Extra programming? They should have been doing this 10 years ago!
That's right, Microsoft introduced their 'touch' interface over ten years ago and what happened? Nothing. The only tablet-specific apps created were by and for specific enterprise customers who wanted them to do specific tasks. Not one single developer tried to support touch in the open market. Then you wonder why Apple sold more tablets in 9 months than all Windows tablets combined in a decade.
This was laziness on the developers' part and it's kicking in the soft parts now. Microsoft really isn't helping by making its 'Metro' interface able to be disabled, turning into nothing more than a more 'prettified' Windows instead of an evolutionary shift to touch. Why should developers redesign their software when even the latest version of the OS will support the old version perfectly?
I will agree with you that tablets, by themselves, are limited; but only in scale. I really can't see an AutoCad user trying do design critical parts solely on a tablet, though he could rough a part in and finish it on the workstation back at the office.
Your history of typewriters is also in error; with the old manual typewriters it was neither faster nor easier to type--you had to have strong fingers. No, Typing was for legibility, standardizing fonts for easier character recognition. You wanted speed you used a stenographer who used Shorthand. Shorthand allowed the writer to take verbal dictation as quickly as it was spoken and then convert it to typewritten documents when the secretary had more time. A good stenographer could take dictation at speeds of 120 words per minute or faster and once electric typewriters came available they could type almost as quickly. My own mother, once an executive secretary, was capable of 160 wpm shorthand and 140 wpm typewritten. Even at almost 90 years of age she maintains in excess of 100 wpm on both today. So it's not the speed of longhand you're playing with, but rather the legibility of typing. There will almost always be a need for a keyboard for text-intensive work, but as our youth develop the skills that keyboard will be as virtual as they currently are on our tablets.
So no, your excuse is only partially valid, mostly due to difference of scale rather than due to any other limitation. The modern tablet is just as capable as the first desktop computers, but need to be significantly larger for some tasks which would really work better on a standard PC workstation.
