It’s been 10 years since Apple unveiled the iPad, a revolutionary piece of equipment that changed the tech landscape.

When CEO Steve Jobs announced the first iPad on January 27, 2010, it immediately sparked excitement, bordering on chaos.

Everyone had to have one, and it was the only one of its kind. By 2010 standards, it was thin, portable and more importantly, bridged the gap between a phone and a laptop.

Back then it didn’t have a camera, and the virtual keyboard was tricky to navigate, but it was still considered the best thing since the iPod to hit shelves.

With the almost immediate success of the iPad, you might be surprised to learn that it wasn’t Apple’s first attempt at a handheld, touch-based computer.

Here’s Mashable:

That honor belongs to the Newton MessagePad which launched in 1993 at the exorbitant price of $900.

By today’s standards, it was more of a personal digital assistant, or PDA, than a tablet. But the MessagePad was a bold step for Apple, a stylus-based portable computer that used handwriting recognition software to translate what users wrote into on-screen text. The only problem is that it didn’t work very well.

The MessagePad soon became the butt of jokes in popular cartoons like Doonesbury and The Simpsons because of its inability to accurately translate what you’d written into text.

Apple would produce the MessagePad until 1998. After that, it would be another 12 years before the company revisited the idea.

We’ve come a long way since then. Let’s recap the last decade, with WIRED.

2011

The iPad 2 comes out, and it’s thinner and lighter than its predecessor, with access to 65 000 apps made specifically for iPad. This is also the year that Steve Jobs died.

2012

Apple rolls out the iPad Mini, described as “small enough for large-handed people to hold comfortably in one paw”. It has an excellent retina display.

At this point, the iPad is a staple of Apple merchandise, with 32 million tablets sold in 2011.

2013

Introducing the iPad Air, an even thinner, lighter, sexier version of previous models. Apple gets serious about innovating its iPhone chips, which were also used in iPads.

2014

Apple releases the iPad Air 2 and the iPad Mini 3 – upgrades on previous products, with a processor bump, a better camera, and more RAM.

2015

The iPad Pro, with its 12,9-inch diagonal display, is the biggest iPad to hit the market. It’s also compatible with a new Smart Keyboard and Smart Pencil, taking iPad versatility to new heights. Upping the game further, it comes complete with four gigabytes of RAM, four speakers for “shockingly loud audio,” and a whopping 12 hours of battery life.

2016

Apple produces a more reasonably sized iPad Pro with features like stylus support and the always-charged accessory keyboard. Importantly, the new iPad features True Tone display which adapts to lighting so that you can use it at night, without damaging your eyes.

2017

Apple developed some of the most dramatic updates for the iPad, overhauling the dock for the tablet, adding a new kind of app switcher, and letting users drag and drop text and images across iPad apps.

2018

Apple reveals a non-Pro iPad that fully supports the Apple Pencil and runs the new Apple-made A10 Fusion processor. Then later in the year, the iPad Pro is revealed and it’s fast, efficient, and with a terabyte of storage, a game-changer.

2019

Apple not only introduces the refreshed, 10,5-inch iPad Air, but also ships a long-awaited update to the 7,9-inch iPad Mini.

This is also the year that Seth Rotherham starts using his 64GB iPad Pro as his primary machine. 

Which brings us to 2020.

If you have one of the older iPads lying around and you want to upgrade to the latest tech, Digicape, South Africa’s largest independent Apple retailer, will accept up to five of your old devices as a trade-in against the purchase of any new product.

So bring in your old iPhones, iPads, Macs, Apple Watches, or Apple TVs, and you could save thousands of bucks.

If a review of the last 10 years has taught us anything, it’s that Apple is going to keep getting better and better.

Best not get left behind.

[source:wired&mashable]