The technology space has been uncommonly active lately, with three of the biggest players announcing their tablet strategies for the next year. This is important stuff, because, as appears to be increasingly clear, the tablet is the next generation form factor for mainstream computing. True, many people don’t recognize that yet, but I think nobody can argue that Apple, Microsoft and Google all believe so. Over the past few weeks, each of these companies has held a major event to demonstrate their tablet plans.

Let’s tell a story through metaphor! Imagine you are a chainsaw repair-person. Fascinated by the intricacies of the machine, you get lost for hours in the maze of valves, gears and other miscellaneous chainsaw-bits. People bring you their chainsaws, and you fix them. Sometimes those chainsaws have problems so strange and arcane, you impress yourself with the solution. Often, you derive great satisfaction from just knowing what the problem is from the second you lay eyes on it.

It’s not enough to have the best idea. You have to execute it correctly as well. And sometimes that means waiting until the technology catches up. I present Exhibit A for your consideration: The Asus PadFone is a “system”, if you will, for having your phone act as your main computing device. You can plug it into an empty tablet computer case to upsize your screen, and a laptop keyboard to turn it into a traditional PC workstation.

Most people might take me for an Apple cult member. Fair enough: pretty much everything I own with a CPU on the inside has a fruity logo on the outside. But let me propose an alternate theory. Rather than using Apple products because they were born in Cupertino, I use them because they are the best. They’re not “best for graphics”, or “best for apps”, or even “best for being cool”.

Although I got my first dialup Internet account in 1995, I didn’t get into writing HTML for another three years. At that time, a budding webmaster would have their pick of authoring tools. For me, it was between Claris Home Page and Adobe’s newly-acquired GoLive (formerly Cyberstudio. Ahh, the 1990s.). In those days, many people looked at the World Wide Web as a medium similar to the interactive CD-ROMs of the time; they were supposed to be media-rich experiences.