3 years ago this eerily accurate comic predicted that Apple would invent a device just like Microsoft's Surface tablet

At Wednesday's event, Apple announced the iPad Pro - a big, powerful iPad with an optional attachable keyboard and stylus. It's a product that many have already compared to Microsoft's Surface tablet, which was once called the "Toaster-Fridge" by some in the industry.

The comic below, first published in 2012, captures the moment Microsoft announced its first Surface tablet. Eerily, it also predicts that exactly three years later, Apple would reveal a very similar device, and be credited with its invention by adoring fans. 

It captures the skewed way Apple fans view the company's products.

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The comic comes from a self-professed Apple fanboy, cartoonist Joel Watson, who explained the reasoning behind his satirical scribbles on his site:

Chief among Apple's key strategies is waiting for years after a new service, feature or function is adopted and implemented by every other competitive platform before putting their own spin on it and taking all the credit as if it were their own invention. They are almost always the last to the party, but they are always the best dressed, the most interesting, the sexiest and the only one everyone remembers the next day.

I don't fault Apple for this type of behaviour because all they are really doing is letting the other guys take the risks and make the mistakes and gauging public response based on other products, before taking all of that knowledge and refining the hell out of their own product before launching it two or three years after the first one came out. Then we, not Apple, create the notion that Apple did something new, different and spectacular.