[forensic]

This applies just as much to the iPad.

Tablets have been out for forever, and some of them have even been well made only to be ABANDONED by the makers.

It's been blisteringly obvious for a decade that tablets are the future of mobile computing.

The real lesson here is that marketing and sales matter. Apple, as a company, rarely invents new things. Rather it executes on old ideas that other companies failed to execute on.

Apple connects the market to the innovative technology and that is what really pays. Inventing stuff is useless if the public doesn't understand.

Moral: Steal a good idea, make it really easy to use, and don't skimp on your sales pitch.

[pinaceae]

tablets with finger input? with a dedicated OS built around that UI? really?

i've worked with stuff from HP, Lenovo, all using Windows Tablet edition. NOTHING came even near the iPad in usability. fucking booting that thing? field force users HATED these crapfests.

the tablet notebook pc is dead, the industry is switching in droves to the iPad. not nerds, business people.

Android will catch up, the HP PalmOS stuff looks nice too. But the iPad was a true first.

[forensic]

The iPad is just a tablet that doesn't suck.

Just like the Sidekick:iPhone relationship, there were a few tablets that didn't suck too much, but the parent companies tended to hamstring them. They would stop supporting them, they wouldn't do proper marketing, and basically they would constantly trip over their own feet. Suits were calling them dead before they even had a chance to be born. It wasn't a technology failure it was a business failure. Hence, Steve Jobs to the rescue.

[mgkimsal]

We've all heard/read stories of internal MS politicking that killed various projects/features that, on their own, would have been good/useful/great.

I can totally imagine that the same sorts of things happened at some of the larger manufacturers re: tablets. When you've got 6 variations of the same product line with various dept/division managers for each one, anything that might truly disrupt that is going to have a huge internal battle.

Apple probably has internal politics, but the way the product lines are developed insures there's a minimum of competition between them. That's just (imo) one of many distinctions between Apple success and the previous tablet mfg failures.

[junklight]

I think you are spot on. Although the whole saga of windows variations on tablets, which is astonishingly ongoing, never really helped.

What really surprises me is that the likes of Palm never got their act together in this space. Apple have shown it was ripe for the taking. Palm had years of experience and a great user base (I was a Palm user for years).

But this is all grist to the mill of the ideas versus execution debate. It's not the idea (although good ones help) but the execution that's key

[isani]

People tend to forget just how long tablets have been around. The first boom of pen driven tablet computing was in the very early 1990's – twenty years ago.

During that first boom, several operating systems were developed which were intended for exclusive pen or touch use. These include PenPoint OS, Magic Cap and Newton OS. Apple fans tend to remember Newton, but the other two are long forgotten.

[edanm]

"It's been blisteringly obvious for a decade that tablets are the future of mobile computing."

Really?

When the iPad came out, there was a lot of argument whether it meant anything - lots of people thought it would be a failure. "Just a big iPhone", as so many people said.

[forensic]

That's precisely the point here.

There were three kinds of iPad naysayers:

1. iPad sucks compared to the tablets released in the 90s. They had more features.

2. There is no market for tablets, tablets are dead. It's been tried and failed.

3. The iPad isn't useful for anything. It's just a big iPhone.

(1) is wrong because it fails to recognize "ease of use" and "style" as features.

(2) is wrong because the market was not educated on tablets and therefore tablets were not truly tested -- no one did the sales and marketing work that is necessary to introduce a new technology.

(3) is wrong because, like usual, people with only a hammer can't imagine using a screwdriver. It's necessary to educate people on the value of innovative technology. Future-oriented product people such as myself were waiting impatiently for both the iPhone and iPad since the 90s when they first became technically feasible. They were held back by entrenched telecom monopolies, bad UX, and poor marketing/sales.

[paxswill]

Just an interesting sidenote, Apple is guilty of abandoning good products as well, especially in the tablet space. The Newton was very well designed, and the user community around it to this day is a testament to this fact.