[anatoly]

>I think it's pretty telling that tablet computers have existed for ... what, 15 years? And that tablet computing didn't take off with consumers until iPad. I think that's a fine example of how Steve influenced a change in the world.

Consider that for most of these 15 years, the hardware wasn't good enough for mass appeal. The combination of a CPU powerful enough to render video and to support custom apps written in a high-level language, the RAM, the screen technology and the battery able to sustain all these for many hours didn't exist until probably 2006 or so.

[drieddust]

Could not agree more.

But this Jobs fanboying surely indicates that world is not yet educated enough.

Even hacker's new crowd belives in Jobs magic and reality distortion.

[delinka]

And why wasn't the hardware "good enough"? Could it have been too much apathy and lack of innovation on behalf of the I.T. industry? And who actually made one where the hardware was good enough to sell millions of devices? Why didn't someone with the expertise come along and beat Apple to the punch?