Seven years ago today it was a Saturday morning, and I was standing in line to buy an original iPad.

Since then I’ve owned an iPad 2, iPad 3, and a 2nd-generation iPad mini. The latter is the one I’ve been using most for the past few years.

Until last week when I bought a 9.7″ iPad Pro. I picked up this iPad Pro for two very good reasons:

First of all, I’ve begun traveling quite a bit more, and needed a portable computer for when on the road.

Secondly, I’ve been trying to keep my home office reserved for work-only. Which means that in the evenings or on the weekends when I have home-related computer-y stuff to do, I needed another device I could use upstairs on the kitchen table.

It’s now been seven years since the original iPad shipped. And the basic landscape hasn’t changed all that much. This is simultaneously good and bad.

…bad because the iPad is fantastic device, and yet it’s not the go-to platform for the best apps and innovations.

But good because it means the iPad is still full of simplicity and promise.

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P.S. Here are a few other fun articles I’ve written over the years:

Diary of an iPad Owner (circa 2010)