Blackberry Playbook - here's hoping

I pray to all things good in the universe that this Blackberry Playbook tablet is in the least bit competitive against the iPad. I'm sick of Apple being the only company able to pull much of anything off correctly. I want an iPad, but I tired of only wanting Apple stuff; I have too much Apple stuff! Please, please, please, wont there be another company to make something as cool as or better than Apple's offerings?

To be fair, I love the Palm Pre and WebOS design. And I hope (again, hoping) that HP will make something great out of the investment (the purchase of Palm). But I'm tired of companies taking the "wait and see" approach to new markets and/or to revolutionize/reinvent markets. Apple does that; they did it with the iPod, iPhone, and now the iPad. They have a philosophy, advanced by Steve Jobs, that says, make something great, know it's great, know it works great, and know it looks great, and spend as much time as it takes to accomplish that, and screw everybody else that gets in the way.

That's right! These tech companies need to grow some!

Microsoft, in its horrible marketing and management disarray, having already failed with the Kin One and Kin Two, is finally set to release Windows Phone 7 upon the world next week -- their new, supreme touchscreen and modern mobile OS competitor to the iPhone. But the iPhone was released July 2007! It's October 2010! This is how long it takes for somebody to do anything to keep up with Apple and the Jobs-man.

Research In Motion (RIM), in the case of the PlayBook, isn't too far behind the iPad; its been only a few months now since the iPad's release. So, I'm sure RIM has been working on some type of tablet offering for a while now, possibly even a few years as far as the operating system infrastructure goes. I'm willing to bet, however, that as soon as the iPad was announced back in January, they went full-steam ahead to ramp up development for what we've seen introduced last week.

They claim this tablet computer is for the "professional" -- like businessmen. But if you think like me, when something now is claimed for the "professional," I'm thinking that it's more along the lines of "hard to use" and "not streamlined for smooth user experience." So, regardless of how great their promotional videos are on this tablet, I'm not getting my hopes too far up, though I sure would like for it to work just as smooth and seamless as they make it seem: