"There were absolutely successful products that came before"
I think it's just a question of definition. The Apple pencil was introduced in 2016, since then about 500.000.000 iPads have been sold. If you compare that with the number of Thinkpad yogas or HP elite book 2760ps it's possible to come the conclusion that they are relatively less successful.
But of course they can be "absolutely successful" depending on your definition.
Certainly the ipad + pencil are some of the best digital art hardware ever created. I take issue with people implying that other products are irrelevant.
The total number of ipads sold doesn't seem like a good metric since many people won't use them for digital art. Market share among digital artists seems like a better metric. I found this survey: https://www.celsys.com/en/topic/20230120 which shows that 19% of digital artists use an apple pencil. This is the largest single category, but much smaller than the sum of windows PC categories.
I think it's just a question of definition. The Apple pencil was introduced in 2016, since then about 500.000.000 iPads have been sold. If you compare that with the number of Thinkpad yogas or HP elite book 2760ps it's possible to come the conclusion that they are relatively less successful. But of course they can be "absolutely successful" depending on your definition.