TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Marco Arment questions whether an Amazon tablet needs to do productivity apps at all:

If Amazon can deliver a $249 tablet that does a serviceable job for reading books, browsing some top newspapers and magazines, watching movies and TV shows, and playing some casual games, that’s going to be very attractive to a lot of people.

This debate centers on where Amazon plans on positioning their tablet. If they view it as an iPad-like tablet, where it can replace a PC for most use cases (web browsing, email, calendar, address book, word processing), then it almost certainly has to include those applications and do them somewhat well. If, rather, they see it as a casual use device (reading, media and games), then there’s little need for it.

Basically, you can sum it up like this: does Amazon want to build a post-PC device, that can replace a computer for most intents or purposes? Or do they want to build an accessory device? There’s good reason to think they would be better off going with the latter.