Which would you buy: An Apple tablet or a Microsoft tablet?

Michael Gartenberg had a provocative tweet today while on a visit to Microsoft’s Open House:

favorite Robbie Bach line of the day. “”Here’s my favorite survey of the year… which will you buy, a Microsoft tablet or Apple tablet?” ”
October 6, 2009 6:06:11 PM

That’s almost a no brainer for me: both. But I imagine for the vast number of early adopters the answer is ‘an Apple tablet.’

That answer makes sense. Apple has the ‘tablet’ momentum right now, whether they fully capitalize on it or not.

Microsoft and its Tablet PC partners meantime are still going to be chugging out quality devices, though mostly under the radar.

The best marketing advice I could give to Microsoft at this point is to go back to the original tablet as a slate vision. That’s where it appears the competition is, that’s where Microsoft should be.

But outside of which device I’d buy, I think a great question for people like me is: which device would you develop for?

Again, I’m a special case since I’ve been developing for the Tablet PC for a long time, however, which platform would I suggest that a new developer invest their time in learning? Easy. An Apple tablet.

Why? Because an Apple tablet is best aligned with growth–particularly in the consumer space. Microsoft’s Tablet PCs are IT focused which is a smaller total available market. So for small, independent developers the best opportunity lies with Apple. It’s pretty ironic because traditionally Microsoft is best known for working with developers, but at least for the next couple tablet years I’d line up with the Apples.