“It’s not the first touchscreen tablet in the history of computing, but it’s easily the most successful so far. With 3 million iPads sold in their first month alone [see note] and a market for interactive magazines and newspapers created almost overnight, Apple finally managed to make tablet computing cool.”

Time put four Apple (AAPL) products on its list of the top 10 gadgets of the year, including the 11-inch MacBook Air (No. 3), the iPhone 4 (No. 6) and Apple TV (No. 7).

Then Apple got a second bite of Time‘s Best of 2010 issue with a list of the top 10 iPhone apps. No. 1 was the NetFlix app.

Time, like Fortune, is published by Time Inc. To see the list of 50 lists, click here.

NOTE: It actually took Apple 80 days to sell its first 3 million iPads.

[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]