Maybe some selection bias? Tablets have been in use since at least early Windows XP days. I'm not sure I'd call them common, back then, but they were hardly unique. We used them in the field when collecting data.
>Tablets have been in use since at least early Windows XP days. I'm not sure I'd call them common, back then, but they were hardly unique. We used them in the field when collecting data.
People collecting "data in the field" is not the hundreds million unit market it is post iPad.
Tablets existed for 10+ years before the iPad, Microsoft especially pushed various monstrosities -- nobody really used them though.
I did mention they weren't common, but I'm not a nobody and I really used them. They had a whole Tablet Edition, for XP. They were used in quite a few industries, by real people who were doing real work.
So, no, not common - but not nobody, either.
>but I'm not a nobody and I really used them
Yeah, "nobody used them" in casual speech just means very few people. Obviously since they were made some people bought and used them. But the numbers were not worth writing home about -- and one would be hard-pressed to see random people using them in the wild (exceptions by field workers, some kinds of researchers, etc, mostly professional/factory/etc uses).
And my response only pertained to them having only seen them in one place and how that might be selection bias. While not common, they were certainly in use outside of research labs.
Motion did pretty well with them and made great hardware.
Who was doing that? Before the iPad came out I saw tablets used in exactly one place, and it was a university research project on construction management and coordination between building trades.
Even after the iPad came out, the people using them as PC replacements were using them mostly for the same set of tasks like email and web browsing, and (flat iOS 7 redesign aside) the experience for those is basically the same as always.
EDIT - I suppose there have been major additions to iOS since then (like multitasking), but I'd argue it's less because they're threatened by users buying a Surface (or whatever crappy HP tablet existed at the time) instead of a Mac, and more because it's the obvious direction that iOS devices have been steadily improving in regardless of the competition. Apple's perfectly happy to eat the Mac's market with it if there are Mac users who can get by on better iPads.