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Apple’s prized operating system—you may hate it, you may be in awe of its beauty, you may be using it right now—hits a milestone today. Version ten turns ten—and it’s come a long, long way. More »

Apple's new iPad 2 comes in black or white. Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Apple’s iPad is just one year old, and more than 15 million customers have voted with their wallets. The tablet is officially mainstream.

But just what is a tablet good for? It’s not a complete replacement of a PC and it’s not a necessity for anyone who carries around a notebook or a smartphone. At best, it’s a “tweener” device.

For a product category that didn’t exist (except in niche form) a year ago, it’s surprising how well the tablet is doing. It’s as if a mainstream product appeared out of nowhere. Indeed, most tech experts underestimated how many iPads would sell in year one.

If it’s not a necessity, doesn’t do many things as well as a notebook and lacks the portability of a smartphone, what’s the key to its success?

Perhaps the best gadget to compare with the iPad is the microwave oven, says tech writer Matthew Guay. Succeeding the conventional oven, the microwave oven could heat food faster and use less energy. Even though it wasn’t as good at cooking as an oven, and it wasn’t obvious why anyone would want a microwave, the microwave became a staple in practically every home, because people kept finding new ways to use this technological wonder.

It seems like the same thing is happening with tablets.

“Everyone thought the iPad needed traditional computer programs to be successful. After all, if you can’t use Office, what’s it good for?” Guay wrote.

And then customers bought them, took them home, and something special happened. They realized that reading eBooks or browsing the internet from their couch was nice on a tablet. They found things they would have never thought to do on a computer were fun and simple. Apps that never made sense on computers with keyboards and mice, like GarageBand and finger paint apps and eReaders, suddenly found life on a 9.7-inch slate of glass and metal.

Indeed, it turns out that a tablet needn’t do everything that a more powerful PC can, according to multiple research studies on iPad usage. Rather, the tablet’s main appeal lies in the approachable touchscreen interface that just about anybody at any age can pick up and figure out.

As you might expect, the top three things consumers have been doing with iPads are surfing the web, writing and checking e-mail and playing games, according to a study published last year by NPD Group. iPad owners are also watching video and reading e-books, and the device’s light weight and portability make it a real crowd-pleaser, NPD found.

“While lots of choices and compromises go into the development of any product, especially something as different as the iPad, these results indicate that most consumers are satisfied with their purchase and are increasingly finding ways to interact with their iPad,” NPD wrote.

Additionally, a casual poll conducted by Gadget Lab on Twitter asked the question “What do you do with your iPad?” and the majority of respondents said they used the tablet for browsing the web, reading (books and/or news articles) and social networking.

The minority of respondents to Gadget Lab’s poll said they used the iPad for special purposes such as recording music, writing poetry and teaching in class from book notes.

“Read, use it to teach from (presentation notes in iBooks) and email,” said iPad owner Josh Smith, in a Twitter reply to Gadget Lab. “Occasionally write up posts in bed w/ silent keyboard.”

As for apps, the most frequently downloaded apps are in the Games, Entertainment and Utilities categories. However, TruVoipBuzz looked closely at the numbers and found that those top three categories only account for 46 percent of apps that attracted the most downloads.

The rest of the pie is divided into smaller slices: People are downloading apps from a wide variety of categories, including photography (4 percent), books (4 percent), social networking (7 percent), business (3 percent) and others. (See the chart below.)

That’s the genius of the blank slate — with nearly 400,000 apps that allow the iPad to become a toy, a TV, a medical tool for doctors, a notetaker for students and more, it caters to an extremely broad audience.

The truth about the iPad is that there is no dominant group of “joe schmos,” creative customers or professional customers buying it. And if you look at it that way, the fact that 15 million iPads sold in one year isn’t completely surprising, after all.

If you have an iPad, how do you use it? Let us know by voting in the widget below. If you use it for something we haven’t listed, you can submit additional uses (they won’t appear until they’ve been moderated, however).

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Inkling is a pretty cute name for a product, you have to admit, but by the end of the year it could be pretty serious business. It’s a company that specializes on publishing textbooks on the iPad, devices that are rapidly killing the poor paper industry. As of now the company’s products are few, but two major publishers, Pearson and McGraw-Hill, have signed on to support the service, a deal that will see Inkling’s product catalog swell by several orders of magnitude. Up to 100 books are expected to be there by the end of the year and, while that’s nothing compared to the massive variety of volumes that swell students’ backpacks and diminish their drinking funds at the beginning of every semester, it is a solid start. Best of all, Inkling’s current texts cost 35 percent less than their printed doppelgangers, meaning there’s hope for cheaper e-books after all.

Inkling signs with major publishers to bring 100 textbooks to iPad by 2012, no actual ink originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Mar 2011 04:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Although we don’t exactly know how they work, magnets are one of Earth’s many fascinations and are used in many gadgets today — perhaps most notably in Apple’s new Smart Covers. As you might have already known, the iPad 2’s first party screen concealer uses a bunch of magnets to make the magic happen; it snaps on and fits almost too well. By taking a few rare earth magnets and gluing them to the original slate’s hip, blogger Dan Provost is able to use a Smart Cover with the iPad uno. He positioned them according to how they stuck to the hinge of the cover, which explains the lack of spacing between the four magnets. As you’ll see in the video, Apple’s screen protector works well with the tablet, but it lacks the auto-unlock mechanism found in the iPad 2. Care to give your original iPad a taste of modernity? Hit the more coverage link to find the main ingredient for this DIY project.

Original iPad retrofitted to play nice with Smart Cover, magnets largely to thank (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 19:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By approving or denying every single app that lines the virtual shelves of its App Store, Apple puts itself in an interesting position: It makes itself personally responsible for every single one. More »