I love the printed word. I have an Amazon Prime membership. I think there is a great future in e-paper.
I should love Kindle, but every time I visit Amazon, there is only one thought going through my head:
This looks like ass.
Please make this product suck less.
You are correct, it looks like ass. Doesn’t it look like something that came out in the early 90’s?
we have a Sony Reader in the office, and the display is BEAUTIFUL. I would seriously consider reading text on the thing.
Sadly, the eInk display, while lovely, is dooooog slow — you don’t so much ‘flip’ pages as you wait for them to slowly render. Once they amp up the speed, and add some obvious things like annonation capability, it’ll be a killer product. Basically, we’re talking next-gen on these things, but the Sony Reader and the Kindle stand to become the Rio PMP300’s of their time; all they are right now are very very cool toys. There’s so many places this could be a killer app — imagine as a college student never having to carry a huge-ass reader again (or having to visit three or four copy stores to collect their syllabus); you simply log in, pay the licensing fees and download your entire course-load to your reader. Ten to twenty years later when the book publishing industry clues in, you could download your entire courseload, including textbooks.
The difference is, I purchased a Rio 300, but not a Kindle. I considered the Sony Reader, but then there is the problem of getting reading material on the thing.
In addition to coursework, I also think that periodicals would be great on the Reader.
But then again, I guess that is what newsreaders are for. 🙂
Nerdspotting.
I think your basic problem is that you like books. Ebook devices all look like they were designed by and for people who hate books, but love Blackberrys.
Maybe I’m not polarizing enough to be a proper geek, but I’m perfectly happy with printed books and my Kindle. I read them interchangeably.
The Kindle isn’t whiz-bang like the iPhone, and it’s not going to give you the same delusion of being cooler by association. Would a bookshelf? Would a paperback?
A lot of the Kindle’s advantages are shared by any digital book, and I’d probably be just as happy with most of them. However, the look of the device hasn’t mattered at all in actual use. The integration with Amazon and free (instant, wirelessly-delivered) sample chapters of thousands of books has been the real treat for this avid reader.
@Jeff Standen: I don’t need to be cooler by association with a product. I have enough stuff that convey that: Nikon cameras, Apple computers, Humanscale office chairs… 😉 I’m just advocating making a basic sense of aesthetic. I know “form follows function” but I think the kindle is more like “function in spite of form.” How hard is it really? This looks like a handheld Apple //c.
Other weaknesses of the Kindle are the book price, the pay/download of free content, the lack of wifi, the lack of a browser—I think some of these have been hacked around, but if I wanted to hack, I’d have bought a Sony Reader. OTOH, e-ink is slow and black and white only which is fine for books, but poor for periodicals and the web which is where a lot of my reading has gone.
I’m really excited about what the Kindle can represent and am disappointed that Steve Jobs dismisses this product with the statement that nobody reads anymore…
Then again, he said that there’d never be a headless mac, flash is inferior to hard drives, and nobody would want a music player in their mobile phone.
Readius eInk mobile device.