[tieno]

It’s pretty astonishing to think that Jony Ive was working on the design of that thing for eight years until it finally came to market.

This also seems like a perfect demonstration of Apple’s outstanding patience and timing. Microsoft(’s partners) was (were) making tablets in 2002. (As a niche product, basically.) Apple could probably also have brought one to market (probably with some sort of desktop CPU and running a mostly unchanged OS X) around that time had they really wanted to – but they didn’t.

They waited until the right technology (mobile CPUs, capacitive touch screens, …) at the right price and the right software was available to them.

Am I completely wrong in suspecting that in many other companies a prototype like that would either be pushed to market prematurely or killed outright because it wasn’t possible to turn it into a viable product for five years, how is that supposed to change now.