[brindle]

I'm a bit late to this party...

I liked the article title but the article is weak. First of all, there are many ways to create a viable tablet. Apple's approach to enumerate the challenges/problems associated with the new form factor and then to solve them not come up with an ad hoc hack and to protect their unique patentable solutions.

At the same time, other companies were creating netbooks because they were to lazy to figure out how to design a fully functional computer and cram it into a notebook form factor.

Probably one of the key breakthroughs was their realization that it didn't need to be a full computer. Seems so obvious now doesn't it? Also that they needed to augment the current state of the touch based UI. All very obvious in retrospect.

If there is prior art then it will remove some of the violations. If you are going to post stuff like this, do the necessary research on when the iPad IP was patented.

Its appalling to see companies blatantly copying better technology and then selling it. They should respect it, either license the technology, develop their own or work on something that Apple hasn't done yet and isn't in the process of doing.