Well, here’s a point in Apple’s favor, people didn’t really want tablets at all until iPad. People were just not thinking about tablets, they didn’t know they existed, and if they did know, they probably assumed that they weren’t good.
With iPad, people were fully aware how cool the screens could be and that tablets even existed. The iPad created desire for tablets. Now that we’re at that point, we have the questions of what the tablet should be, what it should have, etc.
Because the iPad was the first tablet people actually desired. The secret was to not try to shoehorn a desktop OS into a tablet.