Despite what many people believe, Apple didn´t invent the iPad nor did they create the tablet. The first iPad was created by Fujitsu in 2002 and was nothing like the Apple iPads of today. Most people would consider it a traditional cellphone without apps or multi-finger gestures, as we are accustomed to in modern iPads. The guys in Fujitsu quite cleverly understood what Apple was about to and in January 2010 they retrieved the rights to the Trademark iPad. Apple then had to buy the Trademark for approximately $ 4 million. Any way Apple bought the iPad name from Fujitsu in March 2010 and the rest of the story is well known to most iPad users.

This article is about what iPad is used for and even if it´s impossible to cover this in just one article or even a hundred articles, I believe this information could be useful to a wide variety of iPad owners. Actually no one is using their iPad to its full potential, simply because the combinations of iPad with apps are so huge today, that no single human being would be able to fully grasp it all. However there are some really good ways to use the iPad that a lot more people could benefit from, and this is what I will discuss further in this article.

The strengths of the iPad

One cannot forget that the strength of the iPad is in some of the following factors:

• Form factor

• Weight

• Versatility

• Apps

• 3rd party vendors that makes every thinkable and unthinkable accessory to the iPad.

• Perceived quality

• Faithful Apple product buyers (followers).

There were tablets long before the iPad, but they really didn´t appeal to the mass market. The majority of people found them hard to use, most of the time you needed a stylus to access the touch screen. They were usually very expensive compared to notebooks and laptop PC´s. They were targeting the business market and the “Fun” factor was about zero. They were probably of value to some businesses, but they never reached a huge market. Their smaller counterparts the PDA´s were more widely used and did a great job in the late 90´s and early 2000´s for many people. However they too lacked a lot of functionality.

Along came the Apple iPad, with a size and weight that made it easy to bring it on all occasions. There were no right or wrong way to use it, and people could download apps for free or low cost. Soon after companies started to make everything form covers, speakers, adaptors etc. to even increase the possibilities. This was also the last big Apple invention that Steve Jobs launched to his faithful followers. Something happened that excided even the wildest expectations of Apple and it´s competitors. The iPad became the cool high-tech thing to have. People who never before had bought an Apple product lined up to buy the new wonder.

Accessing the web is something that more than 75% of iPad owners do. The number is likely to be higher than this, however people tend to think of surfing the web, when they answerer this question. It´s hard to believe that 25% actually is not connected to the web from time to time one way or the other when they use their iPad. Approximately 63 % use it for e-mail purposes. 53% is using their iPad mainly for entertainment and leisure, and of these people I believe that there´s a great potential to implement some productivity usage as well. No wonder Facebook and Social media is considered to be the main usage for about 41% and this number is still growing. About one third of all iPad owners is searching for and buying products on the Internet. 25% is reading books on their iPad and 22% use it for listening to music.

An increasing number of people are reading books on their iPad, with increased number of available books online some made for Apple´s iBook and other for kindle there´s actually many good reasons why you should consider reading books on your iPad. One of them is the ability to search for exactly what you want in the text. You can bring hundreds of books and the weight is just the same. With the latest iPad the text is crisp clear and actually good to read on for hours at end. An increasing numbers of apps adds functionality and makes the reading experience even better.

With the Voice recognition software Siri, it´s possible to ask your iPad questions and get answers that are useful. Siri can help you find directions, reserve a table for you and suggest a suitable restaurant in the area and much more. There are more functionalities that will be added to Siri soon and there are other apps as well that uses voice recognition on the iPad and other iOS devices. For instance you find great apps that actually translate between more than 40 languages and the number is increasing rapidly. This means that you can travel the world with your iPad and always get a reasonable two-way translation.

Thanks for reading, I will be posting more articles soon so look out for new iPad articles.