A failed consumer product category, yes. But tablets have been in routine use in business for many years, and have been a profitable niche product. Jobs correctly surmised that the tweaks he'd made to the PDA to make the iPhone a big success could translate in a larger form factor to make a successful consumer tablet. But tablets were already a familiar product to millions of people when the iPad hit the market.
Not to be pedantic, but the iPad preceded the iPhone as a concept. Jobs requested a prototype multi-touch display that you could type on, saw inertial scrolling, and decided that the phone should come first. There's very little about the tablet product category that he "tweaked." He threw out the stylus and built a touch OS from scratch.
Good point. I'd agree that the real innovation in both the iPhone and iPad was touch. It seems obvious now that touch is a completely different experience from the stylus, but it wasn't obvious enough that anybody else made the big investment to make it work, before Jobs.
It is worth recognising though that touch did exist before iOS, something a lot of people don't realise. It wasn't in consumer products so much, but it had been out there for quite some time.
True. I was infatuated with the hyper expensive lemur for a while. Then came the iPhone/iPad. Jazzmutant must have had some terse meetings around that time.
