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Microsoft Makes Another "Nearly Sold Out" Claim For the Surface Line
Microsoft made some confident sounding claims about sales of its first-generation Surface tablets before it became clear that the tablets weren't actually selling very well. So make what you will of the company's claim that the second version is "close to selling out." As the linked article points out, the company has "fallen short of offering any real explanation as to just how “close” to selling out the Surface 2 and Pro 2 really are – nor have they indicated how many were on hand to order in the first place."
They are still bitter that they had the idea for a tablet long before Apple, but when they announced it, it was to a big yawn.
ATT ran a series of advertisements in the early 1990s. In which they featured a pen-based computer "sending a fax from the beach" and a computer in a car giving turn-by-turn directions.
Before the advent of modern cellular technology, wireless data, and GPS.
Apple started working on the Newton in the 1980s, and the product was released 1998-ish. Years before Microsoft had the idea of the Tablet PC in ~2000.
There were a number of simplistic tablet-like devices and PDAs that came out in the 80s, as well, from various other manufacturers, such as the "Pencept", the so called "Pen computing" fad; the GRIDpad, the Momenta pentop, NCR 3125 Pen computer, HP OmniGo 100, DEC Lectrice, Palm Pilot.
Apple started work on Newton in the 1980s, released it in 1993, and discontinued it in 1998.
But the idea for tablets has been around since computers gained user interfaces. The most famous is Alan Kay's Dynabook from 1972.
Pen-driven and portable computers come in waves. There was the GRiDPad generation in the 1980s (roughly ending with Windows for Pen Computing). There was the EPOC generation in the 1990s (from which we get the Microsoft product, WinCE). There was the TabletPC generation, promoted by Bill Gates but sabotaged by the Office division. Now we're in the iOS and Android era.
Have a nice time.
Actually 1999 is only the time period when MS created their own hardware design for a tablet. Before that they were pushing Windows for Pen, a Windows 3.1 based tablet OS. WfP was generally miserable, mostly vaporware. It was created soley for the purpose of putting GO Computing out of business. ( Why by a GO tablet when you can buy a fully interoperable WfP tablet ? )
GO computing and the Netwon were near simultaneous creations. In fact AT&T made tablets in 1991 using the GO os.
After the Newton failed and GO was destroyed by MS, tablet computing faded for a while--except for certain niche areas--I remember statistics collecting companies interested, and UPS/FedEx/ DHS/others, used primitive tablets because portable computing was important.
It was some time during this period of neglect that Bill Gates took up the tablet as a note taking device. He was the first one who was seriously pushing for a long period of time.
On another note, it was John Sculley who pushed real hard for the Newton. The initial Mac was supposed to be Steve Jobs redemption. Proving that Woz was not the only genius at Apple. In the same sense the Newton was to be Sculley redemption, showing that Apple could get along without Jobs.
Kind of ironic that now it's Jobs who gets the most credit for inventing the tablet.