THE IPAD'S BIGGEST MOMENTS RANKED

FROM MULTITASKING TO THE M1.

- JASON SNELL

It's been 12 years since the iPad first arrived, amid hype that it was the next iPhone and pessimism that it would never live up to that hype. After some dramatic early years, the iPad has become a comfortable business that's raking in about $30 billion a year in sales. It's not the next iPhone, but in terms of Apple's platforms, it's roughly the size of the Mac.

What were the pivotal moments in the iPad's 12-year history? What were the key events that led it from there to here? I've forced myself to rank the top moments.

HONORABLE MENTION: THE iPAD LAUNCH (JANUARY 2010)

Before we get started, I'm going to admit that the announcement of almost any product is perhaps its most important historical moment. How could it be otherwise? So I'm not going to include that day in January 2010 (fave.co/3vWm43q) when Steve Jobs plopped down in a comfy chair and scrolled with his finger through the front page of The New York Times and paged through an iBook.

It was one of his great demos, literally leaning back on stage in order to showcase a lean-back device. In re-watching it later at home, I turned around to discover my five-year-old son staring at the screen, looking straight into the reality-distortion field. "Oh, I want it, I want it, we have to get it," he said. He wasn't wrong.

The original iPad seems thick and chunky compared to modern models, but it was still a revelation (fave.co/3vJm1Jm).

The M1 iPad Pro has more or less the same hardware as the MacBook Air.

5. M1 IPAD PRO (APRIL 2021)

For years, people have observed that Apple's iPad Pro hardware seemed so powerful it couldn't really be taxed by most iPad software. Faster iPad models seemed almost irrelevant, in that nobody was complaining that the iPad lacked the speed to do any job.