked performance for anything.

And yet the iPad floated away in its own context, separated from the Mac. Yes, Apple declared that the iPad Pro was faster than 92 percent of all laptops at an event in October 2018. But it was not until the launch of the iPad Pro with the M1 in April 2021 that the iPad could really be compared directly to the Mac.

That’s a difficult comparison. The fact that the iPad Pro has more or less the same hardware as the Macbook Air exposes the limitations of the iPad OS compared to the Mac OS. Something that questions the future of the Ipad. Will the iPad OS be more powerful, like the Mac OS? Or will the iPad continue to waste power on Apple’s processors due to an inefficient and backward operating system?

4.Magic Keyboard (March 2020)

During the earliest days of the pandemic, Apple launched, via video and press release, a new Ipad Pro. But also a new accessory called Magic Keyboard, which contained a trackpad – and needed a software update that for the first time added real support for a mouse cursor in the iPad OS.

It was a surprising and touching shocking moment. It was at that moment that Apple embraced the idea that in some contexts it makes sense to use the iPad via keyboard and trackpad. More importantly, Apple spent time designing a new mouse cursor, which feels more at home on the iPad and not something imported from the Mac OS.

In the end, this showed that Apple really has a vision for the iPad; a flexible computer device that can be modified to suit how users want to interact with it. Attach a keyboard and trackpad and it feels like a laptop. Take it out and it’s a clean touchpad again. This is what makes the Ipad so special.

IOS 9 (June 2015)

A little more than five years after the iPad was first shipped, Apple unveiled iOS 9. This version of iOS broke the paradigm for one app at a time, which had been on the Iphone since the beginning. Finally, you could now fill the iPad’s larger screen with more than one app at a time.

Split View and Slide Over were not the same or flexible as floating windows on Mac OS, but they finally allowed iPad users to multitask. And while Apple has spent the past seven years figuring out how to refine the original concept, it’s hard to imagine an iPad without multitasking.

2. Ipad Pro and pen (November 2015)

Just a couple of months after the release of iOS 9, the iPad took a major step forward with the introduction of the iPad Pro. It was the largest iPad to date, with a 12.9-inch screen. It was Apple’s first step in the claim that the iPad should be taken seriously as more than a device for consuming media.

The key to this was the introduction of the Apple Pencil, which opened the Ipad for artists and anyone else who could find ways to use pen input (I started using the pen to edit podcasts).

This was a crucial moment for the Ipad. Unfortunately, many of the promises from the event have not been fulfilled, but Apple continues its efforts.

1. Chicago Ipad Event (March 2018)

This may seem like an odd choice. In March 2018, Apple held an event at a high school in Chicago, to announce, among other things, a new budget model of the iPad with support for the Apple Pencil.

I realized that this event probably would not have a major impact on human gadgets, but this was an era where Ipad sales, and the Ipad product line as a whole, were a mess. After an initial increase in sales, sales figures for the iPad continued to decline, quarter after quarter. When would the Ipad reach the bottom? And could Apple find a way to make us enthusiastic about the iPad again?

The event was symbolic, when Apple finally got its iPad house in order. The introduction of the cheap Ipad helped to create a clear distinction between Ipad for schools, children, home and Ipad professionals for advanced users. Clarity is a good thing – and Apple has been selling many iPads since they realized this.

But another light in the dark, another sign that the iPad would stage a comeback, was Apple’s somewhat risky decision to let the cheap iPad use the Apple Pencil, which was previously an accessory only for the iPad Pro. This was great school world, but it was really good for the Ipad as a whole. The trend of Apple quickly moving iPad Pro features to the rest of the iPad line continues to this day. But this is where it started. And the pen was such an important accessory that it really deserved to be used by all Ipad users – not just professionals.

What happens next? I’m hopeful that Apple later this year will make such important changes to the development of the iPad that this list will become obsolete. But for now, these are my five moments.

Translated and edited by Petter Ahrnstedt