Barnes & Noble Has Been Quietly Refreshing Its Nook Hardware (itworld.com)

itwbennett writes: Peter Smith writes that he 'had more or less written off the Nook when Barnes & Noble farmed hardware duties out to Samsung.' But now that Amazon is aiming for the low end with its downgraded Fire tablet line, Barnes & Noble has an opportunity to 'carve out a niche on the higher end of things,' says Smith. And so it has been quietly moving in that direction. Yesterday, Venture Beat wrote about the newly (and stealthily) launched $250 Samsung Galaxy Tab E Nook. As Smith notes, 'the specs for this new tablet aren't anything special,' which might explain the stealthy launch, except that another, pricier Nook tablet apparently came out a month ago (again, according to VentureBeat), the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 Nook.

Comments

Apparently?

[Anonymous Coward]

We can't double check the veracity of press releases anymore? Just feign incredulity and link an external source to be done with it?

Why not just bundle the app?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see why they don't get the app bundled (and uninstallable) and move on. Amazon sell its Fire Tablet because it started out selling the Kindle and it had to move to Android to keep its market. But B&N are not in that rut.

For Amazon its more about face now.

BTW Samsung, ... I am praying then new 18 inch Samsung tablet comes with a 4k display (or even 8k) and not the 1920x1080 display they're suggesting. Because which clueless MBA would make a device like that and stick such a low res display on it?? Effectively crippling it to distance viewing only like a TV, yet with a touch screen for close up touch..... an obvious mismatch and good reason for such a device to fail!

So, assuming you're not morons, 4k and 8k display versions please, with stylus and full Android note OS.

Re:Why not just bundle the app?

[0123456]

No. For Amazon it's about tying people into their media infrastructure.

They don't need the Kindle for books, because just about every device has a Kindle app. They want to get cheap Kindles out there, so people then buy movies and music and books and games and... lots of other stuff from Amazon. And I see you're buying a movie, did you know can can subscribe for only $99.99 a month and get free access to everything?

Re:Why not just bundle the app?

[Anonymous Coward]

18 inch tablet? Finally! I've wanted a giant tablet for years! Something like the original table-top MS Surface, but semi-portable.

Re:Why not just bundle the app?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed and Amazon ought to be sued for the antitrust violation involved with restricting purchases from the Kindle store to only Amazon approved devices. But, they make it quite convenient to take books from other stores and use them on Kindle.

The Kindle is the only ereader that I know of that can read Kindle books without cracks involved. Tablets usually have a Kindle app available, but reading on them is really annoying.

Unfortunately, nobody enforces anti-trust rules any more.

Re:Why not just bundle the app?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because this isn't an anti-trust situation. Maybe that's what it's not done that way.

Re:Why not just bundle the app?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's an anti-trust situation. Amazon controls roughly 90% of the ebook market and has been able to force people to buy Kindles if they want to have an ereader that can use the book. It's completely illegal to use ones size to harm the competition. Same goes for when Apple was using the ITMS to exclude the competition.

Those were clear cut cases of antitrust violations and the DoJ under Bush wasn't enforcing antitrust law, so it wasn't being enforced. Apple got to the point it is now, largely because the DoJ didn't feel like doing it's job. Likewise, Google was allowed to illegally purchase Doubleclick despite it being a blatant violation of Clayton, and nothing was done.

I never had a problem with their hardware

[taustin]

I gave up on B&N when they became actively hostile to their own users. Removing download links for epubs, playing games to keep you from getting it any other way, changing from their "social encryption" to randomly generated keys, all for the specific purpose of making it impossible to keep an archive of your purchases, so that you have to rely on B&N to reload stuff if you replace a device (and you can only do so on their devices, or using their reader). All while losing hundreds of millions of dollars, and looking like their were going out of business any day now. Fuck 'em.

I hate Amazon's business model on ebooks, but it's still better than B&N shitting all over me.

Re:I never had a problem with their hardware

[unixisc]

If it is an Android, can't its stuff be uploaded to your Google Drive? Also, my main beef has been most of these tablets just having 8GB of internal storage and costing $50+. I'm waiting for the first tablet that has Marshmallow, so that I can put in any external SD card and configure it as internal, which Marshmallow allows

Re:I never had a problem with their hardware

[cdrudge]

I can't speak for the more recent tablets, but the early Nook android tablets were locked down using their firmware and their store. You could sideload, but it was a PITA unless you replaced their firmware with a 3rd party firmware.

Re:I never had a problem with their hardware

[RabidReindeer]

changing from their "social encryption" to randomly generated keys, all for the specific purpose of making it impossible to keep an archive of your purchases, so that you have to rely on B&N to reload stuff if you replace a device (and you can only do so on their devices, or using their reader).

I didn't like that either. It's not like I'm cracking books and handing them out on the street corners, but if they ever do a "Borders" - go defunct (and it's a rough business) - and turn off their servers, a thousand dollars of "purchases" would evaporate overnight. Physically, the files would still exist, but practically, they'd be random bits at that point.

The other thing I don't like is that they keep "hiding" their downloaded books, so even with a key, you can only find them if you root the device.

Since no few of my purchases are from publishers like Baen and O'Reilly whose books carry an explicit notification that the book was to be sold without Digital Rights Management, and since in my view, making the book files physically inaccessible is itself a form of DRM, that implies that B&N, by doing so, is probably in violation of their licensing agreements with the publishers. B&N does not encrypt such books, but if you can't get at the files, they don't need to.

Re:I never had a problem with their hardware

[RabidReindeer]

Back around May, the Nook software shifted the (previously-visible) book files to a directory that could only be read by rooting the device.

Like virtually all B&N software updates, there was nothing said. Their idea of an update bulletin tends to be on the order of "some small changes were made to the Nook software".

Re:I never had a problem with their hardware

[david_thornley]

If you have an Android tablet, get the Nook app. I don't think they can hide the files then.

Re:I never had a problem with their hardware

[Obfuscant]

If you have an Android tablet, get the Nook app. I don't think they can hide the files then.

Bzzzzt. Wrong. Thanks for playing the DRM game brought to you by Barnes & Noble, fine booksellers.

Sorry, that's just how really pathetic B&N are at customer relations. The latest Nook app for Android does not keep the content as files anywhere the normal user can find them. It keeps them IN THE APP. Yes, truly, when I updated to the latest app, the app grew to 150MB in size and the files for each book or magazine that were in someplace I could get them were gone. Vanished.

Not only that, but IIRC I picked up FOUR services running all the time, to replace the previous one service.

I don't recall the specifics because I immediately removed that version of the app and searched my backups for a copy of the previous version. That one does have content files, but they have meaningless names so you cannot look for any book by its name. If you're trying to get your most recent content into Calibre so you can use it somewhere else, you have to look by creation date on the file.

And, of course, they changed the DRM system to try to keep people from getting to their stuff anyway, but shouts to the people writing the import filters for Calibre.

Besides the downside of meaningless names for content files, the "previous" app has the amazing ability to keep turning on the "Show Notifications" flag for itself. I go into Settings/Applications and keep turning it off, and every time B&N wants me to know about a special deal it gets turned back on so I get the icon in the notification area.

Re:I never had a problem with their hardware

[david_thornley]

Oh, rats. I hadn't tried it yet, and I was hoping.

Wot no Eink?

[Anne Thwacks]

If it does not have eink and a battery life in months, surely it is not actually an eBook? Its just an also-ran tablet with an app. I have one of those already.

I am a nerd.

I want a black and white screen 1280x1024, with a physical keyboard and some type of navigation.

Sure I could use it to read "catch 22", but the real world use is to have all the service manuals and wiring diagrams where I can take them on site and use them. paper ones need a couple of drawing cabinets (bigger than 4-draw filing cabinets), and colour displays time out just when you are managing to finally figure out whether it was the blue/green wire or the green/blue wire that deactivates the detonator.

Re:Wot no Eink?

[iampiti]

I'm sure you're aware of larger eink based ereaders. There're some with 9,7 inch screens and those are pretty nice for information-dense PDFs. They're something like 1200x800 in resolution, and their size it's still too small to read dense A4 PDFs, but they're certainly much better than the 6 inch readers.
I have an Onyx M92 and it supports a nice number of formats (EPUB, PDF, cbz, even Excel and Word) but that's old and I'm sure there're much better models by now.

Re:Wot no Eink?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes you and the 100 other people on the planet need that. I am sure B&N will build that device so they can get 101 devices sold. They would only lose about $40 million.

Re:Wot no Eink?

[nabsltd]

I have an Onyx M92 and it supports a nice number of formats (EPUB, PDF, cbz, even Excel and Word) but that's old and I'm sure there're much better models by now.

Nope, there's nothing better in the 9-10" e-ink category.

I have the same reader and have been looking for something new because the poor HTML support on the reader app means I have to manually edit every book so it looks correct, because they all use the features (drop caps, embedded fonts, etc.) available on the Kindle.

Re:Wot no Eink?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a small Kobo e-ink reader and while I love the type of display, I can't really read PDFs on it. PDF->Epub conversion gives you a crappy epub which isn't any nicer to read. I do like the 'Pocket' integration, though, and you can't beat the battery life.

Color E-Ink?

[camperdave]

Is it waterproof, color, full-sunlight readable, rapid transition, low power, e-ink technology? Or is it simply some crippled tablet?

Re:Color E-Ink?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why yes, yes it is.... simply some crippled tablet.

I regret, now

[Anonymous Coward]

Not having bought 2 Nook HDs a year ago. The HD+ had been released and the HD was $124 including tax.

Almost as good as the 2013 Nook HD+

[Gim Tom]

I got a Nook HD+ in 2013 and have never run the Nook OS on it. I am now running the Cyanaogen vs of KitKat and except for the GPS stuff I don't see what these new Nooks do any better and probably some things worse. My first question is, can you ROOT them?

Re:Almost as good as the 2013 Nook HD+

[swv3752]

The new nooks are just Samsung tablets with some Nook software. So whatever you could do with the base Samsung table you can still do.

The reason to buy the nook tablet, is a) cheaper or b) for the non-tech savy: lifetime support.

Free it!

[Anonymous Coward]

All they have to do is make their devices completely open, and then let the enthusiastic hobbyists of the world develop a great product for them!

When will the hardware people learn to get out of the way, and source the wisdom of the crowds?

I hope they do and suceed

[btroy]

Having used various models of the Nook (Eink (1st nook, nook touch), Tablet, HD, HD+), I love their stuff. The first edition of Samsung devices (larger screen ones) were a down step from the HD+ which was simply beautiful.. You talk about lock in, etc. The device was built for average folks (not us geeks that frequent this site). I've watched my wife and kids use the devices and frankly, for the target market of readers and tablet games, etc. The devices have been great. I personally use a Nook Touch and HD. They do their job well. The screen on the HD is nice, the latest high-end tablets are exceeding it now, but still for most cases it is beautiful. Regarding of the hiding and DRM. Well they have to protect their contracts with the book companies as well. I don't like it, but I understand the nature of it.

Every day

[The-Ixian]

I am a little closer to moving entirely to Amazon.

I started with a Nook. At the time, the Kindle did not have a touch interface and I liked the screen size and back light of the Nook.

Fast forward several years and mysterious B&N charges that show up and cause holds on my funds that drop off after a week coupled with really poor touch screen performance and no Windows mobile app and I am about ready to call it.

I really love the e-ink for reading and for battery life so the notion of going with a crippled Android tablet as a reader is just silly.

Wait a second...

[JohnFen]

Barnes & Noble still exists???

Higher end? We've seen this...

[Anonymous Coward]

We've seen what happens to the higher-end e-reader retailers. We called it Sony.