As a regular user of an iPhone, MacBookPro, and Kindle:
- The iPad has the potential success for enabling paid-subscriptions to magazines. I tried the Economist in Kindle form and hated it. It's much too hard to flip, glance, and scan though content.
- I pay $0.75 to read the NY Times on the Kindle once a week or so. I consider it a good deal, particularly on Sunday. No fingers with black ink. No ads. It's a much better experience than the miserable NY Times iPhone App.
- I can't imagine wanting to read a book on a back-lit LCD screen.
- The iPad has the potential to enable a digital transition for textbooks. Again, the Kindle fails the filp, glance and scan test. If you remember back to your textbook days there was a lot of leafing through the pages to find the one with the subject matter you're looking for while preparing for a test. You just can't do that with the Kindle.
- I like the Kindle app for the iPhone a lot. It's nice to be able to read a few pages of whatever book any time, any where. If I'm stuck waiting in line at a store, odds are that I don't have my Kindle. I almost always have my iPhone in my pocket, and am able to read a few pages. My last-page-read gets synced back to the Kindle, so I can continue reading where I left off when I get home. Genius.
- I think it would neat to have an iPad around the house, but I think the price point is still too high.
- I think the potential as a Kid's device is enormous. The price is too high right now and it would need to get ruggedized a bit, but this could be a new market for Apple that would cannibalize the video game and educational toy market.
- The closed-platform nature of the product could be a deal breaker for Apple. It's irritating enough with the iPhone.
- For the first time, the Google Chrome OS makes sense to me. I'm looking forward to tablets from the Asian hardware companies (MSI, etc.) running Chrome OS showing up this year. I'd buy one of those if the price was right. As long as it has a good browser, I can't imagine any feature Apple could provide that would make up for price.
- One needs to look no further than the success of the Netbook vs the failure of the MacBook Air, to validate the last point.
