s/real/office/g and then the article reads just fine.

Otherwise, yeah, it makes little sense, because, yeah, just about every other kind of work, short perhaps of literal bricklaying, has been radically changed by tablets. The last time I had to visit a hospital, I got the impression that they might have had more money invested in iPads than in CT scanners.

I don't see this as a failure. Expecting the iPad to be positioned as a device that would outright displace an existing line of Apple products that's typically sold at 2-3x the price point strikes me as an impressive failure to intuit Apple's priorities. The iPad was intended to break into - and even create - new markets, not to cannibalize its cousins. And if you look at it that way, it's been an amazing success.