The first iPad was a dead end, the performance was abysmal since it was basically a 3GS with a bigger screen, it didn't even have extra RAM to handle the larger

The first iPad was a dead end, the performance was abysmal since it was basically a 3GS with a bigger screen, it didn't even have extra RAM to handle the larger graphical assets. Software stopped supporting it very quickly because it was impossible to get anything running under the RAM constraints. The iPad 2 which doubled the RAM had a much much longer lifespan