[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.