Microsoft didn't fail to deliver iPad, Intel did

I'm going to disagree with one key point in Ina Fried's thoughtful piece on why Apple came out with the iPad instead of Microsoft, even though Bill Gates stood up on stage and showed off a thin, light slate PC code-named Haiku years before. It wasn't Microsoft who failed to deliver the form factor - it was Intel.

Intel developed the Atom for Haiku (and devices like it). If Intel could have got the Atom down to where it will be next year three years ago, Haiku devices could have been thin and light rather than the chunky UMPC that Samsung delivered; today, you probably still couldn't quite get Haiku on an X86 system - it would have to be ARM like the iPad. (If you could build iPad on Intel, Apple would have done it in the first place instead of porting Mac OS to ARM.) Processor design has so much influence on the physical design of the rest of a PC that Toshiba had to get together with Intel to design the cooling system for the Port