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Kindle Versus The iPhone
Bernie Campbell writes "Forbes takes a look at the recently announced Kindle ebook from Amazon, and considers the possibility that Apple may have beaten them to the punch. 'Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs has a not-so-secret weapon when it comes time to load up the iPhone with content: Google ... Google's Book Search project has already pumped much of the world's printed matter into Google's servers. Downloads of classic titles, such as Bleak House, can already be had for free. Mix Apple's iTunes content distribution smarts with Google's vast storehouse of content, and you'll have an instant competitor to Kindle -- one with a touch interface and the ability to play movies and music, too.'
Clearly the author of that Forbes article hasn't tried reading too many of the books on Google books. While there are some really nicely formatted ebooks on there, most of the collection consists of horrendous scans of esoterica only useful to researchers with a tolerance for photographs that may be blurry, noisy, or shot at funny angles.
Apple actually had Kindle's market sector covered way back in 1993. The Newton had pretty much the same form factor, and with applications like Paperback it was an excellent book viewer in it's time.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
hmmm? Only as long as you read blogs on it. For books, the fee is simply included in the price, as for newspapers.
I'm not sure how you got modded troll... perhaps it was someone who is totally in love with the iPhone had mod points and took offense to that last sentence.
Mods: Read this: If you are the person who modded the above Troll, I suggest you go and read the moderator guidelines. If you think its still justified, how about making a comment as to why you think it still deserves -1, Troll.
I fuckin hope I get to meta-mod the parents comment.
My wife and I recently had a new baby, born preemie, and we ended up spending LOTS of time in the hospital. It was driving my wife crazy to not have things to read while staying with the baby. She bought an iPhone so that she could browse the web. A little while later, I bought a Sony Reader (PRS-505, the one that came out only about a month ago) which is like the Kindle in terms of how you would use it while reading.
After a week, my wife "stole" my Sony Reader, and uses it much more than the iPhone. It's much easier to read a full page of text on the 6" screen with the higher resolution. And, it's easier to use one-handed, because there are dedicated buttons to flip through pages.
Reading a website on the iPhone reminds me of the bad early days of HTML when people would put large pages inside a scrollable frame, and you were 'looking through a port hole' to see the entire page.
The other nice thing is that she could read continuously for eight hours. The iPhone, with its backlight, can't do that.
I feel the need to point out that there's a lot of FUD in the original article as well. I think the Forbes editors might have some AAPL stock perhaps?
From TFA:No, they already said there was no monthly fee for wireless access.Actually, you can download eBooks in text or mobi format for free from the Kindle, so anything on Google book search should be free for the taking. Also, even though you have to subscribe to blogs if you want digital delivery of the content for offline reading, you can still browse to any blog or website and read it right from your Kindle. The only disadvantage: You have to use the next/previous page buttons to scroll up and down the web page. It's a limitation of the e-Ink technology, because you obviously can't smoothly scroll a page with a scroll bar that requires 1 second to update it's screen.
There is a lot of FUD out there about the Kindle, but I think it's going to be pretty amazing. Can you imagine having every O'Reilly book ever made on the thing, and the ability to do full text search/grep capability through your entire library of technical books? That alone is a killer app.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Not according to sections 8.2 and 8.3 of the product manual. It can directly read TXT, MOBI, PRC, Audible and play mp3s without any conversion. It can convert other formats, and the conversion is FREE. There is only a charge if you ask them to send them wirelessly to the Kindle.
Battery life will also be an issue. While the iPhone can certainly display information, it isn't really practical for long term reading purposes. With the Kindle, you can go a much longer time reading and it is much easier on your eyes as it uses an e-Ink display. Having used older LCD based e-books and newer e-Ink based e-books, I can safely say that there is no comparison between the two technologies. While it is nice to have color on an LCD, the e-Ink displays will win every time for visibility and length of use. Additionally, there is no monthly fee to use the Kindle, I just wish it wasn't white, I'd be sold if they had a black version.
AJ Henderson
My problem with the iPhone isn't that it isn't a cool toy. It's just nothing particularly exciting considering that similar toys have been available for quite some time.
Exactly. Thank you. All Apple did is take existing technology, package it up into a nice little device and slap a shiny UI onto it. It looks nice and performs pretty well, but I get annoyed by the fanbrats who still can't bring themselves to close their mouths after the iPhone dropped their jaws. Constantly claiming that the iPhone is revolutionary and that nothing comes close is just naive. I know of at least half a dozen phones that have the exact same capabilities of the iPhone, and look pretty good doing it, but since they're not from Apple they get no attention.
Your HTC Herald/Atlas can do some things the iPhone can't do, but it actually can't do everything the iPhone can, so please stop saying this.
It can't look cool: it's twice as thick as the iPhone and looks cheap and plasticky.
It can't deliver 8 hours of talk time.
It can't run anything beyond Windows Mobile, which is a joke.
It can't display more than 240x320 (that's the iPod resolution, not the iPhone resolution: 320x480)
It can't store more than 128 MB Flash without juggling around SD cards, vs 8,192 MB of Flash on the iPhone (64 x as much)
It can't navigate photos or music or menus like the iPhone's multitouch display, and its media apps are no match for the iPhone's.
It can't play or download iTunes content and there's no integrated, free source for H.264 podcasts and other content.
It can't display a functional view of the web with resolution independence.
It can't display HTML emails in a real email client that works well.
It can't do Visual Voicemail.
It can't be navigated with a single button and screen taps. You have a half dozen buttons on the face alone.
It can't be used with an onscreen keyboard, so you have to slide out a chicklet keyboard that is impossible to type upon.
It can't use slick Google integration to pull up nearby searches and map them at all similar to the iPhone's Maps.
HTC can do some things an iPhone can't do, so if you want to brag things up, here's what to say:
You can edit spreadsheets and word documents within a QVGA display.
You can use a variety of proprietary IM services, including Yahoo, AOL, and MSN.
You can buy several hundred dollars of third party WM apps to match some of the features of the iPhone.
You can access your Exchange Server calendar OTA.
You can have your phone remotely terminated by your boss when he fires you.
UnWired! Rick Farrow, Metasploit, and My iPhone Security Interview
Err, common misconception. You can get eyestrain from doing so, sure, but this will not degenerate your eyes. Much as "sitting too close to the TV" is also a myth. I spend upwards of a dozen hours a day in front of an LCD, and other times doing wedding photography, and I've had 20/12 vision for 15+ years.
I actually enjoy reading with my iPod Touch. My site is http://www.textonphone.com/ it has 20,000 titles and you can upload your own content. It's a web app running in webkit/Safari, but it does cache content so that you can read offline, and it also has bookmarks. I just load up a story or book at home or work by WiFi and then read it on the subway.
...several years ago, there was a credible media report that Apple were/are buying up the rights to a large number of books. Further, the multitouch interface used by the iPhone and iPod Touch would lend itself perfectly to an 'eBook'. No need to use external buttons like the Kindle, simply drag your fingers across the screen to turn the page, or pinch your fingers to zoom in. Not to mention using iTunes to make a purchase and download it. Oh, and most importantly, it won't be the iPhone that allows all this, but an all new device under development by Apple. Where's the iBook laptop? No where. But the trademark still exists. Go figure...
O'WONDERWe're working on it.
Treo 650 with the standard Blazer browser.
I can't find a screenshot of the browser, except for this page, which looks like ass. The fact that they don't show a real web page in their advertisement makes me think that the pages don't look exactly like a desktop browser.
Never going to happen, not even with an iPhone, unless you're prepared to carry around a 12" monitor with you. [...] But I'm not going to do any serious browsing on anything with a screen size of the Treo or iPhone.
That's what I'm telling you. It *has* happened. I don't know if you've played with the iPhone for any length of time, but it has a virtual 1024 pixel-wide screen that scales the image to the phone screen. You see the whole page, then can zoom into the area that you want. Very rarely do you read an entire web page at once -- usually you focus in on one area to read. When you double tap on an area, the iPhone zooms the table dimensions to the phone. It's incredible well done.
Seriously -- I hate Apple. I'm not an Apple fanboy, just using his new toy rather than a laptop because I can. I use the iPhone for surfing ALL of my regular web sites and don't miss the laptop at all*. It's small, light and intuitive, and I can sit in any position while browsing. It works way, way better than you would think.
*Well, one caveat: you can't cut/paste on the iPhone, so it makes posting on Slashdot kind of a pain. :)
But what really makes the iPhone different is that for the first time it feels like a real computer that happens to have a phone, rather than the other way around. It's pretty damn cool to load on the BSD tools, bring up a shell and have a full Unix computer at my command.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Oh. I misread your post, so at the risk of repeating myself, let me clarify a little:
They don't charge more for books via Kindle than on paper. The $9.99 is for expensive books (just-released, hardcover-only, bestsellers, etc); cheaper books are... well, cheaper.
Not that $9.99 is the absolute price ceiling (I did a bit of spot-checking and technical books were significantly more expensive, though still below the price of hardcopy). Frankly, I'd be happier if I could get technical books for the Kindle via something like Safari, while using the existing model for other content.