Three years ago, Apple launched the original iPad to a Yerba Buena Gardens audience of tech journalists who largely scoffed at the notion of anyone buying it. CNET interviewed me at the event, but didn't ever use the footage, apparently because I wasn't scoffing.
But iPads rapidly began selling, so much so that Samsung and an "avalanche" of other vendors rushed their own tablets to market by the end of that year. Microsoft had already launched its own Slate PC concept with HP, a product the original iPad immediately shoved off the table and into the trash bin (where, come on, it rightly belonged).
Editorial: The mysterious failure of Microsoft's Surface RT
