Shooting at Bubbles

I’ve pretty much tried to stay out of this whole Apple fanboy daisy-chain lovefest over the possibility of some super duper tablet being announced this month.

Except Robert Scoble just had to go and add his two cents worth about the glory that will soon be in our shaking hands (emphasis is mine).

But someone has already made quite a few of the other arguments I’d make about Joe’s post. That someone is MG Siegler who wrote at Techcrunch tonight “the World Doesn’t Need Someone Telling Us What We Don’t Need In Tech.” MG Siegler ripped Joe a good one, and I agree with MG that Apple is a great company because they are willing to take risks, even some that don’t seem to work out very well.

Well I hate to be the burst everyone’s Apple loving bubbles but the tablet – or slate – or anything you want to call it – isn’t anything new. Nor is Apple the first one to walk down this road – regardless of Scoble’s fandom.

Let’s step back in time shall we.

2001.

Microsoft.

Tablet computer.

The term Tablet PC was made popular in a product announced in 2001 by Microsoft, and defined by Microsoft to be a pen-enabled computer conforming to hardware specifications devised by Microsoft and running a licensed copy of the “Windows XP Tablet PC Edition” operating system or a derivative thereof.

Oh and it’s not just Microsoft, as Linux has been running on tablet computers that don’t exist – well at least not before Apple says they do.

You might want to take that up with companies like Toshiba, Acer. Lenovo and HP.

But then we all know that Scoble thinks that Microsoft is old and decrepit.

Just too bad we’ve forgotten to give credit where credit is due – not everything in our tech world exists because Apple says so.