Can they do it again?

What does it take to start blogging again? A new year? A new decade? Or the opportunity to pointlessly speculate about an as yet unannounced product?
The question that keeps coming back to me is "Can they do it again?"
Not "Can they break into a new, billion dollar market?", not "Can they redefine the way we distribute and buy apps?" but "Can they reinvent the way we interact with mobile devices?"
I remember the time before the iPhone was launched. We had an HTC running Windows Mobile in the office with a touch screen and a dinky little stylus - you could use your finger nails if you angled them just right. OK, it was a bit fiddly but it took most of the fear away when entering a long URL into the browser's address bar. But we knew there were better things coming. We had all seen those iPhone mockups - the one's with a virtual, circular scroll-wheel floating over the interface. We couldn't wait.
And then there it was ... and it had a whole new vocabulary of gestures; slides and flicks and pinches and you could type with your actual fingers and there were '.com' and '@' buttons when you needed them and the interface was simple and hidden and only came to life when you actually touched it. And before the hour was out you knew that was how it was supposed to be and when you actually got one in your hands you just smiled at how much fun it was. And the best part was nobody knew a thing.
Can they possibly do that again?
Maybe they don't have to. A tablet with the touch interface of an iPhone would be a fun way of consuming digital content - but $500-$1000 worth of fun? Surely it's got to be as good as, if not better, than the iPhone when it comes to creating content, when it comes to text entry. And the point is that if it does just what the iPhone does, it won't be better - it will be worse - because you can use both thumbs on an iPhone or you can use it one-handed and I bet you won't be able to do that with a 10" tablet.
OK, so this time they don't have to invent, and keep under wraps, a whole new way of interacting with a mobile device; all they need to do is invent a new way to allow me to write next years blog entry on a tablet. Except that inventing things is hard and rare.

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