Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
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Meet the iPad
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It's not often that something really new appears. Desktop and laptop
computers are so commonplace, it's hard to believe that not too long ago
you could go to the airport and see maybe one or two personal comput-
ers, total. The iPhone represented a new direction for Apple—and, it turns
out, the cell phone industry—but it was still just a smartphone executed
really well. (What's interesting is that the iPad actually came first: Apple
took the work it put into developing a tablet operating system and
decided to bring it to market first as a phone.)
Companies—Apple included—had tried to create tablet computers for
years and failed. So what makes the iPad different? The iPad isn't the
same old desktop software pressed into a laptop case that's missing a
keyboard. It was designed from scratch to be a mobile tablet. And as
