My, how quickly the tables can turn in the fickle world of consumer technology.
When Microsofts designers and engineers took to the drawing board to dream up Windows 8, the 9.7-inch iPad was the 800-pound gorilla of the tablet market, gobbling an insane amount of market share and laughing at Androids attempts to break Apples stranglehold on slates. The future, it seemed, lay in big screens.
Then the Kindle Fire, the Nook tablet, and Googles Nexus 7 appeared. Consumers fell in love with smaller, cheaper tablets overnight, and on October 23, 2012, Apple capitulated to popular demand and released an iPad mini of its own.
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