Speaking of Patrick and Minimal Mac, this is a great piece of advice to all the other companies hoping to compete with the iPad.

Dear Anyone Else Who Thinks They Have A Chance In The iPad Market, You don’t. The iPad is the fire that sucked all the oxygen out of the room. Apple zigged and you guys are still trying to figure out what a zag is.

This is in relation to HP’s recent announcement that they’re discontinuing operations related to WebOS devices as of Q4 of this year. That is just a nice way of saying that they’re killing the TouchPad, along with the rest of WebOS devices, pretty much effective immediately. Also, they’re looking to move out of the consumer PC business and into the enterprise. When you’re the biggest consumer PC maker in the world by revenue, this is big news. So much for Number One Plus.

But the truth is that this is not only about HP. Most tech companies don’t stand a chance of competing with the iPad, because they still think they’re playing the same old game, when in fact this is a whole different story. Patrick understands this. MG Siegler seems to agree with him. So does Horace Dediu. The rest of the traditional PC makers still seem oblivious to the fact that the game has changed. HP was the only company with the skill and resources necessary to replicate Apple’s model and produce an iPad-caliber product. They gave it their best shot, and they still fell short. Maybe they could have gotten there with time, but if this announcement is anything to go by, I’d say they looked at the future and they didn’t really like their chances.

Apple isn’t winning this war by being better at doing the same thing as the rest of the industry. They didn’t in 2001, they didn’t in 2007, and they’re certainly not doing it now. They’re winning it by doing something entirely different, something unique. Something disruptive.

That’s what Apple is all about. And the rest is just background noise.