I know you're being silly.. but reality is messier than that. Apple released a tablet in 1993. Microsoft released serious tablets in 2002. Apple again in 2010, and now MS with their own branded device. Reality is less about leading a trend than hopscotching the competitor.
Slight correction and additional facts: The Newton was not a tablet. Nobody referred to it as a tablet at that time and nobody categorizes it as one now. The Psion Series 3 PDA arrived on the market before the Newton in 1991, and had a sizable user base by 1992.
Right, it was a Personal Digital Assistant -- the emphasis was on handwriting recognition; much of the Newton's pop-culture legacy is how ceaseless the lampooning of this features' flaws were at the time (regarding which, I had a MessagePad 130 and it was all more or less true).
But so while it wasn't called a tablet and differed a bit from the near-Platonic contemporary tablet form, it's pretty close to a tablet in terms of UX, use-case, obvious apps...
