To me the Kindle has two killer features: the screen (because I can read it like paper for hours) and its weight (can hold it for hours like a paperback book). Those two things made it a 'wow' device. The 3G access made it effortless.
None of those things seem very clever and have been pretty easily duplicated in the Nook. The software itself (and this applies to Kindle and Nook) is rather ugly and it feels slow to react. Both need Apple to come in and make them work.
Please leave my Kindle alone. I don't want it to be fancy. I want to read books on it. Cheap, long battery life, and a screen that reads like a book is as clever as I ever want from it. I have no intention of replacing my kindle anytime soon. I don't care if a new version comes out that's 10 times faster... I'm completely content with the one I have.
When I want to use an iPad (for something other than reading books), then I'll just use my iPad.
The first question I always get from people who haven't seen a Kindle before is "can you go on the internet with it?" sigh
"No- it's just for reading books. Nothing else."
The problem is, I realise that it can go on the internet. It's just so damn slow that it makes everything else look way better. Not offering web browsing would stop feature creep.
Although I agree that removing non-primary features would help have a more honest comparison, there is a great advantage to the Kindle having a web browser.
You can download books straight from the internet to your device. You can go to the Project Gutenberg website (http://www.gutenberg.org/) browse for a public domain book, and download it straight to your device. You don't need to use an intermediate computer.
I can't speak for the ugliness, but as for the slow to react...
I think the reason it feels sluggish are two reasons: The screen technology has a slow response time. This is alittle difficult to fix, due to the nature of the technology: an electic field turns on or off causing tiny balls to be pulled to the top or bottom of the screen causing light to be reflected/absorbed. Due to the size of these balls (microns), it can take much longer to reorient these balls then the molecules in liquid crystal (nanometers).
The other reason it probably feels sluggish is that the processor is a little slow. Fortunately, amazon has been able to work around this a bit by caching the next few pages. (But if you go backwards it can sometimes take a bit longer to load).
I love my Kindle and can forgive the response times which I'm sure will improve, but on the other hand I agree with John, the software's low quality. It's nowhere near my iPhone in terms of polish, thought or fairly obvious testing.
For me these things bug me:
The keyboard is missing some obvious keys like comma and apostrophe. You have to go into [Sym] for them but you use them all the time when making notes. They're important keys that have been inexplicably relegated to the extra menu.
There's no first letter capitalization when you start typing a note or start a new sentence. Extremely irritating.
The bookmarking system is confusing, inconsistently named and clumsy.
Some things take a silly long time to figure out, like switching between your present page and the chapter list and back. This is mainly because the menu in a book has silly options in it (Turn Wireless Off is the first option? wtf?).
The arrow rocker doesn't work at all well in landscape mode.
Some things require a full screen refresh while others do not (opening a menu doesn't, closing it does). It's just that little bit jarring.
You can't zoom on pictures enough, very irritating for books which have little maps of battles or such like.
I've had it go titwozz more than once when plugging it into my PC. Is it charging, is it not, screen suddenly resets.
Apple wouldn't have let any of that obvious stuff go out of the door, you notice pretty much all of it within the first few days.
Its more the update circuitry that's responsible - it row-scans like an analog TV. Combined with the relatively slow eInk update rate you get the very-large product of a second per frame or so. There is nothing inherent in eInk that demands row-scanning; its just the choice made by the first commercially-available eInk screen.
Patents exist for better eInk displays: http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20080238894
I look forward to a fast-updating book reader. One day I may even be able to flip through an eBook! Until then they have a long way to go, to reproduce the book-in-hand feel.
I've been using a Kobo since just after release, which has slower page turns than a Kindle. It's annoying for maybe the first hour, then it feels perfectly natural as I hit the "next" button as I'm reaching the bottom line so the screen refresh is occurring as my eyes scan back up to the top of the page.
> The software itself (and this applies to Kindle and Nook) is rather ugly and it feels slow to react. Both need Apple to come in and make them work.
Yeah, and I'd lose the ability to side-load books, and would have to void the warranty on the device to be able to read books from non-approved sources.
As someone who's never bought an e-book from Amazon for my Kindle, no thank you.
iBooks supports ePub and PDF, iOS supports MP3 and AAC and can play h.264 encoded videos. Apple sells music without DRM (just like Amazon) and videos as well as books with DRM (just like Amazon). Loading your own media without DRM is never a problem.
Apple is about as permissive as Amazon when it comes to selling and playing or displaying media.
You might be confused by apps. Apple is indeed less permissive with them.
Are you inferring it's not possible to read material from a non-approved source on the iPad or iPhone? Because that's not the case. Neither is it the case with videos or music for that matter.
Nope, I know all of the above (have both devices).
I would think that when the primary use-case is reading, then books are to e-readers what apps are to smartphones, and I'm not really a fan of the "single point of acquisition" model.
If we want to know what terms Apple would apply to ebook readers and sell books under, we don't need to reason by analogy from the restrictions on smartphone app loading and the terms they use to sell apps for smartphones. They already sell ebooks and make ebook readers, which allow sideloading.
Does eBooks have iCloud support for non-Apple books yet? Amazon now allows me to upload all of my non-Amazon books by email, and I can re-download them onto any Kindle device like books I purchased from Amazon.
Actually, iCloud does support sideloaded books. In addition to some iBooks, I have a good number of DRM-free ePub and PDF books that are taking up a good portion of my free 5GB in iCloud.
I agree, I have exactly the same complaints as the author of the article. Some of the issues, like the "full definition" one, are so frustrating I can't believe that Amazon let them through.
The Kindle hardware is great and all but I'm still wishing Apple would get in on the game. Apart from better software they'd address the issue of an elegant screen protecter (as with iPad 2), and the iCloud already synchs highlights to books between devices (even if you didn't buy the books direct from Apple).
None of those things seem very clever and have been pretty easily duplicated in the Nook. The software itself (and this applies to Kindle and Nook) is rather ugly and it feels slow to react. Both need Apple to come in and make them work.