[jyl]

It is nice to be able to use a stylus when you want to HWR or draw or something. But to have to use a stylus to interact with a tablet is bad design.

Maybe not for geeks (just stick a stylus in the pocket protector) but for the mass market, a stylus is just another thing to misplace. And what displays well at Best Buy: a tablet that works perfectly with fingers, or a tablet that wants a stylus which has, naturally, been stolen/lost/broken?

Wake up, guys. There are reasons why Windows-based tablets have <5% market share (from the 2010 numbers above, <3%).

Yeah, a lot is AAPL's brand and marketing. But a bunch of Android tablets, often from makers that have weak, young, or nil consumer "brands" (Samsung HTC Acer), have 5X the market share of Windows-based tablets made by companies that everyone knows (Dell H-P Sony Microsoft etc) with huge marketing spend.

So it isn't all the "Apple effect". There is something wrong with the Windows-based tablet, for the mass market - that is what the market is telling you. Ranting about how great styli and Windows are and how stupid Apple users are is not going to solve that. Steve Ballmer has been trying that for years and he looks worse at every CES.

I'm not dissing red's Slate or that weird alien thing island showed. I'd like a Slate myself. But that's not the answer for the mass market.