I'm a woman. I carry a purse. The Kindle 2 in its cover is no significant burden. The iPad, however, would not be able to fit in my purse.
The iPhone has the massive advantage of fitting in my pocket (which is a feat, the pockets on girl pants are TINY). However, i rarely read on the thing. I have the Kindle app and Goodreader, and I just don't read on it, unless I am desperate. I suppose it's a combination of the small screen size and the backlight, but I get a headache after just a few minutes.
The by-location posts are quite interesting. It doesn't use your location unless you tell it to, like all iPhone apps. I took a look and there are a lot of pictures of snow being posted by people in my neighborhood, cause that's the big new thing happening in DC, right now.
The problem is that there hasn't been any continued setup. The story is, up to this point, frustratingly linear. My characters are either loyal or they're not. I can't piss them off and make them disloyal. I can't shove Miranda out the airlock. Compare to Dragon Age, where I can piss off half of the party so bad that they try to kill me.
Every mission in Mass Effect had some kind of major choice. Free the rachni or kill them? Ashley or Kaiden? Wrex? At this point in the game (about 15 hours in), I haven't made a single decision that felt significant like those in ME1. If they're setting up for ME3, they're making it so that they don't have to deal with the complications they undoubtedly had in importing characters from ME1 to ME2.
The story has much more depth, and more interesting, fleshed-out than Gears of War or Halo.
I kind of want to kill myself for that sentence.
For a BioWare game, it's weak. Really weak. I'm not done with it yet, but there's so much LESS choice than even ME1. Your choices from ME1 come through loud and clear with consequences and characters who remember you, but there are no NEW choices I have made, and I am 15 hours in. The dialog wheel doesn't control Shepards actions, it just controls how much a dick he is about them.
So, does it have a good story, compared to Jade Empire or KOTOR? Hell no. It's horrid. Compared to the average shooter fans that I think BioWare was trying to attract? It's a story of amazing depth and quality, with a combat system that they know and are comfortable with.
Western RPGs, and BioWare games in particular, really draw from the openness of D&D at their roots. The main character is an avatar, whose name and face and personality the player fills in, and whose choices affect the entire game. In direct contrast, Japanese RPGs offer fully-fleshed out main characters, whom you follow but don't control the decisions of.
Mass Effect has lost sight of this, and is edging towards the Japanese model without looking like it is. The good/evil system is crap. Paragon and Renegade are suppose to be an evolution of good and evil, but ends up being a nice guy/jackass system, since the final results of Shepards actions are always the same when it matters- he's just more or less of a douche about it. There's not a whole lot of the interesting moral choices that made Jade Empire, Fallout 3, and Dragon Age so much fun. In ME2 this problem is far, FAR worse. I've played about 15 hours, and I've made countless dialog selections... but I haven't made any CHOICES.
There is a depressingly small amount of dialog with the party members. The characters are largely flat and uninteresting, and following through on their side missions doesn't flesh them out much.
The combat is Gears of War lite. The hacking minigames are better than the previous Simon Says, but the planet scanning is just as monotonous as driving the Mako around, but without all the fun that comes with trying to get the Mako to flip over.
I'm having fun with it. It's just not the kind of game I expect from BioWare. I'd be ok with that, but they tried very hard to make it seem like it had the same depth as Dragon Age or KOTOR, which it absolutely doesn't.
But Apple wanted an ebook reader, and that's what they made.
An ebook reader they made, with pros and cons vs the rest of the ebook world:
Pros:
Color - self explanatory
Backlight - for night reading. Other ebook readers get to clip on old-fashioned booklights.
Access to three different ebook stores - in addition to the rebranded iBook, B&N and Amazon maintain iPhone reader apps, which obviously carry over, for price compaison and greater selection.
Cons:
Backlight - for hurty eyes after 6 hours of reading straight- reading takes a lot more focus than movie watching, and the backlight will strain your eyes after too long.
Multitasking - You know how sleep doctors will tell you not to work in bed, because you don't want to build an association between bed and working, lest it trigger insomnia? I have this problem with my iPhone, and my computer. I constantly flit from app to app, or window to window, doing a dozen different things, and that makes it hard to focus on just one thing when using it. The flip side is the Kindle, where the only thing is does well is reading, and there is no opportunity for another window or app to distract me. Just like beds are for sleeping, Kindles are for focused reading.
Battery - eInk readers are good for ~40 hours of constant use, which puts the total battery life at about two weeks (assuming ~3/day of reading). The iPad looks like it will need a charge every day to every other day, much like the iPhone.
And, of course, there's the iPhone/iPod Touch. The main advantage the iPhone has over the Kindle as a reader is the size- the Kindle goes with me almost everywhere, in my purse. The iPhone goes with me absolutely everywhere, no exceptions, in my pocket. The iPad negates this completely. And the other things I do with my iPhone: logging calories, logging purchases, making calls, GPS navigation, and taking pictures, are all better served by a pocket-sized, with-me-everywhere device.
So, the iPad's killer app is not ebooks. That doesn't mean that there won't be one. I imagine it will be a wild success in the niche markets that TabletPCs are used for... mainly since Apple gives excellent UI tools to their developers. One of the problems is that TabletPCs just use regular PC interfaces. iPad developers will have to make their apps with touch input in mind, rather than blindly assuming a mouse or trackpad.
Probably because hard drives are largely inert, while batteries will explode if you do it wrong. Yes, it's perfectly possible to replace the battery yourself, but Apple doesn't want to be liable for your medical bills from the burn unit if you do.
It's a good thing for authors (more money), for readers (reasonably priced, non-crippled books), and probably good for Amazon (more sales altogether albeit at a lower profit margin). Just because it's a good deal all around doesn't stop it from being a strong sign of nervousness about Apple.
B&N doesn't offer a self-publishing option, so I couldn't find their standard ebook royalty rates online.
Matching Apple's 70% royalties is another major sign of Amazon's Apple envy- but also a strong financial incentive for authors and publishers to be "well behaved" when pricing their Kindle books, as in keep prices lower than paper, offer TTS, etc.
Zagat guides are already available on the Kindle, so I presume they're looking to update the book content. I really can't see what else they'd want to do.
As you say, games are going to be pretty basic. The Kindle already has minesweeper, and that pushes it's abilities.
Developers are in for a major challenge, and many of them are likely going to decide, and rightly so, that the Kindle isn't the right platform for them.
I'm excited about the possibilities, but worried that some developers will port their apps to Kindle because they can, without considering if it's a good match for Kindle. The Kindle really is a content consumption platform, not a content creation platform (you read, not write, on it). I can see a Twitter client working, however, since 140 characters is about the most I'd ever want to type on a Kindle keyboard. I think Amazon is conscious of this, as they are avoiding the term "app" in favor of "active content."
In any case, the Kindle's very slow refresh rate poses UI challenges that haven't really been faced before. I'm interested to see how developers contend with it. Another possible issue is battery life. The Kindle's battery is actually very, very small. The reason it lasts so long is that only page turns draw current, and even then only a small amount of current, and then you have to read a whole page before you draw current again. If you're refreshing every three seconds instead of every two minutes, you're going to see a serious drop in battery life, especially if the apps expect wireless connectivity. My two week Kindle battery could drop to two days easily.
The Kindle for me is still just for reading. While it CAN do email and web browsing and minesweeper, I use my iPhone for all those things. And while my iPhone CAN read my Kindle books, I use my Kindle for that. Reading is so central a part of my life that I'm not willing to sacrifice the quality of the experience on a convergence device- especially one that will start ringing or flash push notifications in the middle of a very suspenseful book.
But really, the whole thing reeks of Apple envy. This and the royalties change tells me that they feel VERY threatened by the Apple tablet.
The problem is that one of the draws of being a subscriber is the access to the archives or other services that are commonly pay-only for newspapers that offer their current news for free.
But, as a Kindle subscriber, I don't get access to subscriber-only content at WashingtonPost.com, and I don't believe any other Kindle/eReader subscriptions do either. I do prefer the Kindle edition to home delivery - I get the paper earlier, cheaper, with no ads, and no contortions trying to read the second half of the article on page B7. I just don't want to be excluded from "subscriber-only" content because I get my subscription printed on an electronic display instead of dead trees.
My Kindle's USB wall charger charges my iPhone (with the USB->iPod cable instead of the USB->microUSB cable) so I have no idea what you're talking about.
When I'm looking at a resume, I don't want to see RoxxyFoxxy@somewhere.com. Or something completely weird and difficult to decipher and type out. It's not hard to maintain a FMLastname or Firstname.Lastname@gmail.com and direct it to an address that expresses your individuality or whatnot.
Basically, I'm looking for professionalism. That means a resume with no typos or obvious errors/exaggerations ("Proficient in C, C+, and C++" is a gem that springs to mind), and appropriate attire at the interview. Having some kind of in-joke or bizarre reference or obscure handle as your username on the resume is kind of like wearing a tshirt with a weird slogan on it to the interview, although certainly not so severe.
I work with a lot of small businesses (mainly proprietary schools) and this happens a lot. You'd be surprised how many people use their own personal ISP-provided email as the official point of contact for their business- even printing it on their catalog. It's not like these people don't have their own domain names for their school's website, they just don't use it for email.
I also have a telecommute-only coworker who uses his unpronounceable at hotmail email for work emails. This disturbs me greatly, but I have no authority to change it.
The screensaver is a static image- it only appears when you put it to sleep, and doesn't change until you wake it up and put it to sleep again. Because eInk isn't a CRT and doesn't actually NEED a screensaver, it's more of a pretty keylock screen than a screensaver.
I just don't see the benefit in 3D TV. I know the technology is getting better, but the 3D in Avatar was just good enough to not be a distraction from the movie- it certainly didn't add anything to it, besides $5 for the ticket. The point is that for most of the movie, I did not perceive anything different than a normal movie, and those moments when I did were distracting and jarring. I have seen a couple imax movies in 3D and I think I tend to mentally flatten the images- except for the parts where the snake jumps out at you, which is just distracting and cheesy.
So, if I'm going to be mentally flattening the images anyway, why bother?
In general, Grandparent is right. In the case of the iPhone, they had to announce early or let the FCC do the announcing for them, because the FCC publishes data about the various phones they approve.
But most of the time, a new product is available for purchase within a week, if not a day, of the announcement.
I'm also new to the work force, and I work at a small, non-IT company, and I spend perhaps 2/3 of my workday goofing off. Slashdot, Fark, etc etc etc.
And then I get raises and huge bonuses (15% of my salary, for a 2st year worker) and lots of praise from my boss for being such a hard worker. Yes, I get all my assigned tasks done on time, but I really should be - and could be - doing a lot more. 6 hours of an 8 hour job aimlessly surfing the internet and I am a model employee?
I really just can't accept the fact that I am doing that well. All I can assume is that the previous people in my position were such utter failures that mediocre is golden.
The "some" there stems from the two models of the Kindle 2- the US wireless and international wireless. At the time the update was released, the International was shipping, so the Kindle 2 US was an earlier model that DID receive the update, while the Kindle 1 is an earlier model that did not.
The internet can be used to answer all sorts of questions! I recently left my laptop unattended in the living room, and when I came back "How to get a threesome in Dragon Age" was in the search box.
The only question now is which one of my roommates needed to resort to a FAQ to figure that one out...
Consoles aren't in any danger in my house, because I have ceased to maintain a gaming PC. I've switched to console gaming entirely- at the cost of the superior control scheme of Dragon Age, the third-party mods of Oblivion, and the keyboard-and-mouse input that I'm so familiar with. I gave that all up in order to get a game that I know will work when I get home, that won't disagree with my video card or run like a slideshow cause I don't have enough RAM.
Console gaming is, in my opinion, stronger than ever. It just happens to be a recession and people are spending less on luxuries... like video games.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a woman. I carry a purse. The Kindle 2 in its cover is no significant burden. The iPad, however, would not be able to fit in my purse.
The iPhone has the massive advantage of fitting in my pocket (which is a feat, the pockets on girl pants are TINY). However, i rarely read on the thing. I have the Kindle app and Goodreader, and I just don't read on it, unless I am desperate. I suppose it's a combination of the small screen size and the backlight, but I get a headache after just a few minutes.
The by-location posts are quite interesting. It doesn't use your location unless you tell it to, like all iPhone apps. I took a look and there are a lot of pictures of snow being posted by people in my neighborhood, cause that's the big new thing happening in DC, right now.
The problem is that there hasn't been any continued setup. The story is, up to this point, frustratingly linear. My characters are either loyal or they're not. I can't piss them off and make them disloyal. I can't shove Miranda out the airlock. Compare to Dragon Age, where I can piss off half of the party so bad that they try to kill me.
Every mission in Mass Effect had some kind of major choice. Free the rachni or kill them? Ashley or Kaiden? Wrex? At this point in the game (about 15 hours in), I haven't made a single decision that felt significant like those in ME1. If they're setting up for ME3, they're making it so that they don't have to deal with the complications they undoubtedly had in importing characters from ME1 to ME2.
The story has much more depth, and more interesting, fleshed-out than Gears of War or Halo.
I kind of want to kill myself for that sentence.
For a BioWare game, it's weak. Really weak. I'm not done with it yet, but there's so much LESS choice than even ME1. Your choices from ME1 come through loud and clear with consequences and characters who remember you, but there are no NEW choices I have made, and I am 15 hours in. The dialog wheel doesn't control Shepards actions, it just controls how much a dick he is about them.
So, does it have a good story, compared to Jade Empire or KOTOR? Hell no. It's horrid. Compared to the average shooter fans that I think BioWare was trying to attract? It's a story of amazing depth and quality, with a combat system that they know and are comfortable with.
Western RPGs, and BioWare games in particular, really draw from the openness of D&D at their roots. The main character is an avatar, whose name and face and personality the player fills in, and whose choices affect the entire game. In direct contrast, Japanese RPGs offer fully-fleshed out main characters, whom you follow but don't control the decisions of.
Mass Effect has lost sight of this, and is edging towards the Japanese model without looking like it is. The good/evil system is crap. Paragon and Renegade are suppose to be an evolution of good and evil, but ends up being a nice guy/jackass system, since the final results of Shepards actions are always the same when it matters- he's just more or less of a douche about it. There's not a whole lot of the interesting moral choices that made Jade Empire, Fallout 3, and Dragon Age so much fun. In ME2 this problem is far, FAR worse. I've played about 15 hours, and I've made countless dialog selections... but I haven't made any CHOICES.
There is a depressingly small amount of dialog with the party members. The characters are largely flat and uninteresting, and following through on their side missions doesn't flesh them out much.
The combat is Gears of War lite. The hacking minigames are better than the previous Simon Says, but the planet scanning is just as monotonous as driving the Mako around, but without all the fun that comes with trying to get the Mako to flip over.
I'm having fun with it. It's just not the kind of game I expect from BioWare. I'd be ok with that, but they tried very hard to make it seem like it had the same depth as Dragon Age or KOTOR, which it absolutely doesn't.
http://www.wacom.com/bamboo/bamboo_pen_touch.php
You can get 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity for $99. The next product line up offers MORE pressure sensitivity and can detect pen tilt as well.
So, yeah, I'm not seeing the innovation here.
But Apple wanted an ebook reader, and that's what they made.
An ebook reader they made, with pros and cons vs the rest of the ebook world:
Pros:
Color - self explanatory
Backlight - for night reading. Other ebook readers get to clip on old-fashioned booklights.
Access to three different ebook stores - in addition to the rebranded iBook, B&N and Amazon maintain iPhone reader apps, which obviously carry over, for price compaison and greater selection.
Cons:
Backlight - for hurty eyes after 6 hours of reading straight- reading takes a lot more focus than movie watching, and the backlight will strain your eyes after too long.
Multitasking - You know how sleep doctors will tell you not to work in bed, because you don't want to build an association between bed and working, lest it trigger insomnia? I have this problem with my iPhone, and my computer. I constantly flit from app to app, or window to window, doing a dozen different things, and that makes it hard to focus on just one thing when using it. The flip side is the Kindle, where the only thing is does well is reading, and there is no opportunity for another window or app to distract me. Just like beds are for sleeping, Kindles are for focused reading.
Battery - eInk readers are good for ~40 hours of constant use, which puts the total battery life at about two weeks (assuming ~3/day of reading). The iPad looks like it will need a charge every day to every other day, much like the iPhone.
And, of course, there's the iPhone/iPod Touch. The main advantage the iPhone has over the Kindle as a reader is the size- the Kindle goes with me almost everywhere, in my purse. The iPhone goes with me absolutely everywhere, no exceptions, in my pocket. The iPad negates this completely. And the other things I do with my iPhone: logging calories, logging purchases, making calls, GPS navigation, and taking pictures, are all better served by a pocket-sized, with-me-everywhere device.
So, the iPad's killer app is not ebooks. That doesn't mean that there won't be one. I imagine it will be a wild success in the niche markets that TabletPCs are used for... mainly since Apple gives excellent UI tools to their developers. One of the problems is that TabletPCs just use regular PC interfaces. iPad developers will have to make their apps with touch input in mind, rather than blindly assuming a mouse or trackpad.
Probably because hard drives are largely inert, while batteries will explode if you do it wrong. Yes, it's perfectly possible to replace the battery yourself, but Apple doesn't want to be liable for your medical bills from the burn unit if you do.
It's a good thing for authors (more money), for readers (reasonably priced, non-crippled books), and probably good for Amazon (more sales altogether albeit at a lower profit margin). Just because it's a good deal all around doesn't stop it from being a strong sign of nervousness about Apple.
B&N doesn't offer a self-publishing option, so I couldn't find their standard ebook royalty rates online.
Because it didn't make it to /. but is relevant: Amazon's Press Release about Royalty Hikes from yesterday.
Matching Apple's 70% royalties is another major sign of Amazon's Apple envy- but also a strong financial incentive for authors and publishers to be "well behaved" when pricing their Kindle books, as in keep prices lower than paper, offer TTS, etc.
Zagat guides are already available on the Kindle, so I presume they're looking to update the book content. I really can't see what else they'd want to do.
As you say, games are going to be pretty basic. The Kindle already has minesweeper, and that pushes it's abilities.
Developers are in for a major challenge, and many of them are likely going to decide, and rightly so, that the Kindle isn't the right platform for them.
I'm excited about the possibilities, but worried that some developers will port their apps to Kindle because they can, without considering if it's a good match for Kindle. The Kindle really is a content consumption platform, not a content creation platform (you read, not write, on it). I can see a Twitter client working, however, since 140 characters is about the most I'd ever want to type on a Kindle keyboard. I think Amazon is conscious of this, as they are avoiding the term "app" in favor of "active content."
In any case, the Kindle's very slow refresh rate poses UI challenges that haven't really been faced before. I'm interested to see how developers contend with it. Another possible issue is battery life. The Kindle's battery is actually very, very small. The reason it lasts so long is that only page turns draw current, and even then only a small amount of current, and then you have to read a whole page before you draw current again. If you're refreshing every three seconds instead of every two minutes, you're going to see a serious drop in battery life, especially if the apps expect wireless connectivity. My two week Kindle battery could drop to two days easily.
The Kindle for me is still just for reading. While it CAN do email and web browsing and minesweeper, I use my iPhone for all those things. And while my iPhone CAN read my Kindle books, I use my Kindle for that. Reading is so central a part of my life that I'm not willing to sacrifice the quality of the experience on a convergence device- especially one that will start ringing or flash push notifications in the middle of a very suspenseful book.
But really, the whole thing reeks of Apple envy. This and the royalties change tells me that they feel VERY threatened by the Apple tablet.
The problem is that one of the draws of being a subscriber is the access to the archives or other services that are commonly pay-only for newspapers that offer their current news for free.
But, as a Kindle subscriber, I don't get access to subscriber-only content at WashingtonPost.com, and I don't believe any other Kindle/eReader subscriptions do either. I do prefer the Kindle edition to home delivery - I get the paper earlier, cheaper, with no ads, and no contortions trying to read the second half of the article on page B7. I just don't want to be excluded from "subscriber-only" content because I get my subscription printed on an electronic display instead of dead trees.
Here's the abstract. Disassembling, yes. Accelerometers, not so much.
My Kindle's USB wall charger charges my iPhone (with the USB->iPod cable instead of the USB->microUSB cable) so I have no idea what you're talking about.
When I'm looking at a resume, I don't want to see RoxxyFoxxy@somewhere.com. Or something completely weird and difficult to decipher and type out. It's not hard to maintain a FMLastname or Firstname.Lastname@gmail.com and direct it to an address that expresses your individuality or whatnot.
Basically, I'm looking for professionalism. That means a resume with no typos or obvious errors/exaggerations ("Proficient in C, C+, and C++" is a gem that springs to mind), and appropriate attire at the interview. Having some kind of in-joke or bizarre reference or obscure handle as your username on the resume is kind of like wearing a tshirt with a weird slogan on it to the interview, although certainly not so severe.
I work with a lot of small businesses (mainly proprietary schools) and this happens a lot. You'd be surprised how many people use their own personal ISP-provided email as the official point of contact for their business- even printing it on their catalog. It's not like these people don't have their own domain names for their school's website, they just don't use it for email.
I also have a telecommute-only coworker who uses his unpronounceable at hotmail email for work emails. This disturbs me greatly, but I have no authority to change it.
The screensaver is a static image- it only appears when you put it to sleep, and doesn't change until you wake it up and put it to sleep again. Because eInk isn't a CRT and doesn't actually NEED a screensaver, it's more of a pretty keylock screen than a screensaver.
I just don't see the benefit in 3D TV. I know the technology is getting better, but the 3D in Avatar was just good enough to not be a distraction from the movie- it certainly didn't add anything to it, besides $5 for the ticket. The point is that for most of the movie, I did not perceive anything different than a normal movie, and those moments when I did were distracting and jarring. I have seen a couple imax movies in 3D and I think I tend to mentally flatten the images- except for the parts where the snake jumps out at you, which is just distracting and cheesy.
So, if I'm going to be mentally flattening the images anyway, why bother?
Are you kidding? It had no WiFi and less space than a Nomad. Totally lame.
In general, Grandparent is right. In the case of the iPhone, they had to announce early or let the FCC do the announcing for them, because the FCC publishes data about the various phones they approve.
But most of the time, a new product is available for purchase within a week, if not a day, of the announcement.
I'm also new to the work force, and I work at a small, non-IT company, and I spend perhaps 2/3 of my workday goofing off. Slashdot, Fark, etc etc etc.
And then I get raises and huge bonuses (15% of my salary, for a 2st year worker) and lots of praise from my boss for being such a hard worker. Yes, I get all my assigned tasks done on time, but I really should be - and could be - doing a lot more. 6 hours of an 8 hour job aimlessly surfing the internet and I am a model employee?
I really just can't accept the fact that I am doing that well. All I can assume is that the previous people in my position were such utter failures that mediocre is golden.
The "some" there stems from the two models of the Kindle 2- the US wireless and international wireless. At the time the update was released, the International was shipping, so the Kindle 2 US was an earlier model that DID receive the update, while the Kindle 1 is an earlier model that did not.
The internet can be used to answer all sorts of questions! I recently left my laptop unattended in the living room, and when I came back "How to get a threesome in Dragon Age" was in the search box.
The only question now is which one of my roommates needed to resort to a FAQ to figure that one out...
Consoles aren't in any danger in my house, because I have ceased to maintain a gaming PC. I've switched to console gaming entirely- at the cost of the superior control scheme of Dragon Age, the third-party mods of Oblivion, and the keyboard-and-mouse input that I'm so familiar with. I gave that all up in order to get a game that I know will work when I get home, that won't disagree with my video card or run like a slideshow cause I don't have enough RAM.
Console gaming is, in my opinion, stronger than ever. It just happens to be a recession and people are spending less on luxuries... like video games.