This weekend, Amazon quickly responded to a huge customer protest about putting ads on the lock and home screens of the new Kindle Fires. Even though the upgraded lineup comes across as a good value as far as price is concerned, it’s understandable buyers would chafe at having to confront ads on a device that’s already meant to serve as a front end to Amazon’s products and services.

Well, Amazon relented, with a $15 surcharge to ditch the ads. All right, I suppose they are to be commended for making a bad situation better.

But, other than price, what does a Kindle Fire offer that would make it a compelling alternative to an Apple iPad or Google Android tablet? That’s a question that’s really hard to answer, unless, of course, your primary need for a tablet is to acquire Amazon content. If that’s the case, a Kindle may be a good buy. This may be especially true for the traditional Kindles, which offer really crisp display of black and white text. At least if your primary interest is reading books, a Kindle, starting at $69, may be the way to go.

When you go beyond reading digital books, and perhaps watching movies and TV shows on a Kindle Fire, where do you go next? Well, to use Amazon’s storefront for other products and services, and the range is surprisingly extensive. From groceries (in some cities) to lawn mowers, TV sets, personal computers and, yes, even an Apple iPad, you’ll find a rich selection at Amazon. Imagine ordering an iPad from your Kindle Fire. But whatever choice you make, another sales rings up at Amazon, and that’s why the Kindle Fire is less expensive that other tablets.

Well, maybe not the Google Nexus 7. But Google’s aggressive price for that product is based on the same assumptions as Amazon, that you’ll buy content, perhaps apps, and thus make up the difference. This is sort of the tact that printer makers take. Sell the printer cheap, but earn profits from the consumables that are sufficient to compensate and then some.

On the other hand, the new iPad, though heavier to lug around, offers a really good digital reading experience. More to the point, you aren’t tethered to Apple’s iBooks either. You can always install Amazon’s Kindle software, and embrace their e-book ecosystem.

What’s more, if your tablet needs extend beyond consuming multimedia content and digital books, you’ll want a rich selection of apps. Amazon doesn’t do very well in that regard, and the Android app repertoire is mostly smartphone-based. Those apps don’t look very well on tablets, which may be one key reason, among many, that Android tablets have not been very successful in the marketplace.

When it comes to usability, email and Internet access take second place on a Kindle Fire, although the Silk browser is said to be improved. Amazon is still using a highly modified OS based on an older version of Android, which may limit touch responsiveness, although the new 1.2GHz dual-core processor on the HD models may compensate by brute force alone. Amazon is to be commended for installing stereo speakers with Dolby audio, although you can’t expect much in the way of decent sound on a small tablet.

It all goes to demonstrate the emphasis on media consumption, and for that purpose, I suppose a Kindle Fire is suitable, particularly if you buy the higher resolution HD version. I also expect the Kindles will fare reasonably well in the marketplace, particularly during the holiday season. Amazon has roughly 140 million customers, which is a large audience of potential buyers. The Kindles are also sold through some independent resellers such as the Staples office supply chain. The potential audience isn’t quite as wide as Apple’s, but there’s enough opportunity to move millions of Kindles to eager buyers.

On the other hand, Apple still fares better when it comes to the highly integrated and relatively easy-to-use OS, consistently high performance, and the rich selection of apps. Yes, I suppose some potential buyers aren’t enamored of Apple’s closed ecosystem, and might wish for a few more options that Apple would never permit in the App Store. But that’s not Apple’s audience. For the rest of us, the selection is fine, the email works quite well, and the Safari browser just keeps getting better and better.

When it comes to using someone else’s digital books, there is, as I said, a Kindle app for the iOS, and even a Nook app from Barnes & Noble. Indeed, I wonder how much money these companies earn through sales from an Apple mobile gadget compared to their own media tablets.

If the existing iPad is a little too large for convenient reading, Apple may offer a solution soon, in the form of a smaller iPad. The rumored 7.85-inch model, allegedly sporting a 4:3 aspect ratio, will deliver far more screen real estate that a widescreen Kindle Fire or Android tablet. Yes, the latter may be better for movies, but the iPad is superior for most everything else.

So I ask again whether a Kindle is a worthy alternative to the iPad. It seems to come up rather short.

As many of you know, Amazon’s announcement of a new lineup of Kindle tablets has gotten a lot of publicity. But the one irritating fact, one that threatened to make these new tablets non-starters for many potential customers, didn’t get so much attention. In fact it was hardly mentioned, but it seems, you see, that the new Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD is ad-subsidized.

Sounds surprising, but it’s true, and this is already a “feature” of the cheapest Kindles, designed to lower the purchase price, so you shouldn’t be surprised that Amazon would want to spread the “joy.” For the Kindle Fire lineup, Amazon will place ads on the lock screen and home screen. I suppose they expect customers to put up with such intrusions in exchange for the lower price tags, but that’s a huge question mark. I do wish the media had spent more attention on the ad-driven factor in praising these tablets to the skies.

However, there is now a published report that, yes, customers will be able to remove the ads for a $15 fee. Well, at least it’s not $150, but it’s still quite clear that the Kindle Fires are being sold at or below cost, in the hope that consumers will make up the difference buying products and services from Amazon.

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Yes, I realize that most of next week’s attention will be on the iPhone 5. It’s obvious that’s the model name, because of the faded number five on Apple’s invitations to the media. Most of the expected specs have been published, the usual leaks of raw parts from Chinese component makers have given you a rough idea what it’ll look like, and there are essential features that are fairly obvious, such as a larger screen and LTE support.

I suppose Apple could come up with a few unexpected goodies for the iPhone 5, such as a haptic keyboard, which gives makes you feel your keystrokes, as if you were using a physical keyboard. But there’s no point speculating since I’ll either be wrong or right in just a few days, and all the advance handicapping has become somewhat tiring. The actual iPhone 5 launch may seem an afterthought after all the publicity.

Instead, I’m going to consider another product that is long overdue for an update, and it’s still a key tool in a Mac user’s arsenal, the iMac. Now let me put my cards on the table: In the 1990s, before my position as a tech journalist made participation impossible, I was a member of a consumer testing program for Apple, known as Customer Quality Feedback (or CQF). Among the items I tested, in addition to operating systems, was an occasional piece of hardware. Once I tested a Power Mac prototype that never made it into production. I don’t know why, but I was also asked to return the unit to Apple for disposal. Seriously.

I also tested the very first iMac, the famous Bondi Blue model. The testing supervisor at Apple said I’d be able to keep it, after installing a final firmware update. But the update bricked the iMac, and so I was asked to return the unit. I bought a later model for my son.

The original iMac was strictly a relatively low-cost consumer computer. Performance was similar to a PowerBook, with which it shared many parts, and upgrading RAM was a very user-hostile process that involved taking everything apart except for the base and the CRT. But Apple kept working over the iMacs, following up the original pear-shaped design with a model featuring an articulated arm supporting a flat panel display. The current version, which closely resembles a display in an aluminum case, has been around for a while. Beginning with the late 2009 version, where the 27-inch model was first introduced, the iMac became a lot more than a basic home computer.

My iMac is equipped an optional quad-core 2.8GHz Intel Core i7 processor, and 8GB of RAM. It is a powerhouse, with benchmarks that a Mac Pro only beats on apps that support multicore processors, thus taking advantage of six, eight or twelve.

Since 2009, the iMac line has undergone two more refreshes, with more powerful processors, beefier graphics cards and, in 2011, a pair of Thunderbolt peripheral ports. Apple even lets you order one with two drives, a solid state device, and a traditional hard drive. It’s the sort of installation you cannot do yourself without lots of care, though some third-party peripheral resellers will handle it for you.

The 2012 model seems late. The current generation of Intel Ivy Bridge chips have been on the market for a while, so why the delay? Some suggest Apple wants to rejigger the form factor, making the case sleeker. Maybe Apple will ditch the optical drive to help slim the unit, but I can’t see that as being much of a factor.

Yes, the 2012 iMac, when it arrives, will have more powerful hardware. But I’d really like to see an easier method to add or replace hard drives. Two drive bays ought to be easily accessed, so you can buy one with the smallest drive, and add mechanical or SSDs yourself. This one change might even make the iMac a more suitable substitute or replacement for the Mac Pro for many content creation uses. Certainly the Thunderbolt ports make it possible to add the sort of peripherals you would install internally on a Mac Pro, such as a RAID drive assembly.

The other open question is the Retina display. I suppose it makes sense for a computer where you look at the display close up, such as in a MacBook Pro. I keep my iMac roughly 20 inches away, which is my comfort zone. At that distance, I don’t think that an expensive Retina display would offer a significant improvement. It would be somewhat noticeable, I think, but would it be worth the cost? I suppose, as display technology improves and component costs decline, you’ll see one. Maybe Apple might even offer Retina as an optional extra, but the price bump would be at least several hundred dollars, and the gain may not be worth the pain.

Regardless of how Apple upgrades the iMac, I expect you’ll see it by October at the very latest. That would be three years after the debut of my iMac, and I suppose it’s time to save up for something new.

All right, let’s see here. Mac sales in the June quarter were only slightly ahead of the comparable quarter in 2011, whereas iPad sales soared. Sure, some of that might be attributed to the late arrival of the upgraded MacBook lineup, particularly the MacBook Pro with Retina display. But how many people actually postponed Mac purchases because new models were perceived as late?

Sure, Mountain Lion appears to be pretty successful so far After less than a month on sale, it was reported that some 20% of the Mac user base was using the $19.99 OS upgrade, though some of that number consists of new Mac purchases. And, yes, I did see stats putting the figure at closer to 10%, so there seems some variance in such surveys, which are based on Web traffic. The larger question is how fast Mac the user base is growing, and what are the future prospects.

Now PC makers are doing less well, with flagging sales for most of the companies. There’s some hope that Windows 8 will change the equation, but since the PC you buy today can get a free upgrade, it’s not as if sales should be severely impacted in anticipation. Microsoft’s real fear maybe be that large numbers of Windows users will simply stick with Windows 7, if it’s already loaded on their new computers, or downgrade after Windows 8 takes over. Sure, some buyers may wait for a new iPhone or an iPad before making a purchase, but even that phenomenon is debatable.

Consider that it’s only recently that Windows 7 took over from Windows XP, circa 2001, as the OS with the world’s largest market share. It boggles the mind, or maybe Microsoft has failed to make subsequent OS upgrades compelling enough to entice Windows users to upgrade. Indeed, I wonder how many Windows users still prefer XP because they don’t have to contend with those awful ribbon toolbars.

Now Microsoft wants you to believe that regular PCs and tablets are both PCs, thus we are in the PC+ era. The Windows interface, which under Windows 8 actually doesn’t use windows except in a legacy desktop interface, is meant to be available on all sorts of devices. I suppose consistency isn’t bad, except where usability takes a back seat. And on a traditional computer, relying heavily on touch and tiles may just be taking things a tad too far.

Apple’s vision is PostPC, that more and more people will embrace mobile devices such as the iPad and iPhone with a special mobile OS, and that traditional PCs will be more and more confined to heavy-lifting tasks, which essentially explains why Steve Jobs once said he regarded them as trucks.

This is a trend you can already see. More and more schools are using iPads instead of PCs, while Macs are holding onto their share of the educational market, though it’s not necessarily growing all that much.

For travel, an iPad will probably suit most of you. On a recent trip out of state to attend a family function, I did take my 2010 vintage 17-inch MacBook Pro along with me. I didn’t have much writing to do, so it was largely a matter of keeping tabs on my email and getting up to speed on my favorite online watering holes.

In short, I really didn’t need to lug my MacBook Pro and that huge case along. Everything I did could have been accomplished just as well with an iPad, and perhaps an accessory keyboard for writing longer messages or blog entries. Sure, I wouldn’t want to rely on an iPad for editing my radio shows. Not that there aren’t tools for that purpose, but I haven’t yet tested them to see if my workflow could be done as efficiently. Certainly the actual recording process, where I use an analog mixer, would be a non-starter, but I’d have no problem with my Yeti Pro studio mic, since it also has a USB port.

To a large extent, I expect that many of you, if you actually took note of your needs, would find that the iPad really does perform many of the tasks for which you depend on a Mac or a PC. For Apple, a sale is a sale, but PC makers have to be freaking. Sure, perhaps they believe — or hope — that Windows 8 tablets will make up the difference, but that hope may never be realized.

Now I have to admit that, except for that brief out-of-town trip, I am not prepared to give up my MacBook Pro anytime soon. For long-form writing and for recording and editing my radio shows, I am perfectly happy with a regular Mac. In fact, I spend most of my time on a late 2009 iMac. The note-book is only used occasionally.

On the other hand, when I go to bed at night, I keep my iPhone 4s next to me, and I will, perhaps while watching TV, check it on occasion for email messages that require a quick response, or message board posts on my various forums. When there’s a news update on the TV, I will often use the iPhone to get more details, or perhaps an alternate point of view.

But I do see where the PC world has changed. Microsoft won’t admit it, of course, but it does appear to me that Apple’s PostPC vision is the one that will rule.