Amazon Kindle: Hitting Every Branch Of The Ugly Tree
I was ready to write up my own impressions on the Amazon Kindle, but unfortunately I don't have a review unit in my hands (*cough* thanks Amazon *cough*), and there are plenty of others who do and have written their impressions:
Joel Johnson of BoingBoing Gadgets:
The ePaper screen is slightly smaller than that on its primary competitor, the Sony Reader, but is still quite legible and roomy; ePaper has a long way to go before it replaces ink on paper, but it's comfortably on the right path. The always-on, no subscription data connection, powered by Sprint's EV-DO network (or a slower network where the fast EVDO connection is unavailable) heralds the future of no-fuss connected devices. Its store, built right into the device, works simply and quickly. The hardware, while ugly—it looks like a Star Trek shuttlecraft once piloted by Mr. Bill—is comfortable to hold and use.It's just too damn expensive.
Peter Ha of CrunchGear:
Now that I’ve had a positive experience with an e-book, I find myself asking if this is something I’ll continue to use. No, I won’t. I won’t use just any e-book. After the Kindle everything else on the market pales in comparison. I’m actually going to purchase books since some are as cheap as $3.19. I can’t say enough about the free Internet! Is it worth the $399 price tag? Maybe not, but it could be very soon if the hackers get to it. I dig the Kindle and I hope people give it a chance because it’s a great device and I think it’ll put a fire under some asses in the e-book industry.
John Falcone of CNET:
The Bad: Design is ergonomic, but not very elegant; pricing for nearly all the content seems too high, especially considering the periodicals and blogs are available for free online; black-and-white screen is fine for books, but less impressive for periodicals and Web content; lacks a true Web browser; included cover is clumsy and poorly designed; yet another dedicated device you'll need to lug around with you.
That last sentence is a huge sticking point for me. I had some misgivings about clicking to add the "In Your Pocket" category to the Amazon Kindle, but I guess if you have really large cargo pants, you could manage. That's a huge problem. We're in the age of convergence, which means that I don't want to be carrying around another gadget just to read books, especially one as ugly as the Kindle. I'm a subscriber to Alton Brown's most sacred rule: NO unitaskers!
Hit the jump for the rest of my impressions:
I'm happy with my iPhone precisely because before it, I was carrying around my iPod, my cellphone, and my Dell Axim in my pockets (and any gay geek will tell you, fitting all those gadgets into Express Men's jeans is no small feat!). Now, all I have to do is slip my iPhone into my pocket and done! I have the same functionality of all 3 in one slim device.
The future is in integrating ebook software into existing devices like the iPhone, not in creating yet another gadget to carry around for it.
The folks on TWiT #122 also brought up an accompanying point: How many times have you lost a book because you left it lying around? Now imagine you do it, and this time it costs you $400. That's one expensive book.
Mark Pilgrim points out yet another problem with ebook readers and DRM that's an affront to a book reader's sensibilities:
Act I: The act of buyingWhen someone buys a book, they are also buying the right to resell that book, to loan it out, or to even give it away if they want. Everyone understands this. Jeff Bezos, Open letter to Author’s Guild, 2002
You may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content. In addition, you may not, and you will not encourage, assist or authorize any other person to, bypass, modify, defeat or circumvent security features that protect the Digital Content. Amazon, Kindle Terms of Service, 2007
The ability to lend books to each other is vital to any book reading circle, and is one of the main ways we discover new authors and series which we enjoy. DRM'd ebook readers kill this whole concept, and in doing so, kill the community surrounding books that is so vital to the medium.
I may sound overly critical, but I just don't get what market they're aiming for right now with dedicated ebook readers, and until a truly revolutionary device is released, I doubt I will. I'd much rather have someone like Apple integrate an ebook reader application into the iPhone and be done with the whole ordeal.
Product Page [Amazon]
Den Den Boy
Posted to Hot Stuff, In Your House, In Your Pocket, In the News, In the World on 21 November 2007
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: Amazon, arghmyeyes!, ebook, EV-DO, Kindle, Sprint, ugly, unitasker
BlackBerry Bold
i haven't read the newsweek cover article on this thing - all i had to do was look at the cover to see that they had (once again, and once again prematurely) made the comparison to gutenberg.
oh for heaven's sake. really? all of the above criticisms and comments are perfectly valid - 400 bucks is preposterous (i'd sooner buy a ps3), that much is self-evident. but the larger question that seems to be circulating around these reviews is this: if we were presented with a truly amazing iPod/iPhone-level device that functioned as an ebook reader, would we buy it?
no. some people would, but not enough.
we hear every once in a while about the iPod killer, or the this-or-that killer. are we just years away from a book killer? please. it's been nearly 600 hundred years since movable type (nearly 1000 if you count china), and nothing has yet mounted (nor, in my estimation, will ever mount) a serious challenge to the supremacy of the book as an objet d'art. i can wax poetic about the aesthetics of page-turning, but i won't. i'll just roll my eyes at jeff bezos and keep reading my books.
I'm actually excited about this device. Not for books, but for periodicals. Getting my newspaper on this thing sounds great.
Sure, I could do the same thing on my computer, but that's usually busy doing something else. I'd leave this thing on my breakfast table, read it while I'm having breakfast and carry it around with me if I want to keep reading.
I don't have to worry about downloading anything, or having internet access, etc. My cellphone does this too, but I'm thinking about this for lazy weekend mornings, not for jam-packed mass transit commutes.
If the Wall Street Journal or my local paper wants to subsidize one of these to save printing/shipping costs, I'd definitely pick one up. It's gotta hit the $100 range before I'd be interested though.
I still don't understand why it has a keyboard, though. Seems like wasted space.