There’s only two companies that are capable of mounting a viable competitor to Apple’s iPad, according to Bryan Chaffin, and that’s Amazon and Microsoft. Only those two companies can offer a compelling experience in a tablet, and when it comes to tablets, experience is everything.

Bryan Chaffin is delighted to bring you the newest addition to TMO’s Apple Death Knell Counter: Death Knell #55 comes from a Dell exec claiming that the iPad will fail in the enterprise because it’s not open and it’s too pricey.

Amazon announced its own “Amazon Appstore for Android” this week, and a couple of notes from the company caught my attention*. The first is that the company is selling some apps that require users to root their Android devices before they’ll work, and the second is a warning to those on AT&T’s network that Ma Bell doesn’t support apps downloaded from Amazon.

Apple has rejected readability’s self-titled iOS app because it violates Apple’s newly-instituted policies on in-app subscriptions. As a result, Readability has abandoned its iOS app, releasing an Open Letter to Apple accusing the company of greed and bad faith. Bryan Chaffin argues further that Apple is operating against its own long-term interests.

Bryan Chaffin was able to find another Apple Death Knell, #54 in our Apple Death Knell Counter. Fabrice Grinda argues that Google is going to put a Microsoft over on Apple’s iPhone platform, dooming it to a niche status.

Now that Apple has pulled the plug on its immensely popular “I’m a Mac” campaign, Microsoft has fired back with a new Web site called “PC vs. Mac: The PC has Blu-ray capability, more software choices, and more!” No, seriously, that’s the name.

During Apple’s iPhone 4 “Antennagate” press conference, CEO Steve Jobs made what I think is a convincing case that Antennagate is mostly much ado about little. One factoid that he gave us — that the iPhone 4 drops just one more call per hundred than the iPhone 3GS — has little value without context, however, and that’s just how it was presented, without context.

A politician accuses Apple of pursuing a liberal political agenda with the App Store approval process, and Bryan Chaffin looks at the perilous position Apple puts itself into by being the gatekeeper of political speech.

Bryan Chaffin thinks that angst over who is bigger, Android or iPhone, is misspent. Android will eventually be bigger than iPhone, and Apple will continue making the big bucks.

Bryan Chaffin says that if we want to find fault for Gizmodo paying for a lost iPhone prototype, we need look no further than at ourselves and at one of Apple’s most important marketing tools, secrecy.