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A designers perspective on tabs: ux is where most innovation happens. 

How Do You Distinguish One Black Rectangle from Another?

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A tablet computer provides a particular challenge for the design team producing it, since it's not like you can make it a funky shape to set it apart from the competition; instead the user experience is what will set the product apart.

I'm happy with the iPad user experience and grateful that Apple did it, not only because it's good on its own merits, but because it will inspire the competition to attempt to design a better user experience. So I've been going through the promo videos of HP's TouchPad (conveniently compiled here into a single list by ars technica) to see what they're up to.

The introductory video is pretty par-for-the-course, until you get to 2:20. Skip forward and check out their phone call and "Touch to Share" features:

Here's a closer look at those latter two features. I'd love to have devices that did this, as I'm constantly e-mailing things from one of my devices to another (maps and directions, for instance):

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Sent from my iPhone