First iPad hits stores

April 3, 2010: The first iPad appeared on store shelves after several months of waiting. The tablet, which Apple CEO Steve Jobs called “magical and revolutionary” during its launch earlier in the year, is quickly becoming a big hit.

Jobs initially demonstrated Apple’s first tablet on January 27. But the wait for the iPad is finally over… at least for the people of the United States. The international debut of iPad will take place only in May.

The iPad has been a huge success from the start

The very first iPad featured a 9.7-inch multi-touch display and a 1GHz Apple A4 processor. The amount of flash memory ranged from 16 to 64 GB. It is worth noting that it did not have a camera, and the 3G version is a little later.

The iPad enjoyed a lot of pre-release hype, but also faced a certain amount of skepticism. After Jobs announced the device, Newsweek’s Dan Lyons wrote:

“Jobs and his team used words like ‘breakthrough’ and ‘magic’ all the time, but the iPad is neither, at least not yet.”

Jeremy A. Kaplan of Fox News was even more scathing:

“Call it iPad or iPlod, but the message seems to be clear: Apple may have lost its talent,” he said.

And John C. Dvorak of MarketWatch called the original iPad a “giant iPod Touch.”

Using the iPad means loving it

But those comments came from people who had never used the device. After Apple sent out the first prototypes, All Things D’s Walt Mossberg said the iPad was “a pleasure to use,” adding that the tablet made him less interested in using his laptop.

Consumers knew what they wanted. Apple sold 300,000 tablets on the day it went to market, and in less than a month, it sold a million devices. By the end of the breakthrough tablet’s first year of sales, the company had sold about 25 million such devices. This made the iPad the most successful launch of a new product category in Apple’s history.