The iPad in Medicine

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Jim Dempsey, Panasonic's Business Enterprise Development Manager:

We’ve been in tablets for 15 years. I love Apple, they made the tablet cool again, we get a boost from what they do and we like to think of them as friends. I have two iPads in my house, but they’re built for the consumer world and that’s not where we’re focused.

Even if we ignored the fact that it weighs almost 4 pounds, costs over $2000, and has been out since 2008...

I still wouldn't bet on this thing to best the iPad.

Competing Tablets

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Alistair Barr on the purpose of Amazon Tablets:

Amazon is making its own tablets to help the company sell more digital goods, such as MP3s, movies, TV shows, apps and games. Physical versions of these products, such as CDs and DVDs, were a big business for Amazon, but they are now in decline.

Hardware is a secondary concern for Amazon, like it is for Google. The tablet doesn't matter nearly as much as what it can be used to sell. In Amazon's case that's stuff - to us. In Google's case it's us, to advertisers. But if their ends are important and the tablet is the vehicle being used to deliver those ends... I'd want a nice car.

Kirk McElhearn on Mac App Store Prices

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Kirk McElhearn, making the arguement that Mac App Store price drops will eventually hurt consumers makes the same argument people make about the "race to the bottom" in iOS apps:

But these days, as prices drop, users are no longer willing to pay more than $5 or $10; yet they’ll happily dump more than that on a movie, or even a cup of coffee.

Good apps are worth paying for. And users know that. $50 is a bit steep for 1Password but next time it goes on sale I'd happily pay $35 for it. Pixelmator is worth $50-$100, but at $30 I could easily pick it up without even needing to consult my wife. Fantastical was $20. Aperture was $80. Motion was $50. I have two dozen great apps on my Mac for less than the cost of a single-user license of Adoe Photoshop. If I still lived in a Windows world where everything costs $100 for apps of any reasonable quality I would probably still be pirating them. 

Like Steve Jobs alluded to when selling songs piecemeal at $0.99 a pop - make it easy for folks to be honest and most of them will. These lower prices made it easier for me to be honest and buying legal versions of apps I loved was awesome to be able to do. I want to support the developers but everyone has a budget and binary theft is so easy and tempting that lower prices make honesty easy. 

Having said that, Kirk makes a great point later that I could not agree with more. 

Apple should offer a way for developers to provide demo versions of software from the Mac App Store.