[zred]

The key is figuring out when technology gets to a certain point that make a vision possible and which technologies will make it possible. When Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, there had been touchscreen phones for a long time. Apple identified that capacitive touchscreens were a new technology that allowed for a touch device to work much better - better to the extent that it changed whether touch devices would be generally accepted or not. They didn't invent capacitive touchscreens nor touch-phones. They did recognize how that technology changed one's ability to make good touch devices. At the time, Windows Mobile didn't even support capacitive touchscreens.

Likewise, with the iPhone and iPad, Apple designed the interface differently. I remember Windows Mobile phones that had menus much like desktop operating systems (http://pdadb.net/imageview.php?path=img/os/ppc_5.0/wm5_vga_p...). When you look over Apple's guidelines for iOS apps, you can see how they took into consideration the size of touch targets and how the user would interact with the device much more than previous touch devices.

The idea of a tablet computer has been around for a long while. Microsoft and its partners had created Windows tablets that worked like the desktop OS for a while. As others have pointed out, Star Trek and other TV programs have shown us tablet computers. What Apple brought to the table was how to make that technology compelling for people as the components to make something compelling all come into being.

ARM processors combined the needed processing power with lower power consumption meaning that the iPad could be 2 pounds or less with many hours of battery life. If you had the idea of a Pentium powered tablet in the 90s with 10 hours of battery life and a 2 pound weight, it would just be an idea. Before capacitive touchscreens, it wouldn't be a compelling experience. You can have the idea that the touchscreen would be accurate and nice to use, but identifying how to achieve that is important. While Apple's UI concepts are something we're used to today, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry was the order of the day for mobile devices back then. While one can have the idea that the tablet should be intuitive to use, actually managing that can take work.

There's a reason why one never really understands what they're doing with the computer on Star Trek. It can be hard to create a really compelling product that's actually great to use. It isn't merely the concept of "a light, powerful tablet with little weight and a great user experience" that makes it happen. One has to identify what can be brought together to accomplish it as well as design a compelling interaction.