If Apple is really considering price cuts on its just-introduced iPad, the best advice is to make them before launch, not after.

Not today, or tomorrow, but a price drop a week--or even a day--before it goes on sale might give the iPad an incredible boost. I will also describe what other businesses can learn from Apple's troubles.

Apple's iPad, while getting slammed for lack of innovation in some areas, does something no other device seems to have done before: Offer customers 3G service on a month-to-month, no-contract basis. It's about time.

With the iPad, customers will purchase their AT&T wireless from Apple, not directly from the carrier. The pricing, at $29.99-a-month, is nothing special. But, the lack of a contract certainly is.

Big increases in e-book prices seem like a bad deal for consumers. They may be necessary, however, to keep authors and publishers in business as e-books replace paper ones.

The occasion for this discussion is Amazon's capitulation to Macmillan and others over the publishers' demand for greater flexibility in e-book pricing. Amazon has been selling many e-books for $9.99, while Macmillan wanted to add perhaps $5 to the price.

Facebook says it has dumped Microsoft banner ads, but what the social network really needs are fewer sleazy advertisers, not less Microsoft.

For example, ads like to one that invites Facebook members to "test" an iPad, Kindle, or Mac that they then get to keep, "participation required."

Is Apple's banning iPhone applications that would use location data for displaying advertising not as onerous as anything Microsoft tried--and mostly didn't get away with?

What about banning the word "Android" from the App Store? Like Apple thinks it can control the flow of information its customers receive? Give me a break.

Google Books is a wonderful idea that is having a hard time meeting legal requirements. That's the upshot of the latest round in the battle between the world's search leader and the people who actually create the content Google exploits for huge profits.

It should surprise no one that Google ran into legal challenges after it decided to suck all the world's books and magazines into its search engine. What's surprising, to me, is the project has been allowed to continue for so long. This is because it is easy to see value in the project, but hard to see how one company can be allowed to control it.

The more people know about the iPad, the less they want to buy one, according to a study released Friday. But, are we expecting too much?

The study seems to confirm the iPad as Apple's least exciting announcement in years. And the company is feeling the backlash that comes from not delivering on the hype.

Is it safe to buy Chinese-made computer equipment?

With Google and the National Security Agency now teaming up to investigate supposed Chinese hacking and most of our PC hardware coming from China, it's a fair question. And a hard one to answer with certainty.

We are at war and business data centers are the battlefield. It seems only natural that Google and the NSA should be working together. Who better to protect us? And we need to be able to play both defense and offense, something I wonder if we can do today.

Now, I'm as paranoid as the next guy, but the handwringing over the two working together on cybersecurity really needs to stop. This is war and we are at a disadvantage from the start. Free societies always are.

History will note that Steve Jobs was right: Google can be evil. And what it's doing to Android is a case-in-point.

Only Nexus One customers are getting new multitouch features, all you Droid customers are just out of luck.