I understand your sentiment, but can't quite agree.
Apple are innovating. I like the way all my iDevices are becoming 'as one'. Not quite to Mark Weiners vision yet - but its compelling and builds on Apples core value proposition: non-fragmentation.
Sprout is a 'gilding the lily' kind of innovation. Its impressive (in my humble opinion) and could open up a new type of product if there is sufficient demand for HP to continue. But it feels more like a marketing led shot in the dark, than HP building on their strengths in the touchscreen PC space.
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Anecdotal cul-de-sac:
My assumptions about innovation were overturned on a college summer project (EE). Having been told to 'innovate', I produced a thing + bells + whistles. My comparatively low marks & tutors comments showed me (rightly) that innovation should have focused more on 'thing'. The rest was not so important.
I now think of it as an Overton window in the product lifecycle (Im sure theres a term for this, but I don't know it).
'Just because it can be done, doesn't mean it should.'
> Any way Sprout looks very interesting and promising.
Interesting, I agree completely. Promising? I dunno about that. Given the price, I'd be afraid to buy it, given the high likelihood that HP forgets it exists in 6 months. Unique hardware like this requires serious development effort to utilize it properly, and if this doesn't get traction—and at almost $2,000, I think it's unlikely to get any traction—then nobody's going to bother writing that software. It's a chicken-and-egg problem; without sales, there won't be much custom software, and without that custom software, there's no reason for most to buy it.
