I had been planning to launch a big, public campaign about Kindle typography to try and get Amazon to change her ways. But I came to the conclusion: why bother?
This is precisely the feeling I had right before I resigned from my position at Amazon. Though I worked at a subsidiary, not Amazon proper, the culture at Amazon everywhere can be absurdly stubborn. In the presence of a bad team, the "leadership principles" can be used for evil, and not for good. Which is why I was consistently told that bugs in software were OK if a majority of customers didn't care to call up and complain about it to our poor, overworked customer service teams.
Amazon thinks that it already has "the customer," in its most broad abstraction, already in its grasp, and doesn't ever need to fight to keep any of them there. That is why, when I departed my Amazon subsidiary in December of 2014, they were only just starting to hire a UX team. These principles can be made so dogmatic to the point of destructive company culture that outwardly resists change, be it to marketing designs or entire technology infrastructures that entire teams comprising hundreds of people rely upon to get work done.
This is why it is very hard to keep talented people in positions of management at Amazon.
I agree with this post, but not with regards to the Kindle, but more Amazon as an entity.
Also, perfect timing to read this article, after just purchasing a Kindle Paperwhite and having it for a few weeks now.
As a casual reader, I find the Kindle Paperwhite as the perfect medium for my reading needs. I can hold it in one hand, I can read it any time of the day with adjustable brightness, and the e-ink is very clear and the font is fine. With respect to the article, I don't think the typical person cares much for typography, as long as it can be read and understood. The justification notion, I would argue that the typical user may not notice it as much as the hardcore reader. This is where I disagree with the parent post here, as in Amazon may understand "the customer" in this particular case, or at least the majority. Everyone who I've come across absolutely loves, and heavily uses, their Kindle(s). Some people even collect them! All reviews love them and it's a great experience.
The point of the article: Now, I'm all for making the Kindle the best reading device ever by adding all these cool features (justification, typography, different modes for different things like iBooks, etc.), but instead of targeting the Kindle as being deficient for most users, the article is targeting Amazon more so for it's lack of pushing the product to all it can be and I think this can be extracted toward larger companies doing what they can to push the envelope with their product. This is where I agree with the parent post, Amazon seems to be lacking in this area. The blogpost written and the parent post both point to deficiencies in how Amazon looks to their customers and pushes their products to the best they can be.
> The justification notion, I would argue that the typical user may not notice it as much as the hardcore reader.
The fact of the matter is it impacts all readers, whether they recognize it or not, and there is a reason the printing industry generally doesn't do it.
At what point would you acknowledge that maybe the large number of people who think they prefer full justification... actually prefer full justification?
containing numerous links to academic papers showing lower test scores with right justification. I don't know if the author cherry picked only the articles favoring the authors opinion.
(edited to add, also try googling for the topic and "Dyslexia" where the conclusions seem fairly non-controversial and realize dyslexia is a spectrum disorder)
This is aside from the fairly obvious aesthetic argument that looking at ugly things (like right justified text) inherently lowers your quality of life.
On the side of left justification, it looks better, there seems to be at least some scientific data it reads better, and the argument why its easier and better to read makes sense. On the side of right justification we have crickets.
Perhaps there's a patent on displaying left justified text on an ebook, and merely by ruining the product by right justification, the patent can be avoided.
> This is aside from the fairly obvious aesthetic argument that looking at ugly things (like right justified text) inherently lowers your quality of life.
If ugly line endings even make your list of "things in my life that could be going better," you're living a pretty charmed life. :)
Ah but stuffing my house with original paintings by the dutch masters would be somewhat expensive, compared to what boils down to a fairly obvious very small software bug fix. That's the truly interesting part, the ratio of effort to improve vs results of improvement.
(edit to add, its like living in an area plagued by vandalism)
Interesting. There certainly seems to be a bit of cherry-picking in the author's quotes. From the abstract of the first article
"Thirty-two poor readers were then tested with the same material arranged in longer lines averaging 12 words, and no disadvantage of justification was found."
So the only time that there was any evidence of poor comprehension in that study was with very short lines - 7 words per line - and with poor readers.
The third one was published in 1991, and again seems to be based on narrow lines - 4 column newspaper. And if the examples on page 29 are anything to go by, it's potentially also based on fixed space type - and I'm not going to argue with anyone about justified text with a fixed space type looking poor.
> This is aside from the fairly obvious aesthetic argument that looking at ugly things (like right justified text) inherently lowers your quality of life
But if you don't notice it, then you presumably don't think it's ugly.
+1 for that study summary, that's very interesting.
As for aesthetics, the reason for right justification in the first place is that when done correctly it looks nicer. Unfortunately it's hard to do correctly.
I sincerely doubt that there's a patent on left justified text, since that's the most obvious way to display text. I hope you were just kidding.
The issue isn't justification--it's justification without hyphenation. Books with justified text almost always break lines using hyphens. The Kindle doesn't do this, and that's what creates the "rivers" of white space.
Sorry, I guess I shouldn't make generalizations about the entire printing industry. There's a segment of the market where they don't do it. For other markets, not so much.
Exactly, Amazon understands and targets the majority, and they wind up very satisfied. This article lost me at "you’ll find hundreds and hundreds of people asking, begging for Amazon to change this." Ooh, hundreds! Amazon has manufactured at least 10 million kindles by now.
The point is that the product would be better for those millions of people too, they just don't realize it enough to ask. The same way people didn't realize they wanted an iPhone until Apple invented it - people were quite happy with their Blackberries.
I think Steve Jobs would say that by making a product beautiful enough to satisfy enthusiasts, you'll satisfy millions of consumers as well. They probably can't put their finger on exactly what makes it better, it just feels good.
The person who truly cares about typography, or even uploading and using their own fonts, will not buy the Kindle in the first place.
Kobo has already had those features for years now.
As it happens, I didn't buy my Kobo Aura H2O for that reason. I bought it for the microSD card slot, the frontlight, the ability to move documents to and from the device on my own terms, and the ability to read EPUBs without a pass through Calibre first. The water resistance is a nice plus.
I'm all for making the Kobo the best reading device ever, but so far, after the first 40 books, I haven't been able to come up with anything I might want to change about the hardware.
The Kobo in-device bookstore and computer sync software, on the other hand, could use some more work. Fortunately for me, I don't ever have to use either of those things to enjoy the full use of my hardware device.
Even if Amazon has 70% of the market share, they can't afford to ignore features that their remaining competitors have.
Just to chime in from the opposite angle, I, too, have a Paperwhite. I've had it for quite a while now, and it's receded to being a "once a month" thing. There's some reason that the act of reading on it just isn't as comfortable as reading a physical page. I'm not a "casual reader" when it comes to physical books at all, and I was hoping that the Kindle would help me avoid having to buy more shelf-space, but if the product is preventing "casual readership" from turning into "hardcore readership", wherever you draw those lines, it's hard to see a business reason for doing so.
I'll happily blame the justification, but there are other layout problems which also distract: image handling and inconsistent paging don't help in the slightest.
Being able to keep your notes and highlights when updating a book is a feature AND makes it simpler at the same time. Choosing a warmer colour for the Paperwhite wouldn't make it more complicated either. And I wish my (first-gen) Paperwhite wouldn't complain about syncing details every.single.time. I move a book across collections (many of them samples-it's how I keep track of books that were recommended to me).
"Leaders are obligated to respectfully challenge decisions when they disagree, even when doing so is uncomfortable or exhausting. Leaders have conviction and are tenacious. They do not compromise for the sake of social cohesion. Once a decision is determined, they commit wholly."
It's essentially saying fight for what you believe is right, but if the group decides an alternative approach don't sabotage the project from the inside because your ideas were not chosen just so you can say "A ha! Told you!"
I don't buy into most of the Amazon dogma (I currently work at Amazon). But I don't think the lesson behind this leadership principle is idiotic.
To be fair, I find it much easier to fall asleep after using my Kindle Paperwhite than I do with an iPad. But, virtually every aspect of the Kindle ecosystem user experience is an experience in mediocrity. In some respects, I feel like the company is like what you'd get if you crossed the worst aspects of Microsoft and Google.
(And apologies to my friends who work at Amazon, but let's be honest: you're all going to quit within a year or two to work somewhere that's less abusive of its employees.)
While there are plenty of mediocre aspects of the Kindle ecosystem, there are plenty of excellent ones as well. For example:
1. Return policy. Amazon has the best ebook return policy in the business. It seems essentially the same as their physical book policy. The last time I checked, Google Play was next-best (7 days no-questions-asked, regardless of jurisdiction) and everyone else grudgingly had a return policy where it was required by law (i.e. Europe) and none otherwise.
2. Sideloaded books. AFAIK, of the major ebook retailers, only Amazon and Google will let you sync books you didn't purchase from them to your cloud library. Other retailers might let you read sideloaded books in their clients, but you have to use Dropbox or an equivalent for backup and syncing across devices.
3. Client support. If it supports third-party applications, Amazon makes a Kindle client for almost anything you might want to read an ebook on, plus they have a web-based reader. Meanwhile, Google and Apple are busy paying "strategy taxes" for platforms it isn't in their interest to support, and B&N and Kobo don't quite have the resources to keep up.
I was under the impression that you can, though they might show up under Documents rather than Books - assuming you've side-loaded by sending the files to your kindle e-mail address. It's not something I try to do very often though, so I might be mistaken - they don't seem to appear in the Cloud Reader though.
In any case, since you can just open the files in the desktop version of Kindle, it doesn't seem like it would be such a big deal.
Eh, I use both the Nook and Kindle apps for my iPad -- daily -- and Nook is just as good. It's the hardware. If i wanted to buy an e-reader, i wouldn't want to invest in B&N hardware.
Unlike the Kindle with its proprietary format, the Nook reads standard ePub files. Even if B&N went out of business tomorrow, the Nook would remain a perfectly usable device.
I stuck with my gen 3 kindle -- more memory than future gens, no ads, and the option of audio books (never used it). As technology progresses, I expect more not less. That said, it doesn't have the backlight and using a cover w/ built in light while the significant other tries to sleep? Yeah, no.
I've resorted to using a camping headlamp set on "red" (not as bright/obtrusive) when I want to use the kindle to read. However, I mostly just use my phone and the Kindle app.
Advances in the display beyond the gen 3 (first I bought) didn't merit any sort of upgrade for me.
I will vouch about this statement for myself. Rather than how I am reading the book (physical or ebook), kind of book I am reading play more significant role in helping me sleep.
It's not for the faint of heart, given the inaccessible brick-ness of the Kindle and its long, nerve-racking reboot time, but you can jailbreak your device and install KUAL (app launcher) and KOReader.
ePub and PDF support, text reflow/cropping/reformatting (great for papers!), plethora of options from contrast to margins, custom fonts, per-document style sheets, etc etc.
You can also install things like Gargoyle for interactive fiction on the go.
I use the Kindle app for Android because that is where the indie authors seem to be. I use the app in spite of itself. The Kindle app on Android has over the past few years been such a buggy piece of shit that I curse it's very existence. It alone has demonstrated that Amazon can't competently develop mobile apps worth a damn and made me laugh when I heard Amazon was making a phone.
Once a month Amazon seems to make a release that outright breaks a critical flow in the app. For the past couple weeks I've had to use the website to skim through books because every time the app tries to open the store view for a book the app instead opens Chrome with "about:blank" as the URL. /facepalm
I'll ignore the fact the tablet version gets a proper store interface (when it's not completely broken) but the cellphone version gets a regurgitated ancient web view that was last updated a half decade ago.
I can only conclude that Kindle isn't profitable for Amazon at all and they throw appropriate talent at it... that is none at all.
Does Apple give a rip about iBooks? Google doesn't seem to give a crap about getting indies on Google Play.
I think you have the causality backwards. It's not that Google doesn't care about getting indies on Google Play (though, to be fair, not enough to deal with the havoc their automatic discounting creates for indies, last I heard), it's that indies often don't really care about being anywhere but Amazon (largest market, extra perks for titles that are exclusive, less to manage and so on). For obvious reasons, this may not be a great long-run choice for them, but it can be very attractive in the short-run.
> Once a month Amazon seems to make a release that outright breaks a critical flow in the app. For the past couple weeks I've had to use the website to skim through books because every time the app tries to open the store view for a book the app instead opens Chrome with "about:blank" as the URL. /facepalm
Had same issue, reported it, was told to uninstall and reinstall, no joy. Upgraded to Android 5.1 which included a new webview component update, issue fixed.
Another point is just how dreadful the Kindle store is. That is just a rat-infested cellar of literature. I'm not even talking about bad writers; I mean literal fraudsters.
And the personalization is useless. I have a very specific profile: history, statistics textbooks, classic literature, modern poetry. The front page of the store, right now, is offering me "Billy The Bug: Short Stories, Games, Jokes and More"; "Frontiers Saga 13", some kind of space crap; and "Highland Guard" (picture: weedy man with sword).
Plus about four 50 Shades clones. I used to worry about the age of Total Internet Surveillance; turns out Amazon can't even figure out my gender.
Totally agree with this article, but I'm surprised he doesn't mention the train wreck of the touch screen on the Paperwhite.
For a start it's incredibly flaky. Sometimes the slightest accidental touch will cause it to jump randomly to somewhere in the book. Other times I can press it hard or rub furiously and still nothing happens. Then sometimes it will pause for a few seconds, then do something incomprehensible.
If it had simply retained touch for "go forward" and "go back" it would be acceptable, but it seems that the Sales Department insisted that the engineers overload it with extra features.
When I'm reading I'm constantly interrupted by the idiotic "change font" or "look up dictionary" or "take notes" function when I don't want them. It's infuriating.
And then when reading a Magazine, the actions change and suddenly there's a jump forward (or back) one chapter which causes you to completely loose your page.
> I love my Kindle, but I hate the touch function.
I don't know, I read a lot on the Paperwhite and I got used to the touch screen. It's quite comfortable, even though I would probably prefer some actual buttons. In any case I was won over. I was reading a lot of paper books before and I am finding the experience of reading with an ereader to be superior in almost every way.
> ... and I am finding the experience of reading with an ereader to be superior in almost every way.
That's what keep sneezing or Kindle. Not having to fiddle and accidentally leave my place if I set the book down, being able to get a new book almost instantly, being able to look up words I don't know keep using the Kindle despite all the software/hardware faults. Not having to fiddle and accidentally leave my place if I set the book down, being able to get a new book almost instantly, being able to look up words I don't know.
But the absolute best is progress syncing. I don't bring my Kindle in less I know I'm going to need it, but anywhere I get stuck I can pull out my phone and pick up the book I was reading right at my last position. When I get back to my Kindle it already knows how much further I read. It's like hav when I get back to my Kindle it already knows how much further I read. It's so much more convenient than carrying a physical book around.
Especially large/long books. I read King's The Stand last summer. I'm glad I didn't have to struggle with the 1,200 page physical edition.
> I'm glad I didn't have to struggle with the 1,200 page physical edition.
Yes. I read a lot in bed before sleeping, and i found it extremely uncomfortable nowadays to have to turn pages in a paper book - having the possibility to just be on the same "surface" when reading text is just great. And the paperwhite is just light enough that it does not get too painful on your wrists, compared to a large book that just makes you tired holding it.
I think you might have a defective unit, the touchscreen on my Paperwhite works reliably.
That said, even when it works perfectly it remains inferior to the simple shoulder buttons that the older kindles had. I hope Amazon brings them back on the next Kindle.
And those "touchstrips" on the Voyage are indeed infuriating. If anyone is in the market for a kindle then by all means save your money and stick with the Paperwhite.
I have an older kindle with shoulder buttons and a keyboard. That interface would be vastly superior to a touchscreen except that Amazon unaccountably left the numbers off of the keyboard. Far and away the most common use I have for the keyboard is jumping to a particular location, which calls for me to input numbers.
The Paperwhites I got for my brother and sister use much more convenient number input (touchscreen) and have much nicer cases. I prefer my grey screen to their white, though.
If Amazon just released a kindle with the same four shoulder buttons, the same screen, a lighter-weight case, and number buttons so I don't have to navigate an on-screen symbol display with a hard-to-use D-pad, I'd be thrilled. The buttons don't need to be reimagined. I don't get why they left.
This person seems extremely picky. I have pretty much every generation of kindle and they just keep getting incrementally better. Resolution, backlight, multiple dictionaries, x-ray, etc.
I came here to say this. I absolutely love the device and have never been bothered by fully justified text. (My major complaint along that path is books can still override the font settings. Grrr. )
I also wonder if the author knows there is haptic feedback on the buttons and that the activation pressure can be adjusted. With minimum pressure and maximum feedback there is no strain on my fingers even after 8 hours of continuous reading. I do have strain issues with my fingers so I should have had a problem with it if that was the case.
I don't understand this? Why not disagree with the valid points he made, rather than just calling him picky? When you use a device a lot, as you would an ereader, I can imagine these problems becoming magnified.
The article is basically just some guy's rant against Amazon. He found some very minor nitpicks, has blown them way out of proportion, and is using them as evidence that Amazon hates readers. Or something. Factor in all the insults, and it's not really worth trying to start a discussion, IMO.
As a semi-new owner of a Kindle Voyage I find all of his points right on the money. Criticisms of the user experience shouldn't be written off as nit-picky but instead should start a conversation regarding improving the user experience.
I've owned Kindles for years, and never noticed any of these things. Nobody I know has noticed them either. My anecdote is just as valid as yours.
I'm not saying user experience critiques aren't valid, I'm saying the article is so filled with hypberbole and anti-Amazon insults that there's no point debating his complaints.
Like others have said, this guy is going to hate on everything Amazon is doing, because he's making it perfectly clear hates Amazon. It's a no win argument.
That seems unfair; just because he presented the criticisms in a manner which you disagree with doesn't negate the criticisms themselves.
Also keep in mind that just because you don't notice something doesn't make it any more or less valid. The typography issues were pointed out and as a former print designer they are very valid albeit a bit subtle (in my opinion anyway).
I'm willing to give the author a pass on the white-light issue since it is a legitimate problem for some people. But I don't expect amazon to ever address that problem.
There's always a group of people that can't use a given product because they have one issue or another. For example, the Kindle Voyage isn't accessible for a blind person.
Its not just the wavelength of light that affects the sleep question. Backlit devices like the iPad are far more likely to affect your sleep than a device like the kindle, which has both lower levels of light and the light is reflected rather than shone directly into your eyes.
Exactly. I can't see why the author is complaining about white light. I have a Kindle Paperwhite and in no way can the background be called "white"! When you adjust the backlight down, it's a nice warm off-white. Maybe I have a different model, but I can't see any "white light problem".
Completely agreed.
The worse argument is the one about the backlight not being red... If you care about that kind of thing you already have a bedside luminotherapy lamp. Which means you will use it to read (which is way more comfortable).
The backlight's primary function is to counter the effect of the sun in daytime park / balcony / beach / etc... reading. You need a lot of luminosity, and certainly not weak ass red lighting.
That's exactly what I do too, but it goes against the instructions that pop up on my Paperwhite -- it says turn up the light when the ambient light is brighter.
I don't have a Voyage yet (will probably upgrade the next time I'm in the US), but I mostly agree that each device has been a small but good upgrade. I do dislike that they removed the physical buttons, and the first version where they did that was a bit of a pain, but you get used to it.
The Paperwhite screen is just fine for me, and the justification problems the poster refers to have only been annoying to me a few times - the free public domain books are often not converted decently, and side-loaded books aren't always formatted nicely. Other than that, no problems here.
Maybe it's personal, but I, too, hate the full justification. US newspapers used to do a lot of that, too, whereas European one didn't. It is shown that full justification is detrimental to actual reading.
That being said, I don't understand why he involve the Echo. First, it's a totally depend product, and second, it's the most used internet radio and music payer I've owned.
After having owned three kindles, I have switched to a kobo about a year ago. The kobo has many of its own problems, but it gets the reading experience right: it uses (very un-aggressive) hyphenation, and the lock screen displays the book cover.
I miss going on Amazon, clicking some button, and immediately start reading a new book. Now that's a multi step process that involves a computer and a DRM removal tool. But the reading experience is easily worth it for me.
I've been seriously considering switching to a Kobo. I already convert/strip the DRM from all my books anyways, as I loathe the idea of ever being stuck in one ecosystem (and have switched before, from Kindle -> Nook -> Kindle).
The new waterproof Kobo especially shows me that Kobo actually understands making a better e-reader.
So is it reasonably easy for one to step out of the walled garden? I've considered buying one (Kobo) but I've read comments saying it constantly wants to connect to wifi (after a factory reset which sometimes is required because of buggy firmware) and transfering files without using the desktop software is nearly impossible.
I just want to read PDFs, text files, possibly HTML with some light CSS. I'd like sync to take at most 30 seconds of work. Would you recommend one? Any alternatives?
I have a Kobo mini. I never use wifi, though when I have used it, it worked fine. I often buy books on the Kobo store and they appear immediately in the desktop app, ready to sync, which they do no problem. For all other books I use Calibre which is perfect.
>and white light is the worst for reading in bed. It’s proven to keep you awake.
This is not a great argument. First, because the Kindle allows you to dim the screen, and in fact, does so automatically in dark rooms. Pulling my Voyage out and comparing it to my screen with Flux, anecdotally, it looks to be producing less light than my laptop does.
And what are the alternatives? Not lighting the kindle display, and having you use an external light source? You have the same problem if you use LED lights - white light is generated in much the same way in LED bulbs, so you need to dim them as well, leaving you in the same position.
>You can tap both margins to advance the page. (Unlike Amazon who thinks readers always hold their books in the same hand. Have they ever seen people read books?)
The pressure sensitive buttons previously mentioned by the author are on both sides of the Voyage. You can use either hand to move forward or backward.
It's not the luminance of the light that's a problem, it's the colour. White light contains a lot of blue, which is associated with melatonin suppression that in turn throws out sleeping patterns[1]. This problem remains even with very dim light sources.
The alternative therefore is to use LEDs with a lower colour temperature[2], producing the kind of orange light associated with flames and traditional incandescent lights, which people have been using to read by for centuries.
This isn't obscure or novel science, it's something the Amazon product team should know, or at least discover through basic research into their chosen field. The fact that they haven't backs the article author's suggestion that they're incompetent or uncaring about the quality of their product.
While the colour is the main factor, the lux probably matters as well. Your article there specifically mentions eight lux, or twice the brightness of a night light. Would a faint light at four lux also have an affect? The articles don't seem clear.
I don't have a measurement handy for the lux on a kindle at the dimmest setting, nor can I find any details on if brighter lights have a more pronounced affect on melatonin suppression.
The thing is no matter what, this is still assuming that your preferred method of reading is the right one. Some people do not like the look of orange lights - personally I hate incandescents, and have been using CFLs and LEDs putting out white light for a long time now. Perhaps using said lighting directly inside the kindle looks particularly bad. Perhaps they assumed people want to stay awake while reading.
Making a design decision you don't agree with means they made a design decision you don't agree with - not that they don't care or are incompetent.
Considering that they have a model called the Kindle Paperwhite, I am assuming that the use of white light is a deliberate design decision on their part, not an accident.
Plus, the article gets it wrong: the Paperwhite screen isn't backlit, the leds are oriented perpendicularly from the reading angle, so there is no direct light shining your eyes. Add that to the automatic dimming, the Paperwhite isn't going to keep you awake.
As an anecdote, I am immensely susceptible to falling asleep when reading in the dark with the Paperwhite.
I don't understand your point: the orientation of the lighting is irrelevant with respect to suppressing melanin production. The cold temperature of the Kindle LEDs, ostensibly selected to make the screen appear white in the presence of warmer ambient lighting, is likely to have enough of a blue component to disrupt sleep. Total luminescence isn't a factor in suppressing melanin production either, as someone else has posted in this thread, so automatic dimming doesn't help either. The automatic dimming, if it worked well (it didn't in my case) would help reduce eye strain by matching the Kindle screen brightness with the ambient light level.
Yes, you're right. Perhaps my original statement was a bit too extreme in that sense. I'd wager, though, that having the screen not be back lit at least reduces sleep disruption, that is, it fares better than backlit screens in that regard. I don't know if there are any studies that have proven this to be the case though.
The lighting is indirect and not as strong as in a backlit display. That could affect the amount of melanin suppression going on. That is to say, it could very well be considerably weaker than in backlit displays.
I think this comes down to personal preference - I absolutely love them. I didn't even change the sensitivity/haptic feedback settings on my Voyage for a few months because I really had no complaints, and my changes have been minor tweaks to get it just right.
I think this falls into the whole 'You can't please everyone' bucket - my anecdotal evidence among friends/family/coworkers with the Voyage suggest it's a big hit.
To replicate the experience of the Kindle Voyage ‘button’ find an immovable surface in your house: a marble kitchen countertop will do. Place your thumb upon the surface, then press down – deforming your thumb.
Not pleasant, is it?
I don't follow. It feels like I'm pressing down on something.
Of all the things I can think of that would cause an RSI, pinching a pressure-sensitive button seems low on the list.
I also don't understand why, if the author loved his first kindle so much, he doesn't just keep using it. They release new ones frequently enough (and old ones keep working long enough) that you can skip several generations and pick out the revisions that you like most.
I own a voyage, but can't come up with the answer to one simple question. In what way are those stupid little touch strips actually BETTER than real buttons? Since there's no actual physical feedback you can't tell how hard you have to press. They've tried to fix this by letting you set sensitivity levels, but that doesn't work great. Then I thought it would be a good idea to add a pager motor to fake physical feedback by vibrating when you would've made a press.
None of this works as well as the buttons on Kindle keyboard , but I bet it cost a hell of lot more money.
> that you can skip several generations and pick out the revisions that you like most.
The problem is that you really can't. Despite owning the absolute top-of-the-line device the software feels half-baked. Shortly after launch it would often crash itself and require physical restarts. The on screen keyboard is absolutely atrocious, Which they appear to tried to fix with text suggestions. The suggestions are slow and wildly inconsistent which makes it impossible to quickly use them. Even if it suggests the right word you never know where on the suggestion bar to actually going to pop-up.
As the author mentions the text layout system hasn't been updated in years despite obvious problems. I waited years for a new version with physical buttons but ended up settling for the somewhat acceptable touch strips. He complains about the lighting system, which is apparently still a problem for a lot of for a lot of voyage users (luckily I'm not one).
Also Amazon doesn't seem to do anything to control or improve the quality of e-books. They're often laughably bad.
His main thesis is dead on. The project doesn't feel like anyone who actually likes books is working on it. It doesn't feel like a passion, it feels like a terrible afterthought that people rotate in and out of making random changes to try and look like they did some management.
> The project doesn't feel like anyone who actually likes books is working on it. It doesn't feel like a passion, it feels like a terrible afterthought that people rotate in and out of making random changes to try and look like they did some management.
> In what way are those stupid little touch strips actually BETTER than real buttons?
Well, they probably don't wear out. I know someone who replaced their Kindle Keyboard because the next page button wore out after four years. (They love their Paperwhite, both for the touch screen and the front-lighting.)
The clicking of the physical page-turn buttons on my old Kindle Keyboard would keep my wife awake at night. No such problem with the pressure-sensitive buttons on my Voyage. I love the unit, despite the lame typography.
"Their Firephone is so terrible they literally can’t give it away"
Okay, fair enough -- it was a disastrous product.
"and the existence of the Amazon Echo strains all reason."
Wait, what? How do you extend your hatred for typesetting and buttons on the Kindle to a product that has neither? At this point, you are just being presumptuous.
> How do you extend your hatred for typesetting and buttons on the Kindle to a product that has neither?
I'm not sure if that's why the author added it, but I really wish Amazon would first fix a bit more low-hanging fruit for its most beloved hardware product, instead of sinking time and money into unrelated crap.
It always feels good when you pay for something and you can feel that the money goes into making it even better (software updates, next hardware iteration...).
>but I really wish Amazon would first fix a bit more low-hanging fruit for its most beloved hardware product, instead of sinking time and money into unrelated crap
It'd be very surprising to me if the resources put into the Echo had any impact whatsoever on the amount of resources put into the Kindle team.
I hear this argument a lot - "Why does company X work on feature Y when feature Z isn't complete", when features Y and Z are handled by completely different teams with their own dedicated resources.
People can be moved from team to team, and the Echo and the Fire gadgets need hardware and software engineers just like the Kindle does. Given how little the Kindle software evolves, it's hard to say whether it even has a proper team.
Amazon is famous for taking all profits from one product, and investing them into other (new) products. This is precisely what annoys me here :|
I'm definitely looking to get a Kobo Glo HD. I loved my Kindle w/ Keyboard but the battery is shot and it crashes pretty often (also 4 years old). I'm not tied to the Amazon eco-system per se so I'm ok with going to Kobo.
He mentions lack of including any allegedly dyslexic-friendly font as one strike against Kindles. I thought that there wasn't actually a lot of evidence those work: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyslexie
I hate justified margins though so that's reason enough not to be happy with Kindles.
I've read through that study before when I was reading about fonts for dyslexics a long time ago. The study didn't come to any conclusion and even states itself that the same size was too small and further studies needed to be done. Specifically, some major points where the study needs to be more robust are:
1. font comparisons
2. age range (university students were tested, but these fonts will most likely have the greatest effect on younger people who have not learned to adapt to being dyslexic)
3. languages
Overall, there isn't evidence either way. But there is one thing that the studies consistently find, that the majority of dyslexics, both anecdotally and from the participant pool, have a favorable opinion of the font compared to normal ones. For that reason alone, I think it would be wise for Amazon to include such a font on the Kindle.
I love the virtual bookshelf concept. I love not to waste time wandering through libraries and that almost any book is two clicks away from me.
That said, I'm also a graphic designer and many book layouts are awful. I can't tell how many times I read 1 star reviews of good books which were worthless as an ebook.
The ebook is thrashing 500 years of typographic tradition. It's trashing everything we know about making a good reading experience. This is not only insulting, but insightful. Amazon is telling his costumers:
"We are a GOOD ENOUGH company. We are not striving for excellence."
OT: I've recently tried Audible as well. I felt dirty and cheated on. I gave a chance to Amazon Kindle, but I'll never compromise with Audible's business tactics.
I was fortunate enough to get a Kindle DX. It's the best of the Kindles. The second best is the Kindle 3. I have some other Kindles, but I always go back to the DX and the 3.
No, I don't like touch screens. The buttons are much better. The Kindle 3 nailed it. The only thing it is missing is a backlight.
That's why I moved from a keyboard up to the voyage. The back light is really nice, as is the much higher resolution screen.
The touch screen isn't bad, but the software doesn't make good use of it. The fake touch that's why I moved from a keyboard up to the voyage. The back light is really nice, as is the much higher resolution screen.
The touch screen isn't bad, but the software doesn't make good use of it. The fake touch buttons are acceptable.
If they had used real buttons, or actually polish the software, it be a pretty great device. As it is, it's just okay.
I have to say I disagree with the author on everything except the typesetting issues. The buttons to change the page are really good and the feedback try provide is very pleasant, just like clicking a physical button. I'm also quite happy with the white light, and don't really understand why a light that is meant for me to read should make me fall asleep. Quite the opposite, if anything it should help me keep awake and concentrate on the book.
The Voyage is my second Kindle and in the 4 months I've had it I've read more than 30 books on it, which is a big increase over my previous average, and it's a lot thanks to the device being great.
The fact that the author doesn't have one nice thing to say about the Kindle, and yet keeps buying them makes it seem there's some kind of Kindle dissing agenda behind it.
The theory is that a warmer light wouldn't wear your eyes out, so you'd be able to keep them open to read and stay awake for longer, not that it would make you fall asleep.
My biggest gripe with Voyage is the silly restriction to 4GB and no SD card in order to make PDF viewing far less likely. A lot of scientific papers are available in PDF only as well as older books and magazines and they are considerably larger than Kindle's own format yet preserving layout nicely, so they are my preferred media. I don't care about uneven lighting (yellow-blue cast across the screen) as I turn the light completely off.
Is there any e-reader with "retina"-style e-ink that is optimized for viewing PDFs/PostScript and allowing a SD card?
The previous generation had a silly restriction to 2GB, so at least there's that.
I actually couldn't fit my whole Kindle (not sideloaded) collection on it at the same time, even discounting cookbooks, comics, and other heavy-graphics things, which was a problem because the category feature at the time only supported on-device books.
One thing I always wanted out of the Kindle (not the Fire / Tablets) is a web browser that actually works. Maybe not every page would work, but at least some would, the internet has a bad habit of not being backwards compatible so maybe there is this at fault sadly. A guy can dream I suppose.
As a commuter the kindle paperwhite was such a step back, the removal of the side buttons effectively prevented you from reading it left handed, I find myself halving to turn the page with my nose if for some reason I have to hold on with my right hand while on the subway.
I've found that there are two things that let me use the Kindle Paperwhite left-handed -- one is that the "back" area of the screen is small, so pressing close to the center with my left thumb, once I've gotten used to the "sweet spot", is very reliable. The other is that it recognizes swiping gestures, so a small swipe with the thumb will also turn the page if my hand is in an awkward position.
That said, I would love to have the physical buttons back -- when the touch screen works, it is okay, but when it decides for some reason that I want to change my font size instead of turning the page, or just decides that I didn't press it, or turns the page twice when I think it didn't register my first touch, I get unaccountably mad.
I don't know about the Kindle line, but I wonder why this author thinks the Echo is such a disaster. Seems to me like it could be quite useful, if it lives up to the ad.
Agree with all the typesetting points, but I do not share the author's experience with the buttons—I think they're great. You don't have to press them hard, and the vibration feedback works perfectly for me.
I have been using a kindle keyboard (3.5) since January 2011 (still use it actually). It took until September 2012 for them to introduce what they call "crisper fonts" which were fonts that actually match the pixels of the device. This means that before "crisper fonts" the same letter could look different depending on its position (which was not aligned with the pixels). I have for that entire 20 months wondered if anyone at Amazon actually used the kindle themselves.
Other than that I'm still quite pleased with the thing (apart from the small trouble of having to remove DRM from most books to read my, paid for books on unsupported devices. Calibre plugins make this quite painless thankfully.)
I think he has some valid points in his rant, although I must say I enjoyed my Paperwhite 1st Gen very much and I don't find those issues (especially on the justification and font choices) to be a blocker for me from enjoying the books.
The problem is that they don't really have any competition. I had a weird sudden wish watching the Pepple Time video on kickstarter that they would expand into e-readers. They've already got the experience with the screens...
I don't wish to derail but there are other e-ink readers that don't suffer from any of these problems. You can just read whatever you want on them in any way you want.
For all that he portrays the Voyage as a trainwreck, I like mine a lot, after having several Kindles before it including a Gen-1 Paperwhite.
I don't mind the justification as a general rule, and actually find extreme hyphenization (which was their route on the iOS apps) much more distracting.
My only real problems have been:
* The haptic feedback can't be made prominent enough to be obvious through the first-party leather cover.
* The tap zone for switching percentage/page number/etc has no visual affordance and I find it pretty non-obvious to reliably find.
* The automatic lighting is way more sensitive to what's over my shoulder than the ambient light, so goes very dark if the room is softly lit from behind the Kindle (or very bright if there's a light in my background).
* The font size isn't consistent between books even if I don't use publisher font. I assume that's because the markup of the books has some influence on the font size and doesn't always use "default."
* I'd prefer a first-party book spine case over a notepad style case--that said, the origami stand has been extremely useful for reading while eating.
Other than those niggles, it's been great, and certainly has been a more enjoyable device to use than any of my past Kindles.
I had a second generation Kindle (still had buttons, still had free 3G everywhere in the world, which was an awesome feature), and loved it. I dropped it many, many times, over the years, and finally the screen broke. So, I replaced it with a Paper White.
It's a better product in most regards, but I find I use it for reading far less. I tend to almost exclusively read on my Nexus 7. Twilight makes it possible to dim and turn the screen orange, which isn't something Kindle can do, so I like it for night time reading. I haven't tried to figure out which is better for getting to sleep after reading, but I suspect both are problematic.
Also, the Nexus is faster than the Kindle, in every dimension, so it's just more fun to browse/buy books. And, as others have noted, the touch screen on the Paper White is bad. Not a little bad, either. It's annoying as hell. And, I've also had problems with unintended page turns, and intended turns not working. The Nexus 7 has a great touch screen.
I also have an Amazon Fire Phone, and that's enough to convince me that Amazon just can't do hardware well. It's an awful phone; it would have been barely passable three years ago. Today it's laughable. And, their priorities for where to expend resources are way out of whack. The 3D stuff and four front-facing cameras to make it work, is just ridiculous. I'd much rather have one good camera than five shitty ones.
I recently got some ebooks from O'Reilly, and found that they looked much better in Google Books than on the Kindle or in the Kindle app. Amazon might be in trouble. I currently have a Kindle Unlimited subscription, so I still do most of my reading in Kindle (whether the app or the hardware Kindle), but the experience of reading in Google Books is better.
Only 15 bucks to fix my old Kindle! Why didn't I think of that? I definitely miss the old one, and wish I'd thought of doing this to start with. I wasn't really excited about the new Kindles (the move to touch screens everywhere has been a thing I've been unenthusiastic about, always...I was hesitant to move away from the G1 to a touchscreen Android phone, too). I just assumed I had to "uprade".
Yeah, the lack of responsiveness/feedback makes the touchscreen kindles especially frustrating - my page turning error rate was probably >10%, between accidental brushes, double turns, and other mishaps. Really got in the way of getting lost in the book. Plus, I love the tactile feedback of the buttons they used on the old ones.
If you want an old one, looks like good quality ones are going for ~$60-80 on Amazon, and it's pretty easy to sell a Kindle via the fulfilled by Amazon seller program - just set a price slightly below others offering Prime, ship off your Kindle and other old electronics, and they send you money when your stuff sells.
I've been reading books on my iPad and it's fantastic. I recently switched to buying books from apple rather than from amazon and reading using iBooks. Again, fantastic. Great typesetting, great UI. Also I can share books with my family with Family iCloud sharing. I know there's a kindle version of this sort of thing but it seems like a hassle.
Oh and this - "Speaking of highlights: Amazon has no graceful option to update books. Updating a book, in Amazon’s world, is the digital equivalent of handing you a new book, then burning your old one. Hope you didn’t have any notes or highlights in there."
Hey that's actually not true. I beg the author to please provide examples and scenarios. Amazon goes to great lengths to not impact the reader by erasing their notes.
It could have been true at the time of the post though. You can't tell from the post, but the article was put up on Dec. 15, 2014 so writing occurred before then (I have his blog in my rss reader). The Bookerly font, from my short searching, was released that same month on limited devices and was not pushed out to the Voyage until January (time of your linked post).
I'd suspect that the notes issue might be true when you're updating a side-loaded book (or possibly even one that you've uploaded to Documents, since the only way to update those is to delete them and upload a new version).
I've had three Kindles and while I like the convenience of them, there is something about a regular book that absorbs me into the page better. The strange grey/blue tint and any sort of lighting whether front or back, for me, is irritating enough that I don't absorb information or get lost in a story as well.
I like the Voyage alright, but I want the ability to turn the light ALL the way off, not just to a minimum.
I still have one and use it, they just really need improve on these things so it feels less like just another screen, and more like a book.
Right about the Kindle - still like my original with the keyboard best. All wrong about the Echo - best thing in my kitchen. Not sure where the connection to typography is. Bit of a whinger?
As this user states, these issues are easily googleable and well known already.
They could read the amazon reviews page for the kindle to learn these specific gripes.
What they need is not someone now who sees the problems with the product (believe me, they know the problems), but someone who sees all these problems as it's being created and people who are able to produce reliable code that fixes it now.
The cow has left the barn on the point where this person would have been most useful.
My biggest problem is that they're actively preventing jailbreaking. If I could jailbreak my Kindle Touch, most of my problems would go away.
I filled out a 15 minute survey shortly after buying one, and noted that in the comments issue. The more people who do something like that, the more likely Amazon will decide to allow user "hacks".
Why doesn't the author consider other, competing eReaders? The Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight (ironic Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Barnes-Noble-Touchscreen-Technology-Il...) has a nice, even light and two physical page-turn buttons on the sides of the screen.
I agree about the em dashes are written incorrectly in Kindle. I really hope that Amazon fixes this.
Just a suggestion about the blog's formatting; please remove the ` `s from the html. These non-breaking white-spaces are messing the left justification of the text in the blog.
Question: why does the Voyage exist? After progressively getting the price down, a very Amazon thing to do, a high-end model seems un-Amazonian. Especially if it doesn't really meet the needs of serious readers. Did Amazon just see an unmet market at that price point? Curious as to when companies move upmarket with a product line - it's usually the other way around.
I own one, and reading on it is quite pleasant. I can see the rationale for pressure buttons (you can adjust the sensitivity). The resolution is fantastic, backlighting is great compared to reading in my particular low-light environment. The store works for what I need as a casual reader. I had a Kobo H2O, which was alright, but felt less refined. Also, the Kobo didn't have any useful newspaper subscriptions.
My biggest complaint with the kindle (post beige / side buttons era) is the black plastic. If i read in the sun for 20-30 minutes the device begins to get very hot. After 40 minutes the heat starts to cause performance and display problems. Using a towel or newspaper helps but it screws with the mechanics of holding the device and turning pages.
Oh, those seething bureaucracies with faceless collectives and blurred responsibilities...
Also that's sort of interesting to see how a company which is supposed to take over the world is unable to deliver even the ordinary products. I hope, this will prove in the long run that to be successful you need to have a good product or service.
having owned both a touch and button kindle I would prefer a marriage of the two. keep the physical page buttons that many of us want but use the touch screen for entry, high lighting, and even selection.
If anything I give Amazon credit for making it so easy to read again that I find myself forgetting to do much else
I really pity the author. He's lost the ability to enjoy a book and throws a fit when typesetting is flawed. A sure path to disappointment and unhappiness is to demand only "the best" in everything. He should just learn to read his books as they are.
Wait, what? Shitty typography makes a book substantially harder to read.
With good typography, the color of text blocks is even and flowing, and logical structure of headings, captions, block quotations, etc. is obvious and clear without calling attention to itself. With shitty typography, the eye is constantly pulled away from a regular flow by the uneven color within text blocks or by distracting elements on the page, certain words or phrases are illegible and require scrutiny (in some cases, switching focus back and forth between two places on the page or even between pages) and effort to figure out, and inconsistencies impose a small but continuous mental tax on the reader.
If I had to guess, the parent commenter hasn't experienced bad typography on a kindle. Typography is very much one of those things that you only notice when it's poor, or if you're really deep into it.
I'm certainly not, and I've never given two thoughts about typography except when weird things happen with it.
Have you used a Kindle? It's not small nitpicking, sometimes they layouts it makes are laughably bad and hard to read. Basic stuff that anyone who has read a book would notice at some point and it hasn't been fixed in YEARS.
I use my Kindle Voayge daily. I have no issues with strain on the buttons. I did need to adjust them to the lowest pressure and highest feedback before I was happy with them.
As for full justification, I don't really mind it. It's not a pain point for me. If I wanted to be picky, I could come up with a list of minor issues.
The problem is the Kindle is the best reader out of a category of really shitty products.
Novels on Kindle are bad enough in this regard, but they are head and shoulders better than anything resembling a textbook--particularly if the textbook has anything like mathematics or code in it.
I've started seriously contemplating going entirely to scanned, pirated PDFs and simply mailing the author a check the retail cost of the book. I'd love for technical books to start rendering PDFs for multiple common ereader screen sizes. Journal articles are too much to hope for.
> I'd love for technical books to start rendering PDFs for multiple common ereader screen sizes.
Google Play Books supports having both EPUB and PDF for the same document, and, I believe, chooses between them based on screen size or other platform features. I don't think it supports having prerendered pages for different layouts yet, but certainly the "buy a title, which might have multiple formats for different devices" thing is already established there, so its not a big jump to see it being done with more specificity.
Amazon's octopus stranglehold on books. He mentioned that he reads a lot and listens to audiobooks... audible is basically the only game in town, and Kindle editions add $1 to the cost.
While you're right about Amazon's bundling advantages (with both Audible and MatchBook), there are other audiobook alternatives (e.g. Downpour, which sells many DRM-free audiobooks).
Amazon thinks that it already has "the customer," in its most broad abstraction, already in its grasp, and doesn't ever need to fight to keep any of them there. That is why, when I departed my Amazon subsidiary in December of 2014, they were only just starting to hire a UX team. These principles can be made so dogmatic to the point of destructive company culture that outwardly resists change, be it to marketing designs or entire technology infrastructures that entire teams comprising hundreds of people rely upon to get work done.
This is why it is very hard to keep talented people in positions of management at Amazon.