Both personally and professionally, I hope this analysis is wrong. As the editor of PCWorld, it's better for my business to have a spirited, interesting tablet competition to cover. It's more fun to report on and brings in more readers. And as an average technology citizen, I think Apple's got enough power already without completely dominating an important new product category.

But as I look at the tablet market, I feel more and more like I've seen this movie before. It starred the iPod ... and a bunch of other actors I've long since forgotten.