More on the Amazon “Kindle”
David Pogue neatly sums up my thoughts on eBook readers:
Sure, the idea has appeal: an e-reader lets you carry hundreds of books, search or jump to any spot in the text and bump up the type size when your eyes get tired.
But the counterarguments are equally persuasive. Printed books are dirt cheap, never run out of power and survive drops, spills and being run over. And their file format will still be readable 200 years from now.
So e-book readers keep on coming and keep on flopping: the Rocket eBook Reader. Gemstar. Everybook. SoftBook. Librius Millennium Reader. The Sony Reader is in stores even now, priced at $350 and making literally dozens of sales.
Then he goes on to (*cough*) praise the Kindle:
So if the Kindle isn’t a home run, it’s at least an exciting triple. It gets the important things right: the reading experience, the ruggedness, the super-simple software setup. And that wireless instant download — wow.
Even though most people will prefer the feel, the cost and the simplicity of a paper book, the Kindle is by far the most successful stab yet at taking reading material into the digital age.
No, it’s not the last word in book reading. But once its price comes down and its design gets sleeker, the Kindle may be the beginning of a great new chapter.
You can dress up your criticism as nicely as you want. Saying they didn’t get it right is still synonymous with saying they got it wrong.
I thing I like Robert Scoble’s straight-to-the-point summation:
1. No ability to buy paper goods from Amazon through Kindle.
2. Usability sucks. They didn’t think about how people would hold this device.
3. UI sucks. Menus? Did they hire some out-of-work Microsoft employees?
4. No ability to send electronic goods to anyone else. I know Mike Arrington has one. I wanted to send him a gift through this of Alan Greenspan’s new book. I couldn’t. That’s lame.
5. No social network. Why don’t I have a list of all my friends who also have Kindles and let them see what I’m reading?
6. No touch screen. The iPhone has taught everyone that I’ve shown this to that screens are meant to be touched. Yet we’re stuck with a silly navigation system because the screen isn’t touchable.Would I buy it? Yes, but I’m a geek. I can’t really recommend this to other people yet. Sorry.
It’s obvious that they never had this device in their hands when they were designing it.
Look. When the rubber meets the road, it’s still just a gadget. It’s not practical. It does some cool things, but so did Apple’s Newton, Microsoft’s Bob, and countless other neat, geeky, failed technological wonders.
It comes down to this: eBook readers are motivated by evil, and consumers see through that. These companies are trying to invent a need for a huge, low-overhead revenue stream.
Inventing a need doesn’t work. Necessity is the mother of invention, not the other way around.
Tags: Amazon, eBooks, Kindle, Sony Reader
November 28th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Well said, now will you get off my screen so I can buy one. O wait didn’t I read that this device allows the user to read blogs from it as well, so I could be reading @Randem right now from my Kindle. NOT! “Give me the IPhone or give me paperbacks!”
November 28th, 2007 at 11:12 am
You should do a tech talk on the kindle :)
What I think is interesting is Charles Stross in his fiction talks about this century as the Dark Ages because in the future, all of our content will be stored on magnetic media which degrades over a few decades. So in the future, societies will no more about us before the “digital” age than during it… once 3d crystal storage is perfected, the data will be safe forever… but if we go completely e-book right now using magnetic/solid state electronic storage, all of our knowledge will be lost… at least that which isn’t in a condition to transition to new, more long term storage types. Anything on records will be playable for ever… tapes, CDs, MP3s on flash drives… will be lost.
So for now… keep the paper and physical media… until we have a safe place to put this stuff! :)