When the first iPad debuted in 2010, its reasons for existence were not altogether clear. In large part, it seemed little more than a giant iPod, with the added capability of being able to access cellular data, as an option. It used iOS, and worked with mostly scaled up version of iPhone apps.
Over time, developers learned to take advantage of the larger displays, but it took a while for apps to truly exploit the product differences, and it’s been a long decade.
At first, the iPad was largely regarded as a media consumption device, designed to watch videos from Netflix and YouTube. Despite a growing number of productivity apps, they were largely limited-function subsets of equivalent desktop PC apps.