Cheap tablets have been on the market for several years... Used to use them by the dozens back 10-12 years ago for SONAR installations, and they were right around $800 each then (of course, with more capability, since they ran a full OS and had more than one I/O port, and were also waterproof when you put the port covers on...)
Heck, I worked a bit with a company in Seattle that was using the Compaq TC1000 tablet in the early 2000s (like 2003-2005 I think) where they made the interactive menus at places like Aureole and other high-end restaurants. Also did auto-updating wine lists, and the like. All touch-based, no pen needed.
And at that time Microsoft was loaded with tablets; it was the thing to have on campus. IBM, Compaq, HP tablets with swivel screens and detachable keyboards abounded!
So, I don't see Apple as inventing or changing the world, perhaps just because of their great PR engine they brought focus back on them.
I will grant you that Apple "made them pretty", so I guess in that regard, Apple is much like Calvin Klein or Vera Wang or Versace or Armani - making the ordinary not better, just pretty...;)
Now, if they would just figure out that we WANT to store our Movies like our Songs and get Apple TV right... LOL
Yep. And I predict that - once again - because Apple wants to keep a closed, continual-revenue-stream model working, they'll end up back in the sub-10% of the marketshare. Just like they did with PCs.
I’ve seen tablets too. Tablets have been used for exactly what you say: specific commercial uses. The one I mainly saw was for network engineers. It had Ethernet and other ports for plugging in the cables, and a pen-based Windows program did all the analysis (of course I had pens back in the 80s too). I’ve also seen specific POS touch tablets like you have.
That is all irrelevant. No touch tablet ever gained traction in the consumer market. The consumers rejected them all. They were all attempts to shoehorn a desktop/laptop OS into a tablet, and it simply didn’t work well. Apple finally made it work, not because of the pretty case, but by giving a general-purpose OS to the people in tablet form that could truly be easily and intuitively run by the fingers only. They didn’t slap a layer of touch over an existing OS like Microsoft did, they used a system where the entire UI was painstakingly designed from the ground-up for touch on small devices.
And yet they are the biggest corporation in the business, and profits that the rest can only dream of. There 10% makes more money than you 90% strange huh?