Seven years ago today it was a Saturday morning, and I was standing in line to buy an original iPad<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Until last week when I bought a 9.7″ iPad Pro. I picked up this iPad Pro for two very good reasons:<\/p>\n

First of all, I’ve begun traveling quite a bit more, and needed a portable computer for when on the road.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

But good because it means the iPad is still full of simplicity and promise.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

P.S. Here are a few other fun articles I’ve written over the years:<\/p>\n

\n
• \n

  An Initial Miscellany of the iPad<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n

• \n

  Diary of an iPad (3) Owner<\/a><\/p>\n<\/li>\n

• \n

  Why the iPad is my New Laptop<\/a> (A lot has changed since I wrote that article 5 years ago, but the sentiment still remains.)<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

• \n

  Three Weeks with Two iPads<\/a> — when I did a side-by-side comparison with the iPad Air and iPad mini.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,35],"tags":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shawnblanc.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15324"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shawnblanc.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shawnblanc.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shawnblanc.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shawnblanc.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15324"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/shawnblanc.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17648,"href":"https:\/\/shawnblanc.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15324\/revisions\/17648"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shawnblanc.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shawnblanc.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shawnblanc.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}