This morning’s Observer column.

This has been quite a week in that strange, frenetic universe known as techworld. Two major companies did things that they once vowed they’d never do: Apple launched a small iPad in order to attack similar-sized devices marketed by its rivals – Samsung, Google and Amazon – and Microsoft launched the first computer it’s ever made (a tablet called Surface). So we have Apple playing catch-up and Microsoft getting into a business – hardware manufacture – it had hitherto wisely avoided.