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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.