The iPad is a tablet or 'slate' computer in its most basic form.
Apple declared the iPad to be a 'magical and innovative' gadget for 'browsing the web, reading and sending email, enjoying photographs, watching movies, listening to music, playing games, reading e-books, and more' when it was first released.
Although 'magical' may be a stretch, the iPad is unquestionably a novel product.
Lineage & Software Support:-
Apple created the iPad to fill a gap between the iPod touch/iPhone and the Mac, and as a result, it is neither an iPod, iPhone, nor a Mac.
It does, however, use the same operating system as the iPod touch and the iPhone. Similarly, because the iPad is compatible with the vast majority of iPhone and iPod touch applications, it is legitimate to consider it a member of the iPhone/iPod touch 'family' of products.
Although iOS is derived from Mac OS X, the iPad does not run Mac OS X or Mac OS X programmes, hence it is not a Mac.
Additional Applications:-
The iPad can be used as a rudimentary computer with the original external keyboard dock device (above, since discontinued) or any number of Bluetooth wireless keyboards, in addition to its original list of 'approved' purposes.
The external keyboard functionality, when combined with the iWork software Pages, allows users to comfortably produce whole documents on the iPad, which can then be saved in Pages, Word, or PDF format and printed if necessary. Spreadsheets and presentations can also be created using versions of the iWork suite's Numbers and Keynote programmes and saved in native formats or Excel or PowerPoint, respectively. Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint are also accessible in native versions.
Of course, the iPad can be used for a variety of different tasks thanks to the thousands of third-party apps available. If requested, iPad models can be linked with a compatible Mac or Windows PC, just like an iPod or iPhone.
Later iPad models, particularly the iPad Pro range, were designed with the creation of creative content in mind, such as music, photography, and video, elevating the iPad to the level of a serious rival to 'conventional' PCs.
