At no point did I say that MS tablets were particularly incredible - I simply said that MS vendors have already made lots of tablets, in lots of different form factors, so at least customers get some choice (e.g. I chose an HP tc1100 'cos I'm an artist, so most of the time I like to draw straight on the screen -with pressure sensitivity- and I can just ditch the keyboard, but when I want a keyboard, it just clips right on). Apple will have the usual "one design fits all approach" that turned me off the iphone in the first place... consumers will get no choice with Apple - but that's the price you pay for keeping the OS proprietary.

What I cannot see is what Apple realistically think they can do that will be better than the existing tabletpc options at a reasonable price- as noted above, the only way it will work for most artistic/graphics types is if it runs OSX, so that it can use photoshop, etc., and has a pressure-sensitive pen. Otherwise there's no point - and if it runs the iPhone OS then I don't see what the point is at all.

But if it runs OSX, then that means Apple need to basically fit laptop architecture into a 10-12in tablet-size space. It can be done - HP did it with the tc1100. But Apple are starting from scratch much later in the game. If you can by a good tablet PC on ebay for £300 (as I did), why are you going to pay £500 for the same thing from Apple?

Same goes for business users. What IT department is going to buy Apple tablet that costs significantly more and delivers no tangible benefit?

The only reason anyone would do that is the same reason they pay all of Apple's other fashion-victim-taxes...

(Also - whereas you said MS vendors made tablets and moved on, you'll find that, for example, the Archos 9 isn't even available yet, and Acer, Toshiba, HP, Dell, etc. all still make tablets and all still sell them on their websites...)