What is iPad(1st generation)

The first-generation iPad was a tablet computer designed and marketed by Apple Inc. It was released on April 3, 2010 as the first entry in the iPad line of tablets. Running Apple's iOS operating system, the user interface was built around the device's multi-touch screen, including a virtual keyboard rather than a physical one. The original iPad had Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity (2G and 3G.)

The iPad can play music, send and receive email and browse the web. Other functions—games, reference, GPS navigation, social networking, etc.—can be enabled by downloading apps; as of 2012, the App Store offered more than 700,000 apps by Apple and third parties.

As we’ve come to expect from Apple, the iPad is a physically beautiful, highly usable gadget refined to a state of excellence. The iPad is light – just 1.5 pounds (or 1.6 in the 3G model) – and feels great held either with one hand or two.Its 9.7-inch screen is a joy for practically everything, especially games, video, and the web (the only drawback is that non-native apps don’t always look great in fullscreen mode, but that will change as those apps are updated), but isn’t so big as to be unwieldy.

While the screen is great looking, it’s also a magnet for fingerprints and smudges – even moreso than the iPhone. Apple applied an “oleophobic” coating to the iPhone 3GS screen (which I don’t love, but that’s another matter). Why it didn’t do the same with the iPad is puzzling. Apple could have at least including a cleaning cloth like it used to with iPods. Looking at smudges on the screen is unappealing.

The iPad runs a modified version of the iPhone OS that’s been tweaked for the iPad’s bigger screen. It offers all of the strengths of the iPhone OS, but adds new features like drop-down menus that present more information and options in the bigger space. These changes will be welcome to anyone who’s tried to work with long lists or large amounts of data on the iPhone’s screen. They also move some options out of a setting panel and into the app, and smooth the overall process of working on the iPad.

But, along with the strengths of the iPhone OS, the iPad also has its weaknesses: no multitasking, support for tethering, unified email inbox, or powerful business features. Many of these drawbacks (with the exception of tethering. We may need an end to the AT&T/Apple relationship to get that) will disappear with the release ofiPhone OS 4.0 this fall.

In some respects, the iPad feels like a large iPhone. But with the addition of the new OS, it will become more like a robust handheld computer that can challenge desktop functionality for many standard apps.

Because it runs the iPhone OS, the iPad gets the thing that contains its greatest promise and potential: App Store support.

The built-in apps range from acceptable to great and include the things you’d expect – web browser, media player, calendar, photos, etc. – but the nearly limitless options in the App Store are what make the iPad so exciting and fun.

The apps that got the most attention at the iPad’s launch – the Netflix and ABC video players, Marvel Comics’ reader and online store, the iWork suite, iBooks – demonstrate the versatility and potential in the App Store. With it, users will only be limited by the imagination and skills of developers (well, that and Apple’s app approval system and technology restrictions, which are not insignificant factors).

The iPad’s success really isn’t in question. With sales of over 450,000 in the U.S. in its first week alone, it’s another hit product for Apple. The question isn’t whether it will succeed, but rather whether it can live up to the promise of being magical and revolutionary.As the device and its software stand now, I’m not sure it will. But, with the upcoming changes to its software, and revised hardware we can certainly expect, it may.

For now, the iPad is a product for early adopters, tech and gadget enthusiasts, and those interested in luxury items. That doesn’t detract from its status as a well-conceived, fantastically executed device, though. Those who do purchase it are likely to be well satisfied.In the coming years, though, I suspect the iPad may be the device that we look back to as a turning point in computing.