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Apple iPad announced one year ago today

by Kelly Hodgkins Jan 27th 2011 at 9:00PM

We couldn't let the day pass without mentioning the iPad and the first anniversary of its announcement. On this day one year ago, the world sat on the edge of their seat waiting for Steve Jobs to confirm the tablet we all knew was coming. Ironically, Engadget scored a picture of the device hours before the announcement, but many people doubted the blurred image was the actual tablet.

Post-announcement responses to the iPad varied. Many people touted the iPad as a revolutionary device while many, including Steve Ballmer, discounted the tablet. Despite the predictions of the naysayers, the iPad has turned into one of the hottest products of 2010. By the end of the year, Apple had sold almost 15 million iPads in a mere 10 months of sales and kicked off a revolution in portable computing.

For those that enjoy taking a walk down memory lane, you can watch the iPad announcement on Apple's YouTube channel. We included the first part of this announcement after break. The lead up to the first mention of the iPad starts about 8 minutes into the clip.




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We couldn't let the day pass without mentioning the iPad and the first anniversary of its announcement. On this day one year ago, the world...
 

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clasqm

Bad form to reply to my own post, I know. But it needs to be said: a few hours after the above rant, the iPad became available in South Africa. At regular prices.

January 28 2011 at 6:17 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
clasqm

And a year later, you still can't buy an iPad in South Africa. Not from Apple, anyway. Oh, there are grey importers who will sell you one ... at double the price. Strangely enough you can buy iPad cases everywhere.

In fact, down here we get no music, no films, no books and no Games section in either of the app stores. Could someone tell Apple that apartheid ended 20 years ago and the sanctions have been lifted?

January 28 2011 at 2:59 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mikko

Where is new iPad and iPhone? I can't remember another January when Apple has not released anything. Steve's leave of abcence seems to have influence on Apple sooner than we thought.

January 28 2011 at 12:38 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Shunnabunich

To be fair, though, derision from Steve Ballmer is a pretty reliable indicator that a product will be wildly successful.

January 28 2011 at 12:05 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
silvio

and it took 1 full year until competitors actually started to come out with their competition to the ipad

January 27 2011 at 11:46 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to silvio's comment
mkvirt

the ones i've seen (samsung, etc.) do a few things very well, especially in the areas of video, but so far none of them make me think about switching from Apple, so at least for me they're not really competition.

and Microsoft's latest rebranded Zune (aka the windows 7 phone) only has my interest because i'm curious to see how long it takes for them to show up "refurbished" on Woot and TigerDirect.

January 29 2011 at 2:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
DS

Funny to see that the Engadget leak pictures from January had an iPhone 4 resting on the iPad (see front facing camera hole!) but no one seemed to have picked up on that at the time! (a good 5 months before the iPhone 4 announcement)

January 27 2011 at 11:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to DS's comment
silvio

after you mentioned that, i went back to the engadget article, and its true, pretty crazy, i guess the pic was too blurry to be able to notice it

January 27 2011 at 11:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Sairam Kunala

still, its unable to make it to India .

January 27 2011 at 9:15 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Sairam Kunala's comment
gauravofindia

Yeaaaahhh.

Ipad is availabe in India

January 28 2011 at 9:14 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mkvirt

and one year after, TUAW still doesn't have an app that runs on an ipad.

January 27 2011 at 9:07 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to mkvirt's comment
redcard

Why not make one yourself? They might buy it from you

January 28 2011 at 3:49 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
mkvirt

since there doesn't appear to be a consistent way to reply to a reply, we have to reply to ourselves..

why not write TUAW's ipad app myself? because i write trading apps for the financial industry and therefore AOL can't afford my time..., and i can't afford to spend time developing an app that simply will not return sufficient income to justify my hourly booked rate.

but if TUAW would come out with a decent app that doesn't consistently crash on startup (and doesn't force me to watch a continuous parade of commercials aka ad-mob), and supports fast app switching on idevices, I wouldn't mind purchasing it at the appstore.

January 29 2011 at 1:56 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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