I’ve often said that the e-book revolution will not reach its tipping point until there’s a tablet under the arm of every student on campus. Though the Apple iPad is the first significant advance in that direction, however, tablets have been around for about a decade.

The first one I ever saw (pictured right) was made by Microsoft, and it created a storm of excitement with a really slick demo showing doctors making hospital rounds with tablets (they still do – one of the few applications that got picked up) and pianists reading a score on a tablet propped up where the sheet music usually goes.

Year after year I waited for Microsoft’s tablet to sweep the country but it never happened. And now I know why. You will, too after reading a New York Times op-ed column by Dick Brass, a former vice president at Microsoft from 1997 to 2004. Brass describes himself as “the fellow who tried (and largely failed) to make tablet PCs and e-books happen at Microsoft a decade ago.”

Though his piece is ostensibly about how MS dropped the ball when it had a chance to tablify the world early in the new century, it’s really about “why Microsoft, America’s most famous and prosperous technology company, no longer brings us the future, whether it’s tablet computers like the iPad, e-books like Amazon’s Kindle, smartphones like the BlackBerry and iPhone, search engines like Google, digital music systems like iPod and iTunes or popular Web services like Facebook and Twitter.”

What happened? “Unlike other companies,” says Brass, “Microsoft never developed a true system for innovation. Some of my former colleagues argue that it actually developed a system to thwart innovation.” Bizarrely, Microsoft remains one of the world’s leading technological companies, having made a $6.7 billion profit in the last quarter alone. Yet even that may not be enough. “While the company has had a truly amazing past and an enviably prosperous present,” concludes Brass, “unless it regains its creative spark, it’s an open question whether it has much of a future.”

You can read his analysis in its entirety in Microsoft’s Creative Destruction. It may explain why Microsoft’s introduction of the HP tablet early in January – predating the release of the Apple’s iPad by three weeks – seems to have laid an egg. Here’s PC World’s take on it: “The HP tablet is basically a color e-reader running Amazon Kindle software, with few other details besides a sub-$500 price point and an estimated arrival on the market by mid-2010. So disappointing was the release that Microsoft and HP’s shares fell yesterday according to BusinessWeek.” (Another HP tablet is being used by designers on Project Runway to good effect. Check out the HP Touchsmart tm2 tablet PC.)

The sad thing is that the original tablet PC could, with some refinements, have evolved into the gold standard for the tablet. Instead it looks like it’s become the…um…Brass standard.

And yet…Microsoft has a chance to redeem itself with the forthcoming Courier, which Gizmodo leaked just recently. Maybe MS will not only get the tablet right this time, but will find the fire in the belly that Brass says has been missing from the corporate culture. Check the below video (actually a series of videos) and determine for yourself.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.