It hasn’t quite made the sociocultural splash of the Mac or the iPhone, but Apple’s iPad has undeniably been a colossal critical and commercial success for the American tech giants. The device truly changed the game: before the iPad, comparatively few tablets existed – and they certainly weren’t adaptable enough to find a niche in the home as well as the workplace.
In the intervening 13 years, Apple’s sleek tablet has become a familiar sight in homes around the world – with children being wholehearted fans of having a portable, easy-to-use gateway to learning and entertainment on tap. Are iPads completely safe for young users, however? And if not, what do trusted adults need to be aware of? Our NOS #WakeUpWednesday guide has the details.
“We have no plans to make a tablet. It turns out people want keyboards,” Steve Jobs famously shrugged back in 2003. Roughly seven years (and presumably some censorious meetings with his market research team) later, the Apple CEO was happily eating humble pie as the iPad became a near-instant commercial phenomenon – selling almost a million units in its first month of release. Just over a decade after its introduction, there are approximately 500 million iPad owners worldwide, many of them children and young people. With that in mind, Apple’s parental controls and online safeguards are reassuringly thorough – if trusted adults choose to set them up. This week, our NOS #WakeUpWednesday series turns its eye onto iPads.
