Now, why would Apple need to compete on price to bring price down? It isn't their thing, yet they may still bring price down, and they can certainly bring demand up. Take the iPhone as an example. Before the iPhone I did not believe I could find any use for a smartphone, but now, if I had a little extra money, I would get one. And there are a lot of people less interested in me in gadgets and tech that have an iPhone already. Apple could create a market for tablets.
Their aren't any good user interfaces that I know of, yet, but if anyone can create new UI idea Apple can. And when they do others will begin to follow. Creating the demand that is needed for more hardware companies to compete with Wacom, hopefully bringing prices down.
Your scoff about how you use them is weak. You hold it like a clipboard or a notebook. You realize _all_ drug reps carry one around to get signatures verifying they've been to their clinics for the day. We will find uses for them, it's just chicken and egg for a while longer. It's just too bad MS got into it too early.
Well, I hear Windows 7 has great handwriting recognition.
They're not the only ones hovering around that space. The Crunchpad was aiming for $299 and I'd buy one in a heartbeat if it came out tomorrow. If a first product strikes a chord, there'll be multiple competitors under $500. $10 says these things will be all over the place in 18 months.
I'm poor, so $10 is the most I can throw away on a vanity bet - but I am confident that if tablets with about the functionality of an eee/ipod touch (don't care much about 3g modems etc) come on the market for under $500, they'll see a high rate of adoption. I'm at gmail if some third party wants to be referee and take $10 via paypal.
Even with that, I fail to see any value. It still doesn't solve anything.
One thing I never understood is how one would type on it. If one of the main purposes of a tablet is to utilize internet services, I'd imagine that typing emails/IM/tweets/etc. would be something done quite often. You want to fire off an IM or tweet in less than 3 seconds. How would that be done on a tablet? Using a touch screen keyboard won't work simply because the table would be too big to allow you to grip it and type with two thumbs. The only other option would be the hunt and peck method of typing, which would provide for a pretty crappy experience.
For a tablet to be really useful to me it would need to be a hybrid. Tablet for reading and browsing, laptop for email. But there is a middle ground of texts and chat that can be easily taken care of with handwriting recognition.
...[handwriting recognition is] better than you remember.
edit: Actually, I would be perfectly happy to have a $500 tablet with a small screen and without a keyboard for reading and browsing as long as there was good handwriting recognition.
I prefer handwriting to typing for longer essay type papers because it feels more natural to me.
When was the last time Apple competed on price?