iPad

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<span style="color: #555; font-weight: bold;" darkstyle="color: var(--wiki-muted);">Touch, draw, and type on one magical device.</span>
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| style="background-color: #333; padding: 8px;" | [https://www.apple.com/ipad/ <span style="color: #fff;">Official iPad site — Apple</span>]
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The iPad is [[Apple]]'s tablet line, introduced by [[Steve Jobs]] in 2010 as "a third category of device" between phone and laptop. It made the tablet a real product category where a decade of predecessors had failed, and it remains the category: the iPad has outsold every rival tablet line combined for most of its life.

Today the family spans four tiers — iPad, iPad mini, iPad Air, and iPad Pro — running [[iPadOS]] with Apple Pencil and keyboard support throughout, with the Pro models carrying the same [[Apple M5|M-series]] silicon as the [[Mac]].

= History =

The original iPad (2010) sold faster than the [[iPhone]] had; the mini (2012) and Air (2013) split the line by size, and the iPad Pro (2015) added the Apple Pencil and a keyboard — the productivity turn. The 2018 Pro redesign (all-screen, USB-C, Face ID) set the modern template, and [[iPadOS]] forked from [[iOS]] in 2019 to give the bigger canvas its own software.

The [[Apple M1|M1]] iPad Pro (2021) brought Mac-class silicon; 2024's Pro debuted the [[Apple M4]] and Tandem OLED in Apple's thinnest device ever; and the current generation runs from the A16 entry iPad to the [[Apple M5|M5]] iPad Pro (2025). iPadOS 26's windowed multitasking finally answered the line's oldest criticism — hardware years ahead of its software.

= Current lineup =

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! style="background-color: #555; color: #fff; padding: 6px;" | Model
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| '''[[iPad Pro]] 11"/13"''' || [[Apple M5|M5]] (2025) || Flagship: Tandem OLED, thinnest Apple device
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| '''[[iPad Air]] 11"/13"''' || [[Apple M4|M4]] (2026) || Most iPad for most people — first with the [[Apple C1X|C1X]] and [[Apple N1|N1]]
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| '''iPad (11th gen)''' || [[Apple A16|A16]] (2025) || The volume entry model
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| '''[[iPad mini]]''' || [[Apple A17|A17 Pro]] (2024) || The small one
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= Position =

The iPad owns the space between phone and Mac: the default classroom, cockpit, point-of-sale, and sketchbook computer. Its perennial tension — Mac-class hardware against a touch-first OS — has driven a decade of iPadOS evolution, and its Pro tier now serves as the launch vehicle for Apple's newest silicon, debuting both the [[Apple M4]] and the [[Apple M5]].