All of your other points about Microsoft commercializing the tablet PC are well taken.

Been where? Done what?

As I browse through the collecion of available Apple products, I don’t see a single mention of a tablet. Not one.

Sure,the iPhone or iPod touch might be called a tablet like computer, except that it doesn’t do anything that a tablet is meant to. It’s a multi-touch phone and media player meant for the consumption of media.

Tablet computers do more than allow you to pinch and zoom your photos. In fact, the courier mock ups are actually very good examples of what a tablet should look like. They let you enter things with a stylus. (Sorry, but the entire strength of a tablet is having something that looks like a pencil/pen. If I want to type, I’ll get a notebook. I hear that Apple makes a very nice light/think notebook at an outrageous price.) They allow me to draw and manipulate photos with real computer software like Photoshop or GIMP. (Finger painting isn’t the same.) They recognize handwriting and simplify the process of notetaking. (OneNote on a tablet PC is simply awesome and there is literally nothing like it in the Mac world.)

So, how can you claim that Apple has revolutionized this space? There is no Apple tablet. Apple has made no announcement. There is even a serious dearth of shadowy photos. We don’t know anything about it, except for wild speculation. That might change in a week, after Apple finally announces something, but until then, you can’t claim that your vapourware is better than my vapourware.

Up until Apple does make an announcement, Microsoft has won the tablet war. They are the only company that has ever shipped a tablet or tablet operating system (as unimpressive as the current offering might be). I would even say that Courier currently beats out the Apple tablet for likelihood. At least with the courier, there are leaked mockups and videos that probably came from Microsoft (or a design firm associated with Microsoft). With the Apple tablet, we got nothing. We don’t know what it does, we don’t know how big it will be. We know nothing about the software, or price, or applications.

Apple’s tablet is a big black hole. How can you possibly claim that Apple has “been here, done that”?