For years, Microsoft has been touting the imminent arrival of the age of tablet computing. Year after year, PC makers got in line and presented their own entrants in this hoped for burgeoning marketplace. Only success was an unrealized dream. Except for a few vertical markets, such as medical offices, tablets — delivered as essentially converted PC note-books — were stillborn.

You can well understand, then, the industry’s skepticism when the iPad arrived in 2010. Weeks after such gear as the HP Slate were presented at the Consumer Electronics Show, Apple staged a media event in which Steve Jobs was present to announce the future of the PC. But I expect that many devoted Apple fans were still skeptical at first.

The main argument was that the iPad was largely a bloated iPod touch. They didn’t see the possibilities that would be revealed as app developers began to explore the iPad’s potential. At first, the industry analysts preferred to consider the iPad a media consumption tablet, meaning you bought them primarily to watch movies and play games. That you could also write email, surf the Internet, and even do some productivity work, eluded them.

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This article was posted on Monday, June 18th, 2012 at 12:00 AM and is filed under News and tagged with: Consumer Electronics Show, hp, iPad, Microsoft, PC., Steve Jobs, tablet computing.