"Resting against the edge of a conference table, balanced on the knee of a crossed leg, tossed towards the middle of the table for emphasis, or slowly pushed across the table in a conciliatory gesture of resignation, that legal pad is a prop. […] And the Tablet PC is the first computer to recognize this essential bit of business playacting. Microsoft has for years been making hardware that recognizes human factors in a way that the Macintosh has, frustratingly, been amazingly unaware of. Mapping page navigation to a scroll wheel makes infinitely more sense than having a user target a tiny scroll button. Most bits of GUI widgetry probably ought to be represented in hardware, as well, if only to mitigate the Fitts of apoplexy induced by the high cost that current user interfaces exact for even the simplest of errors."
08/31/02 update: Anil follows up on Apple’s missed hardware opportunities.