The windows tiles may or may not be an advance, but they are clearly not a row of buttons just like the 1st gen iPhone and 2 out of every 3 smart phones that followed.
http://osxdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/tablets-befor...
We can argue whether or not it's right for Apple to fight to protect this design, but let's not pretend that these tablets were developed completely independent of the iPad's design.
Some of those earlier tablets had rounded corners.
I imagine many of them would have looked much more like the modern tablets had technology been available at the time. For example, the battery, the weight, the durable glass, the display, the wireless options... all these things contributed to the ability to make a tablet without big rubber bumpers on the side of it.
Yes, Apple's design is nicer looking and they should be respected for pushing forward the manufacturing technology. But we don't allow auto makers to sue each other and block the sales of entire models because curves are in fashion one year and more angular shapes in fashion the next.
Well I owned three phones back in 2002-2006 which had rows to buttons and were not iPhone. I get that iPhone is a great phone but please give credit where its due. Even BB had rows of button.
Edit: Not that iPhone was the first to use those elements, just that they where copying whatever the leader did. If windows phone starts to win I expect a switch to a lot of 'tile' interfaces.
http://images.wikia.com/victorious/images/6/65/That_guys_Pea...