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Amazon Releases iPhone Kindle Software
palmsolo writes "The Amazon Kindle 2 just started shipping last week, but Amazon surprised everyone late on March 3rd by placing the Amazon Kindle software for the iPhone in the Apple App Store. With the Whispersync technology you can now keep your Kindle and iPhone ebooks in sync and read everywhere you go. Readers on the iPhone also now get access to over 200,000 ebook titles on the Amazon Kindle storefront. Check out the hands-on image gallery and video of the Amazon Kindle software on the iPhone and Kindle 2."
Thousands of iPhone zombies squinting into tiny little screens, walking into cars, telephone poles, other zombies.This world is getting out of hand.
Actually, I'm just jealous. I couldn't possibly read that tiny little type.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Amazon Releases iPhone Kindle Software
Finally I won't have to huddle around a pile of tinder in the forest, rubbing two iPhones together just to get a spark to light my campfire.
We lived like cavemen before iPhone software.
My work here is dung.
Do you need a Kindle to use this iphone app? The article only talks about the benefits of using the app with the kindle, but for all of those that don't have one, can we use the app and buy ebooks on the amazon store?
Cue the author's guild bitching about how they lose money because now their ebooks can be read by two devices instead of just one in 3...2...1...
Amazon probably makes plenty of money off eBook sales. With tons of iPhone and iPod Touch users using Stanza and other eBook readers, it only makes sense to support this market. Now instead of having Amazon eBook sales tied to Kindle hardware, they can tie to iPhones and iPod Touches too.
While I don't think this will do anything to get iPhone/iPod Touch users to buy a Kindle, it will certainly quintuple their Kindle eBook sales.
Watch the Kindle software platform become available on other devices (Android, Windows Mobile) in the near future.
Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, START
No Kindle is needed. You can buy books using a web browser on your PC and have the books sent wirelessly to your iPhone/iPod touch.
DRM = no sale
How much does it cost to place these ads on /.?
One sacrificial lamb ... I mean webserver?
The summary doesn't make it clear, but the article mentions that it also works with the iPod touch. Considering the touch is smaller, lighter, and much cheaper than both the iPhone and the Kindle, this application might give a significant boost to readers looking for a (relatively) inexpensive reader.
Having read long books on old Palm PDAs, the size of the screen is only a minor annoyance. Those PDAs, though, were not backlit LCDs. Some people might find an iPod screen too fatiguing for long reading.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
+1 unbearably smug
"It's almost like I predicted this"
/., that you predicted that Company XYZ would support iPhones someday.
wait... you predicted that Amazon would someday support iPhones? You're amazing!
What's your next prediction?
mark me as flamebait/troll, i have karma to burn, but come on, that's a pretty dumb thing to say on
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
If Amazon starts allowing its software to be used on _any_ platform, whether it be iPhone, Kindle, Laptop, Netbook, or 3rd Party eBook Reader, would that be an acceptable compromise to the fact that their e-books use DRM?
Valve's Steam has shown that people (even Geeks who notoriously hate DRM) are willing to compromise and use DRM if something of great enough value is offered with it (and possibly because of it).
I just had this conversation yesterday with our CTO. He was talking about how people weren't taking the Kindle seriously, and I was saying the Kindle will always be a niche product, but the Kindle store would soon appear on the iPhone and then become this huge beast.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
The screen won't get larger, but most rumors say the next iPhone (much like the G2 launching in April) will feature an OLED screen with much higher resolution. It will use less battery, and be slimmer.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
No, you don't. I just downloaded it and tried out a sample chapter. I had previously used eReader from Fictionwise, but they were unable to get "The Amber Spyglass," even though they had the first two books of Pullman's Dark Materials series.
Amazon had the content, so I went and bought Amber Spyglass.
Vote for global prefs bug
I know most of the people here might not agree, but the new iPods are extremely cool and nice. :( Since you don't need the Kindle to use it, buying an iPod would probably be more in line with most people's budgets. And this would be great way to read on the subway or on a break with coffee, if your vision is decent.
I really like the Kindle too, but if you could have a small portable iPod for your books and music that is really great. For commuters this is a very nice piece of technology and software.
The iPhone is too expensive and not worth the money. The average person would probably buy the iPod because it costs so much less than the iPhone. With the Apple stores and going online and looking around there are always have deals or a refurbished one, you just have to watch for them every few months.
While I agree that text-to-speech should not be a copyright issue, and that it currently sounds horrible, I think the quality issue will change.
If text-to-speech is even remotely popular, it will keep improving in quality. Eventually you won't know if you're listening to a recording or a rendering. And yes, the market for audio books will (mostly) dry up. (Some people will still want to hear authors read their own work, or hear celebrities read it.)
But hey, them's the breaks. You can't sue obsolescence.
Which is why the iPhone absolutely sucks as an ebook reader.
Best Slashdot Co
It seems I can't get the software, because it's not available on the german store... Has anyone had any luck getting the software with a non US account?
I am Dr. Adewole Areuma and am the managing director of the Union Bank of Slashdot. I would like to speak with you most urgently about the opportunity to advertise on Slashdot. You will gain revenues of up to $20,000,000 US dollars.
Surprisingly it is quite readable even on the iPhone's small screen. You just swipe your finger across the screen to flip back/forth through the pages. There is options to change the font size, so really the only complaint you can have is how much/little text fits on the screen before you have to flip a page.
There are some free books on the Kindle Store (mostly classics like Treasure Island and some religious texts like the Bible), so there is no cost to try out the Kindle iPhone app.
Really cool how you buy via your web browser. Next time you open the Kindle app, it just automatically syncs what you have just purchased to the iPhone. Since it is just text, it takes just seconds to sync. Should not be painful to use even in poor signal locations and on EDGE. Plus you can download any purchase you make for free again in the future.
I don't know if if I would buy all of my books this way (I lately have been using the local library), but in a pinch (say on a trip) when I want a book to read and don't want to or can't stop by a bookstore or library, this could work very well.
Due to DRM of bookware.
They hope you have a better reading experience and spend more money if you use their reader.
I think they focused on the benefit of using this app with the Kindle because... well, the first question that popped into my head was, "If I buy a book on my iPhone and then get a Kindle in a few months, will I be able to transfer my books over to the Kindle, or are they going to try to make me buy them all again?"
Once I had gotten past that thought, my next question might have been, "Well how hard will it be to transfer books from one to the other? Will Amazon provide a mechanism for that?" If I had gotten past those two, I'd like to think I'd be clever enough to ask at some point, "Can they provide any method for me to read on my one device and have my place synced over to the other so I can pick up right where I left off?"
It looks like Amazon may have covered their bases pretty well.
Disappointingly, it seems that it's only available in the US too. Very disappointing for us Brits.
All intents and purposes. Not intensive purposes.
Do you not think that this would be of interest to slashdot? Do you honestly think that this site, with millions of users, would have nobody submit this as a story, and that none of the editors would post it?
So what you're saying is that you think it's more likley that this is astroturfing, than just you know, the people who use this site happening to think this is cool news? I for one think it's neat.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Always make sure you preview a sample before buying though. The font choices for some of these are just inexplicably bad. Check out Zoe's Tale vs An Autumn War. The AWA font is terrible...
It's great Amazon is opening up the market to iPhone and iPod Touch users. The other shoe will drop when they release a desktop version of the Kindle. The ebook wars will be on their way to over if that happens.
blog
The trouble is, "pretty much every non-3G app that exists for the iPhone would be just as functional and applicable on an hx4700" if and only if they existed. Apps that don't exist are neither functional nor relevant, no matter how nice the platform they don't run on is or isn't.
Undeniably, there have been phones with superior specs (and rather more open OSes) floating around for years now. In spite of that, no Kindle support.
No, the app works just fine if you don't own a Kindle.
Mod parent up.
Marketing, rather than quality engineered products is what people are raving over. They'll take something shiny over something good any day.
I love my PDA, a Garmin iQue M5. Its 420MHz, has SDIO (I have an SDIO wifi card for it), bluetooth, a solid construction, and the screeen is large, bright, and easy to read. It also has a GPS and performs turn by turn directions. And it was on the market years before Apple even dreamed of the iPod Touch.
Agreed. I was going to get this app until the Kindle made its way to the UK, but I can't even do that.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Give me a phone with e-ink display first.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
I like Stanza better, actually. It's more pleasant to read with. In Stanza I can tap to turn the page, pinch-unpinch to alter the text size, and rotate to get a different aspect ratio. In the Kindle app, I have to swipe to turn the page, tapping just annoyingly brings up some controls I usually don't want, and rotation does nothing. I still haven't figured out if I can adjust the text size in Kindle. On the other hand, rotation not working means I can lay down on my side, turn the phone to align with my head, and read, which is harder with Stanza.
Kindle places a border around the text on the page, which is pleasant to look at, but means there's less text on each page so I have to change pages more often. Stanza uses the entire screen.
Also, if I buy an ebook from an online retailer for use in Stanza, I can back it up with my computer. Kindle books are delivered directly to the device, so I have to trust that Amazon will still be delivering my ebook to my devices in the future, and that I'll want to be doing my ebook reading on a device they support.
I don't think I'm going to be buying a lot of ebooks for Kindle as long as it has its DRM issues, unless they lower the prices a lot. The books I found on the kindle store that I would want were not significantly cheaper as ebooks than as paperback. If they want me to put up with DRM, I want to pay half the price of dead tree media, or less.
Not available in the Canadian app-store (or in Europe).
I really am saddened by this aspect of 'progress', you can order physical CDs, DVDs, kindles, anything from all over the world and nobody has an issue with that, but the second anything becomes distributed electronically boom, we're transported to this strange super-protectionistic world where things do not move freely anymore.
I fear for tomorrow's world, where instead of being exposed to music, shows, books, tv, from other countries you will just be able to read, listen and watch to things 'approved' by some company somewhere.
And let's not talk about people learning a foreign language: say you're studying German and you'd love to read some German books and watch some shows from Amazon.de, sorry, no way. Or maybe you live in Brazil and you'd like to improve your English by reading books, listening to music and watching shows over the internet, nossiree, not gonna happen.
It seems that modern technology is more and more used as a 'control' technology, vs an 'enabling' technology, which is quite sad as it just promotes an extremely insular world, instead of the free exchange of information.
I really hope that, as it happened to the music DRM, at some point the 'powers that be' will realize that this attitude is completely wrong, but given the latest salvo by the book authors about the kindle's text-to-speech functionality (which could've helped a lot of blind or non-native-English speakers) I am really not sure if it will ever happen.
-- the cake is a lie
Last I checked you weren't allowed the privilege of purchasing an amazon ebook without having a Kindle registered to your account.
And believe me I was interested in find out if it was possible, the kindle inferior. You need a book light for an ebook reader? Seriously?
Question everything
Most likely because they only have the book rights for all those books in the US. It would have been foolish to have paid extra money for worldwide rights (or even US+UK) when they were going to be testing the Kindle in the US first to see if it would flop or succeed. It may or not also be related to purchasing UK versions of books (because yeah, some books are localized even though it's kind of dumb) and purchasing a different title list based on popularity in the UK.
I would expect once they purchase book rights to your region, they'll turn on the iPhone app even before they get the Kindle out the door. Unless some exec gets nervous that somehow that will make the Kindle less likely to sell.
No, what I was saying was: "How much does it cost to place these ads on /.?"
Last I checked, the iPod Touch was $30 more than the iPhone hardware for an 8GB ($229), and the same price ($299) for the 16GB). (I last checked 1 minute ago.)
Now, if you're talking data plans, sure, the iPhone ends up more expensive after just one month. But the price difference obviously depends on your current phone plan. I had unlimited Internet on my old Blackjack, and getting the iPhone 3G was only $15/month more for me--and I was told I would have to pay $15/month more for any phone I got, as I was on an older, cheaper data plan than they currently offered (woo, prices went up!).
YMMV.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
You need a book light for an ebook reader?
Its better than staring at a lightbulb for hours at a time.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
Last I checked you weren't allowed the privilege of purchasing an amazon ebook without having a Kindle registered to your account.
Did you bother to look since this announcement? Web pages do change, or so I've heard.
You need a book light for an ebook reader? Seriously?
You need a book light because it's epaper. Just like regular paper, it doesn't emit any light of its own. The upside with this is that the display only draws power when you turn the page. I think that the convenience of having a device that you can use continuously for days without recharging kind of outweighs the inconvenience of having to provide your own light source.
I'm curious if this is restricted to the US App Store, given the restrictions around the Kindle itself.
LOL
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Why not? Most geeks will use it for their own pleasure.
for those of us that have not fallen to the Apple Side (yet), any chance we'll get a blackberry app from Amazon soon? And for that matter, what about the Windows Mobile application? I would like to be able to read books on my BB, especially when on long flights.
-- All this knowledge is giving me a raging brainer.
Yea but it doesnt make calls. I only like to carry around one piece of hardware
OK, why is this flamebait? Even by the unofficial definition that a lot of moderators use ("flamebait" == "you're full of it") that seems a stretch.
First off, as others pointed out the technology will improve. I think one day it probably will replace human audiobook readers. I listen to a lot of audiobooks. Unfortunately, the quality of the performer has a LOT to do with the experience of the listener. Take for example Frank Muller. He was widely known as one of the "best" audiobook readers in the business, his career ended only by a tragic accident in 2001. I knew of him because he read almost all of Stephen King's audiobooks. While I feel for the man and his family, I have to say that I found him unlistenable. I bought a recording of Black House and could not make it past the first half hour. He read things in an overwrought, almost Shakespearean tone, even for mundane bits of narration. And every sentence had the same basic pitch structure. It made me laugh, as well as everyone I played it for. The part that made me stop laughing was that I'd paid $60 for something I couldn't listen to.
Clearly he has plenty of fans, what with all his awards and accolades and such. But he was not my cup of tea. This is unfortunate, as I'm a King fan. Even if I've read a book, it's nice to go back and listen to it again later on audiobook while driving or working out. After Muller had to retire, George Guidall performed the rewrite of Gunslinger. I was dismayed to realize he used the exact same performance style. Since then I haven't even tried another King audiobook. Considering the quality of his more recent output, this hasn't really bothered me that much.
And then you get older or more obscure titles that no one is going to perform because of the costs involved. Or titles that were performed long ago and you can't find them anymore. I recently found a torrent of Heinlein's Time for the Stars. I enjoyed the story quite a bit, even though it was a fairly lousy quality copy of an old cassette and the performer was nothing special. The only other way you're going to find this recording is eBay/craiglist/garage sale.
On top of this, places like Amazon and Audible frequently don't even list the performer. I'd say "usually", in the case of the titles I look for. And when they do and it's a person you've never heard of (also frequent), good luck finding a sample of their performance.
So yeah, I see a huge market for something like this if they can improve the technology enough. Audiobooks are insanely overpriced, and I wonder what using software like this might do to that price. I would hope that there'd still be a market for certain performers, like Jim Dale. His Harry Potter performances are wonderful. And I'd miss hearing the works of Sarah Vowell or David Sedaris in any voice other than his. Of course, eventually it's likely that a computer simulation will be able to mimic them fairly accurately. I know I can already mimic the latter two in my head when I read their writing in print. Imagine if you could get the works of Twain read in a sufficiently Twain-like voice. Or set the voice to "James Earl Jones" when you listen to Lord of the Rings.
The authors have nothing to worry about. In fact, they'll probably make money on the deal. It's the performers and those who work in the recording department who are going to be out of a job. But then, they'll be jobs created for software people. Such is the way of change.
I own a first gen kindle and an iPhone and this is a very nice gift from Amazon. A free app that allows me to keep reading my e-books when I'm bored and don't have my kindle handy. What's not to like?
It's not often that I say this about a huge corporation but Kudos to Amazon for thinking about the consumer and providing more convenience as opposed to the Riaa/Mpaa.
Now, if only they would get that stupid DRM off their ebooks and slash their (inflated) prices, I'd have nothing left to complain about.
Last I checked you weren't allowed the privilege of purchasing an amazon ebook without having a Kindle registered to your account.
The app registers your iPhone as a Kindle after you put in your account info. I just bought a couple books off of there and I don't own a Kindle myself.
So you'd rather have news about ... what? What, exactly, would be news yet have no corporate ties of any sort?
Maroon. Pathetic, whiny maroon.
Infuriate left and right
I subscribe to the Financial Times on my Kindle. I just installed the iPhone app and FT is not available to download, only the books I've purchased.
Who's whining? I just asked a question. And what is a "maroon"?
What a Maroon!
Last I checked, the iPod Touch was $30 more than the iPhone hardware for an 8GB ($229), and the same price ($299) for the 16GB). (I last checked 1 minute ago.)
Now, if you're talking data plans, sure, the iPhone ends up more expensive after just one month. But the price difference obviously depends on your current phone plan. I had unlimited Internet on my old Blackjack, and getting the iPhone 3G was only $15/month more for me--and I was told I would have to pay $15/month more for any phone I got, as I was on an older, cheaper data plan than they currently offered (woo, prices went up!).
YMMV.
*Qualified customers only. Two-year contract required.
t
Heck, I just thought it was a twisted form of moron. Thanks for all that fascinating history.
Infuriate left and right
Summary unclear: do we need a Kindle to use that software, or is it independent ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Sounds like you have found an exciting marketing opportunity. When does the first one go on sale?
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
I wouldn't hold my breath, but I've always liked the eReader (available for both Pocket PCs and iPod/iPhone) and the MobiPocket reader (PocketPC, no iPod/iPhone version). Fictionwise.com and ereader.com are both nice online bookstores that support both of those readers.
Really now, why on earth would Apple want to raise awareness of Pocket PC devices? Microsoft isn't some little backwater company operating at a disadvantage here....the PPC has been around for ages, and they've done a rotten job marketing it. Direct your complaints here to MS and HP, it's their job to hype Pocket PCs, not Apple's.....
Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
The Kindle 2 is limited to 16 color grey scale, the original kindle only 4. The iP[od|hone] doesn't have that limitation- so are the diagrams and charts and images that are otherwise utter crap on the Kindle presented in all of their glory on the iP[od|hone] or do you just get the ugly 16 shades of pixel vomit?
Does narcissism count as a hobby? --Shawn Latimer
You need a book light for an ebook reader? Seriously?
They call it "electronic paper" for a reason - because it looks and works like one. Yes, that means you need an external light source to read in the dark. It also means that your eyes don't strain anywhere near as much as they do when you stare at the backlit LCD (which isn't fundamentally different from staring at a pretty powerful lamp shining right into your face).
What's your next prediction?
Let me try that. Amazon will not - I repeat, will not - support OpenMoko.
No, it doesn't. Nor does Stanza support Kindle books. Easy fix: have two apps.
At any rate, it's decent enough for a first release, but a better way of buying on the fly than Mobile Safari would be nice. I'd also like an interface closer to Stanza's, with touch-to-scroll (instead of swiping), a sans-serif font and a white-on-black display option for night reading. I'd imagine these will probably make it in over time.
-- the opinions stated above aren't those of my employer. in fact, they're probably not even my own. you know what, ju
Installed it. Cool. Downloaded three free books from Amazon's Kindle store. Cool.
--Steve
If I can't download an article from JSTOR (or wherever), then the thing is useless to me. I don't care about ebooks. I don't care about audio books. But I'd really love a portable way to be able to read PDFs in a more convenient way than on my Dell Axim.
"Cut word lines. Cut music lines. Smash the control images. Smash the control machine." - William S. Burroughs
For navigation, my hx4700 offers an even more general purpose solution: I use a bluetooth GPS (20-hour battery life) and Tom-Tom's ARM software. Tom-Tom at least didn't ignore this market segment. There's actually a LOT of both free and for-pay ARM software out there, but as you said it's largely unknown BECAUSE there's not this huge marketing campaign constantly waving it in people's faces. And it was all years ahead of the iPod and iPhone. I can actually show you "prior art" third-party today-screen and productivity apps that arguably pioneered the iPhone's touch-friendly interface before the iPhone did, and available for at least a couple years beforehand. Once the iPhone appeared, with all that marketing, it had the effect of focusing even the ARM Pocket PC market on software that had that touch-friendly paradigm; there was a lot of Pocket PC software that got redesigned after the iPhone appeared, even though such touch-friendly apps had already existed before that. The iPhone's marketing campaign diverted everyone's attention to that single aspect of the software, and suddenly nothing else mattered.
Just as soon as I manage to get my 10,000 hours in. In other words, Real Soon Now.
Actually it's OUR job to hype it, by word of mouth. I've been doing that for years, but my audience is limited and my cats don't have opposable thumbs.
My Nokia N810 lasts for days of reading without recharging. And it's smaller. And it has a touch screen & stylus. And wifi for looking up definitions. And an IM client (optional) that I can use to chat while reading. And it can be configured (easily) to use dim red text on a black background that doesn't strain or ruin night vision.
The buttons on it are also incredibly convenient for turning pages. I just contract a single finger. Oh yeah, the pages turn almost instantly because it's not eInk. Or disrupting my gf sleeping next to me since there's no booklight. Or having an extra device that also requires batteries that don't last days clamped on to my ebook reading device.
Call me when you can backlight eInk evenly and still keep several days of battery life like my N810.
Who cares if "it only uses power when you turn pages!!11ONE" if the battery only lasts days. My N810's battery lasts days too - often a week or more of nightly reading - without even having to turn it off. AND it has a perfectly even backlight configurable to any color, brightness or contrast you choose. And you don't have to angle any lamps, lighting, or booklights. It's just always works perfectly.
Bonus? It runs Linux.
Question everything
Ah ... I had "just" in the wrong place. I meant I didn't know any of the history of that usage, nor of alternative meanings (other than the cookies).
What do you know about mouse knuckles, and when did you know it?
Infuriate left and right
I'm frankly getting sick of these Apple "there's an app for that" ads, ads that once again twist reality to make it sound like the planets revolve around a big glowing apple rather than the sun. Pretty much every non-3G app that exists for the iPhone would be just as functional and applicable on an hx4700, but Apple doesn't want people to know that.
How is it twisting reality when you yourself just admitted that Apple does in fact have an app for reading Amazon's e-books while other platforms like your iPAQ don't? That's not Apple's problem.
It's mis-framing, like you just did in responding to my comments.
Hah, well played.
I'm also getting sick of the lack of objectivity demonstrated by Slashdotters allowed to moderate: my comment was moderated as Troll. If I had to choose one reason to desire being the world's benevolent Overlord, this would be it: surgical removal of the VMPC from the brains of every human and putting a stop to this sort of (re)action.
My Nokia N810 lasts for days of reading without recharging.
Well, that's pretty amazing, considering that Nokia only claims 4 hours.
Not that this is a bad product — I came very close to buying its sibling the N800 (I have no use for thumb keyboards), until I decided I wanted a bigger form factor.
Call me when you can backlight eInk evenly ...
Jeez, what is this silly obsession with backlighting? The only reason you need them is these gooddamned technicolor displays that are unreadable without them. When I first started buying portable devices (including an early Toshiba laptop, a Palm Vx, and a Samsung cell phones) all these devices had simple monochrome displays that were perfectly readable without a backlight under normal lighting conditions. Which, oddly enough, is where you mostly use them. It was only when feature creep set in, and all devices had to have color displays that always-on backlights became mandatory.
Color displays have their uses (I love watching videos on my Motion tablet). But for reading??? And WTF cares about "even lighting"?
And wifi for looking up definitions. And an IM client (optional) that I can use to chat while reading. And it can be configured (easily) to use dim red text on a black background that doesn't strain or ruin night vision.
Actually, the Kindle also has a web browser, one that works even when you're not near a hotspot. As for night vision, do you really have time to read when you're on special ops?
Sorry, forget the sarcasm. Look, if this Nokia tablet meets your needs, by all means use it. But don't go all Jihad just because somebody else likes a different technology. It's just a little lame.
I have read books on the N810 and the Kindle and my personal take is that they are difficult to compare to each other. One is a general purpose computing device that happens to have a relatively pixel dense display and better than average battery life for a handheld computer. The other is a highly specific piece of technology largely aimed at imitating the printed page. In the highly specific case of wanting to read at night next to someone trying to sleep? I guess I would give the nod to the N810 but only if I am more worried about ticking off the person trying to sleep than I am about the strain on my eyes. Want to read in direct sunlight? Better leave the ole N810 at home. Even if you can crank the screen up high enough you can kiss that nice extended battery life that comes with the extreme low light settings goodbye.
Kindle and comparisons are largely null and void. They just are not covering the same territory. The LCD's are typically more general computing devices of which a 'book' reading is one small portion of its capability. The Kindle (or similar e-ink devices) are purpose built for reading comfort rivaling a printed book. It is all they are trying to do and they do it far better than any does.
I feel safe in making that assertion because I have been searching for an electronic option to books for a LOOONG time.
Davinci PDA- Fail but surprisingly better than most other options I have tried... 100 dollar PDA from '94 that still works.
Palm V - Fail
CRT based desktop - Fail
LCD based desktop or laptop - Fail
HTC Wizard - Fail
HTC TynTyn - Fail
Iphone - Fail but comparable to N810.... screen is ultimately to small, to many page flips.
N810 - Tolerable courtesy of high pixel density, caused eye strain during book style reading sessions but was actually able to get lost while reading it.
Kindle - Its a book with one page that re-arranges its ink rather than turning a page.
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
For once the Apple device is cheaper, huh?
It's interesting to note that Amazon OWNS Mobipocket, the encrypted format used by many of their competitors in the e-book industry, but have "embraced and extended" the format so that their Kindle is completely incompatible with other stores' Mobi encryption (without a lot of messing around with python scripts, anyway).
It occurs to me to wonder just how much longer Amazon will be content to provide DRM services to its closest competitors in the e-book biz. If it were to stop licensing Mobi DRM entirely, it could very well cripple large sectors of the rest of the e-book industry.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
The Kindle is a nice device but every single kindle book just became available to iPhone owners. Other smart phones will follow. eBooks are now mainstream.
Knowledge is valuable. Ignorance is dangerous. Censorship is unacceptable. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10
News about news, rather than "Here's a new application ... for the Iphone!" I don't recall articles for reading stories on any other mobile devices that people have done for years, but everytime something is done "On The Iphone!" for some reason we get an article.
Though nothing beats the "You can now access this website ... On The Iphone!" story we had recently, about avoiding paying parking tickets IIRC.
Because for even more moderators flamebait indicates "I'm full of it".
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Well, in this case, I suspect the moderator was an editor in vindictive mode. (See my sig.) Very sad that somebody who plays a major role in running a site that's for online dialog has a compulsive need to shout down any dialog he doesn't care for.
If you've got bluetooth and wifi enabled and in use the battery goes a lot faster. If you're sitting there refreshing the screen occasionally it lasts much, much longer.
What's this silly obsession with nitpicking use cases you obviously aren't a party to? 90% of the time I read it's in bed a night. So it's more of a mandatory requisite for me than a "silly obsession".
No, I mostly read in bed, at night. And judging by the sheer volume of "kindle compatible" booklights for sale, I'm not alone.
Apparently a significant portion of the market given that Sony attempted to bolt this feature onto their eInk displays. And the reason I mentioned this was Sony had tried it and someone posted the pictures here on the last kindle story. And the results were extremely uneven lighting leading to being blinded at the edges and straining to read in the middle. And burning a nice after image into your retinas if you use it in the dark (you know, where you need a booklight).
I can only assume that since I'm only reading on special ops that you only read between 11:30 am and 12:30pm in the middle of death valley on cloudless days. When I first started reading with white text on black background is that when I put the device down to sleep I could still see a very strong afterimage of lines with my eyes closed. For several minutes. I figured this was bad for my eyes, so changed to red on black. The problem went away completely.
Question everything
What's this silly obsession with nitpicking use cases you obviously aren't a party to? 90% of the time I read it's in bed a night.
Dude, you're the one that sneered at any device that doesn't have backlighting. If you tout your own particular use case as the norm, it's not nitpicking for me to point out that it's not.
Oh, what a brilliant argument! Let me join in:
"Iphone blows megagoats" "No it doesn't".
Wake me up when you actually have a worthwhile argument.
Maybe I'm too easily amazed but you're comparing a device that was well over $500 to a $200 device? As for quality engineered products Apple has had some variations in results over its 30+ years but I can't think of anyone else with a record as good.
The iPod touch has fantastic engineering and Apple's recent laptops are as ubiquitous as they are (despite a premium price) for very good reasons.
Don't get me wrong. I think it is very fortunate that there are irrational Apple haters who will diss and avoid Apple products while buying and singing the praises of Zunes, Garmin and all the others. It supplies a market force that keeps the prices of Apple products less extreme. Thanks.