10 Years of iPad – Who is celebrating with me?


Today 10 years ago Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad. Is there anyone out there for whom the iPad was such a big game changer for me - much bigger than the iPhone?

The iPad was the source of inspiration for digital storytelling for me and my company. Many of the great interactive eBooks like Al Gore’s “Our Choice” have disappeared.
We continue to work on digital content for the iPad, because I don’t see the potential exhausted by far. Or is this it?
Image by Matt Buchanan – (https://www.flickr.com/photos/40134069@N07)

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Is it for you more of a consumption or creation device?

I got the iPad despite being a pretty big Apple hater at the time and found my old blog post about thoughts: https://casabona.org/2010/11/my-review-on-the-ipad/

I basically wanted something better than my laptop or phone for reading websites and checking email. iPad ticked all those boxes.

I’ve had one ever since. It was always so much better than the competition. And now I’m fully assimilated into the Apple ecosystem.

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Thanks. I read your blogpost. It seems like you are a writer. Have you have considered to distribute more interactive content with the iPad? For me the iPad was a door opener for digital storytelling. Originally I am a documentary film producer. The iPad pathed my way to create a format that I called videobook. Have a look: Videobook Death on the Matterhorn

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Well, I am celebrating with you.

I could not “live” without it.

I am a hobby musician. I am conductor of a Brass Band, I play the Church Organ, piano and my bass guitar. I have all of my sheet music digitized and always with me. “That is so cool!” I have heard that many times and I know of at least a dozen persons who bought themselves an iPad and went the same route. I use the iPad for many things. And I do even own two of them: the big Pro one and the small Mini model.

Still, I think that we do not use the device to its full potential. Those first years were mind-blowing.

Those rich eBooks… Yes, I miss them. Apps like The Orchestra are just amazing.

And of course all the usual stuff… :slight_smile:

Yes, the iPad is great.

I was celebrating with you: I watched the keynote again on my iPad :slight_smile:

My current iPad (11" Pro with Apple’s folio keyboard cover) is my most used consumption and communication device. It’s always at hand, instantly ready, and always connected (cellular is really nice for that) and those things mean that it also often trumps the much more capably Macs in my life for light to moderate work at home. It’s very nearly the perfect travel computer too. It’s really changed how I feel about casual computing.

However, getting work done on the Mac after having been using the iPad for a while is a bit like getting home to your house after having lived out of your suitcase for a while. Moderate to more demanding work is (for me) so much easier on the Mac.

I love both platforms and would hate to have to choose between them :slight_smile:

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I’m celebrating with you! The iPad for me has changed the way I think about consumption of content and tasks like email. I use it more than any other device.

As a programmer and designer though it doesn’t allow me to create things, as I need IDEs and Adobe Illustrator or Xd for those tasks.

When sitting on my sofa or in a cafe, it is my first choice for reading, watching or achieving inbox zero. Having LTE when out and about is also great, and the pencil means I have gone paperless (which, as a person who loses paper all the time, is a great thing).

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It is the same for me. I use both devices side by side.
The biggest development for me was the introduction of the Apple Pencil, since I have to sketch a lot and I really like to write down my notes and mind maps by end. But for so many tasks I just like to use my MacBook Pro with the trackpad, even though I have a smart keyboard for the iPad. It’s so great that it easy now quite convenient to switch between the platforms thanks to the better support of iCloud and because of sidecar. I thought the smart keyboard will help me to replace the MacBook Pro. But I take every day both of them in the bag…

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I am! But I haven’t really beyond, “I should make content for Apple Books.” I also create online courses and I feel like there’s a good opportunity there. Something to consider.

Thanks!

I got an iPad the first week or so they were out. The iPad was always kind of a novelty device for me until I got the 12.9 iPad Pro and Apple Pencil.

The iPad was a little delayed to get to the UK. I had an iPhone, but didn’t see the appeal.

Until of course I got my hands on one (someone else’s) and had to have one. The original ipad was followed by the iPad 3 and the iPad Pro 9.7 and now the 12.9” iPad Pro.

It replaced my laptop eventually, almost silently, I sat down at my desk one day and realised I hadn’t unplugged my Laptop or moved it for months. The only reason I took it anywhere was on Holiday, to take photos off my camera SD card (when MBPs still had SD slots.)
Amazing machine and I’m still amazed when I remove everything from it (Keyboard, Case) and hold that amazingly thin machine in my hand. I can’t imagine what 10 year old me would say if he could see what looks like a sheet of glass and has all of the knowledge in the world at your fingertips.

I must admit, I was “meh” when the iPad first launched. It wasn’t until I saw that developers were creating iPad apps that I’d actually use that I started to see the potential. I got an original iPad in October 2010, and used it solidly until the end of 2012. I then got a second-hand 3rd-gen iPad, which stayed in use until 2017. I’m currently using an iPad mini 4.

What I like most about the iPad is that it has replaced a lot of other gadgets for me. It’s an ebook reader, writing pad, alarm clock, radio, music system, portable games device and more.

Excellent analogy; this has been my experience as well. As good as the iPad is, it does not have all of the Mac’s capabilities.

There have been incremental improvements to the iPad over the years. One example is the keyboard. The new keyboard folio on my wife’s new 11’ iPad Pro is substantially better than the original Smart Keyboard on my original 9.7" iPad Pro. The speed and processing power of both of these devices are dramatically better than those of our older iPad Air or 2nd-gen iPad.

The big shortcoming of the iPad is file management. I spent a couple of years establishing and converting to a paperless filing system for our home, financial, legal and family records. Working with and maintaining this system requires a Mac. Occasionally adding or accessing files using the iPad is possible, but clumsy at best.

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I agree. An iPad has been my primary computer since I retired.
I’m now on #3 having upgraded one and destroyed another. Its only major limitation, IMO, is file management & backup.

After spending the better part of a year trying various workarounds such as trying to store everything on both iCloud and Google Drive, I ended up buying a base model (with 4TB of external storage) Mac Mini last year. Now everything on my iPad & iPhone syncs to the Mini and gets backed up to S3 via Arq.

Maybe Apple will solve this problem before I need to upgrade again,

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I wonder if there is any way, or any plans, to make Synology units (and the units’ downloadable apps) work with an iPad-exclusive home setup.

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Typing this on an iPad Pro 12.9 With an external apple keyboard so guess I must like using it.

Honest opinion… For certain things, I prefer it, for writing and research it is very good, and of course consuming content, however…

For coding it is near useless. I can not compile even SCSS on it and the available text editors for coding are very very basic compared to a Mac.

The OS is nowhere near as capable as a Mac, apart from the above code things, everyday utilities like KBMaestro, LaunchBar etc make using a Mac far quicker, and therefore me more productive, and yes I know “shortcuts” can automate… A mac is simply more powerful, and for me indispensable.

It feels as if the iPad is at the beginning, it has certainly brought the “fun” back to computing, creating workflow puzzles that need to be solved via third party apps and automation, much like the early PC days, and I see some very clever solutions sometimes, however they sort of feel like they are held together with string and glue and created as proof of concept or ability rather than solid solutions.

Am I celebrating the last ten years, sort of, I am far more though looking forward to the next ten when I hope the OS grows into the device (which is far more powerful than the OS), and makes it a real alternative rather than the unequal partner it is now.

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Yes, the iPad Pro is a powerful device, but severely limited by the OS. A good example is video editing. The Luma Fusion app for the iPad is a wonderful video editor that can substitute in many cases for Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premier on a Mac. I bought my 15-y/o granddaughter a 512-GB iPad Pro so that she can edit and process professional-quality videos that she posts on Instagram. Other professional photographers/videographers have discovered the iPad Pro/Luma Fusion combo as well. My granddaughter took to this like a duck to water. Young people are quite at home with touch-screen devices.

I would do the same for my own upcoming large video project as well, but Luma Fusion cannot handle Pro Res 4.2.2 files, commonly used by professional video labs. This is not a Luma Fusion limitation - it’s a limitation due to iPadOS’s inability to handle Pro Res video files. It is frustrating to be so close … a powerful and well-designed hardware device, superb third-party software (Luma Fusion), but hindered by a crippled operating system.

I still kinda wish they made touch-sensitive tablet-mode Macs. I loved using Windows with a Lenovo convertible tablet PC over a decade ago. That’s only gotten better since—Surfaces are sleek and a joy to use. The key thing missing is the app ecosystem.

I’d buy this tablet Mac over an iPad any day. (And yes, I know about modbooks.)

That said, I’ve owned every iteration of the iPad. I appreciate how the constraints of the form factor and the software have challenged assumptions about how I should work. I don’t think it’s anywhere near as valuable as most iPad evangelists would have you believe, but it still fills a niche in my day to day tools.

Ultimately, though, I think the iPad’s major contribution was simply making the iPhone bigger. By leveraging the developers already invested in iOS, Apple was able to get more people into tablets than macOS ever could have.

I think the disappointment people are talking about when they compare the two is what could’ve been. A Mac can’t be tiny, touch sensitive, battery-resilient, and one-handed. If it could, these debates—which I agree are kinda silly—would cease. The wishful thinking isn’t for an iPad to be a Mac. It’s for a Mac option that’s more iPad-like. (That’s a subtle difference, I guess.)

Although I largely (but not completely) disagree with this, I still find it insightful.

I think the media pushes this viewpoint. I honestly don’t know how widely users (especially MPU’ers) see it this way.

I think there is room for cross-breeding between iOS and Mac OS. Catalyst ain’t it IMHO.

BTW @PostmanPat, count me in as a iPad celebrator.

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