Tablets didn't fail so much as tablet PCs failed. Stuff like cell phones, GPS units, book readers, personal media players, PDAs, smart remote controls and the like are all quite successful and available as small tablets, but they're not PCs. Designing a bigger and better one of those is more natural than trying to make a laptop usable without a keyboard.

After 1.6_10 and JavaFX, they're effectively one and the same. There's a JavaFX demonstration of an experimental feature where you can drag the Applet from its spot in the page and it becomes a regular JWS application with only the slightest pause as it spawns a new OS-level container. I'm pleasantly surprised to see all that Sun's done to improve Applets even after they've mostly failed in the market.

I wait with bated breath for a hyperlink that I can click on to play an Ajax version of Quake 2. Until then I'll just have to make do with http://www.bytonic.de/downloads/jake2_jogl11.jnlp instead.