Day: 30 March 2012

Google Goes After Apple and Amazon ⇥

David Streitfeld and Nick Bilton:

Google’s long-awaited tablet might finally be on the way to becoming a reality. For at least two years, there have been reports that the search giant was working on something that could compete with Apple’s iPad. […]

Google’s target audience, however, seems to be as much those who use Amazon’s Kindle Fire as people who favor the more expensive iPad.

I’d be surprised if this does well. In order to compete with the Kindle Fire, they need to make it cheap, which means the hardware has to be cheap. Therefore, the experience will suffer. In order to make the experience not suffer, they have to get closer to the iPad price point, and that’s dangerous.

“Sir, I Have a Plan” ⇥

“We can’t do everything ourselves, but we can do what we’re good at,” RIM CEO Thorsten Heins said.

I think your idea of what you’re good at differs substantially from what your shareholders think you’re good at.

Hot Mic ⇥

On March 27 in Janesville, Wisconsin, Rick Santorum was giving a speech to a group of supporters. Midway through, he was berating Obama for his hot mic gaffe. Immediately following this, he said (and I quote):

We know the candidate Barack Obama, and what he was like: the anti-war, government nig—the, uh… America was a source for division around the world.

This occurs 34 minutes into the linked video.

Santorum should immediately drop out of the race for this disgraceful, hateful, derogatory, disrespectful remark. He continues his record of being the single most vile human being on the ballots, and he’s getting votes and cheers.

Clarification: I’m going to give Santorum the benefit of the doubt and assume that he doesn’t use the epithet in conversation, even in private. I’m sure he did not mean to say that. The closest explanation I’ve heard is that he meant “negotiator” and stumbled. In that case, why not finish the word?

But while what came out was probably just a strange slip of the tongue, it sounded offensive, and he’s the only candidate with a record of two of these stumbles on the campaign. Remember the “blah people” incident?