[runjake]

>Apple is also hailed as genius for "inventing the tablet" even though Microsoft tried to make tablets happen for a decade before the iPad

The iPad has more in common with the Newton, which came years before the Tablet PC.

Tablet PCs, while great (I liked them anyway, especially with OneNote) might have been called a tablet, but it had little in common with the tablet concepts as presented in the iPad. Tablet PCs didn't even get capacitive touch until after iOS devices came out. They were wholly stylus-based until then -- no pinches or swipes.

[siamore]

>Tablet PCs didn't even get capacitive touch until after iOS devices came out.

That's not true, I own a HP Tx2 which was released before the iPad and it has a capacitive touch screen it works great and before it there was the dell XT2 too.

[naz]

The iPhone is an iOS device.

[siamore]

Yeah you're right, The dell XT with capacitive touch was released in december of 2007 with a capacitive screen, the iPhone was released on june of 2007, I thought the op meant the iPad.

[gnaffle]

Well I did have a capacitive touch screen "tablet PC" (Panasonic Toughbook). But that's pretty much irrelevant since the UI didn't have pinches and swipes and wasn't designed primarily for use with fingers.

[fdmvsh]

There still were Tablet PCs with capacitive display before though, for example the ThinkPad X60 Tablet had an optional MultiTouch display and it came out in 2006.