Today I was reading Stephen Hackett’s post naming the MacBook Air as the “Mac of the Decade” (I agree!), and it got me thinking about what I would consider the Apple Device of the Decade for the 2010s. The answer, to me at least, is the iPad.

While there were lots of rumors and speculation leading up to the iPad, the device was first released in April 2010, at the start of the decade. I remember the first day of owning the iPad vividly. I’d used tablet computers, and the iPad was like no tablet ever before it. It was lighter. It had no fans. It had a beautiful screen. And it had a touch-friendly interface. It’s easy to forget that just like the iPhone changed all phones, the iPad changed all tablets.

Today was not an unusual day, and I spent hours on the iPad planning my week, performing an OmniFocus review, responding to clients in Basecamp, and writing this post.

Throughout the decade, Apple continued to push forward on hardware and (to a lesser extent) software. The currently shipping iPad Pro has some fantastic hardware, and I’m convinced the tablet platform is here to stay.

I often hear from folks that prefer to use a laptop to a tablet, but we are still relatively early to this game, and Apple seems to have recently woken up about getting the iPad software to match the quality of its hardware. Also, there is a much less vocal group of folks that don’t keep up on tech (or read MacSparky) that have already replaced their laptops with tablets. Congratulations to Apple for a decade of iPad. As much as I complain, I love even more.