Amazon shows off Kindle app for iPad | Hacker News Reader

Amazon shows off Kindle app for iPad

wired.com

It's interesting how many articles have quotes like these

  but it also sends Amazon’s own grayscale-only hardware to the back of the line

that lack any consideration for the positives of Amazon's decision to have an E-ink screen. For many people who bought the Kindle, the insanely good contrast, even in areas with direct sunlight, is a must have.

Also, I'd like to see an iPad last for a month without charging.

The problem is that a Kindle is a tool for readers. But iPad is a more general-purpose tool: While usable by readers, it also serves up color rendering of web pages, TV, movies, and whatever else there is an app for, not the least of which is interactive games.

So iPad is going to swamp Kindle in the press, just as the audience, gross profit, PR, and media for the typical movie dwarfs that of the book or comic from which it was derived.

Amazon can't realistically have expected more from Kindle. The product remains successful, it continues (as we can see) to drive interest in Amazon ebooks on other hardware platforms, and most likely the hardware (or similar e-Ink hardware) will remain available in one form or another for the relatively small number of buyers who fit its use case. But it will never out-hype the iPad. The potential market is just too small.

I think that the idea that Amazon is selling hardware is missing the point entirely. A lot of the time companies lose money selling hardware (ex. the price to produce a PC is more than the selling price... they make up for it by being paid to put 'trial' software on the windows install).

So, in parallel, amazon doesn't really give a crap about whether they sell a ton of kindles. What they care about is that the amazon kindle store makes a crap-ton of money. If everyone goes out and buys an ipad, and "kindle on ipad" is a killer app for ipad, amazon ends up making way more money than they would trying to match their own hardware against Apple's.

I'm an avid reader and I got the DX when it came out (it is freaking sweet). I'd probably be too distracted/eye-strained reading on a tablet PC for the number of hours that I do. (I realize that I am an outlier, however).

My one complaint is that there are actually a lot of books that I cannot get for the kindle, and it is hard to take notes in the margin so I end up reading certain books on dead trees. (Maybe the ipad touch screen will make it easier to do margin notes?)

Amazon looses if backlit screens beat the kindle and other e-ink screens. People don't read voluminous quantities on a backlit screen; it's hard on the eyes. Amazon will sell more books if the main platform has an e-ink screen, because people will read less if they are using a backlit screen- imho. (this is if we hold the user base constant across devices)

It's true, it's not a total loss if the iPad dominates yet the kindle app is popular, but it's not the ideal scenario.

Isn't this the same philosophy people had about the video games industry for a long time?

It's proven that "hardcore" gamers buy a lot more games than casual gamers, and that they are far easier to sell related merchandise and subscription to.

Yet, the success of the Wii has proven that the sheer size of the casual demographic more than makes up for the fact that they buy fewer of your products.

There will always be the hardcore, voracious readers, but I'm not convinced that it's not worthwhile to go after the casual readers who might only read 2-3 books in a whole year.

First, I am aware of that and was not discussing that part- the holding user base equal bit

Second, I suspect even the casual readers would read less.

I'm not sure about that.

People who get the kindle are more likely to read a lot, whereas people who get the ipad (as opposed to the kindle) are more likely to read fairly casually. (You get the ipad because you want the internet and all of the games/apps).

I'm not really sure that it holds that people will read less on their backlit device than on a normal kindle. I'm a software developer and I spend all day staring at a computer screen (8+ hours). I take periodic breaks, and yes, it is bad on my eyes, but the back-lighting of the screen isn't enough to stop me from doing it (I only really notice at my yearly optometrist appointment).

If the iPad app allowed you to pick some mellower colors for the text/background, that would probably go a long way towards making the device usable. Black on Grey (or dkgreen on black!) is a lot easier to look at prolonged than black on white, for example.

For me, the more obvious benefit to reading on my Kindle isn't lack of eye strain (I stare at monitors all day too), but lack of glare. Even with full backlight, using my laptop outside on a sunny day ranges from being uncomfortable to completely unusable. With the e-ink screen, that's barely an issue.

I've been waiting for _precisely_ this application for about 12+ months (I'm a K1, K2, and Kindle-on-iPhone User).

The Kindle E-Ink is _the_ platform to read books outdoors, by the beach, anywhere it's really sunny - you just can't do better (it outperforms paper - less glare).

But, for anywhere you need backlighting (Bed, Dark Trains) - The Kindle is a less than exciting performer. Even my little book lights are problematic - the sun works fine, but the little LED lights tend to put point glare on the Kindle screen. I always end up reading books on my iPhone, which is _almost_ acceptable - iPad will blow it all away.

My hope now is that people like Oreilly will start offering their kindle books at a reasonable price. I _already_ have all their books on paper, paying $30+ dollars for the Kindle Version is painful)

I've heard a few people complain about the low-light scenarios and was worried about it. However when I got a good LED light with a long neck, I found it was trivial to position it far enough to the side so there'd be no glare.

Hallelujah - Even though I have my iPad on order (and reserved, just for good measure) - and will hopefully be in reading bliss in 12 days, I would _kill_ to get a decent book light for my Kindles. I've gone through three of them, and even with a difuser (which was a hack), I always ended up having to try and read _around_ that one stupid glare point on the screen. I finally gave up and switched to my iPhone for dark light reading.

So, share - which LED light are you using, and do you have a diffuser or any after-market modifications to it?

Wierd :\ I just got the first one I found: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002CMLDT6/ref=oss_product

The neck is long enough that if I put it off to the left, I get nice solid illuminiation with no glare spots. (And I'm pretty sensitive to this kind of stuff.)

Note you do need to move the light far over to the left for it to be OK. In practise I've never found it to be a hindrance.

My plan for O'Reilly books and iPad is to read them via Safari Library. I've already tested this on the iPad simulator, and it works great. iPad + Safari Library == Geek dream.

The Kindle software is absolutely awful. It's slow - you can list 4 bookmarks and it takes 20 seconds, and the same goes for substring search (buggy AND slow). Also, the system has a 534MHZ CPU but because it's Java running on top of Linux, it's a dog. I only got one for the screen and because it lets you upload a book in open formats (unlike the Sony and Nook devices).

As a point of interest, I wrote a text ebook reader for my Psion 3/5 which was written in OPL and reformatted text automatically. Interesting, because it ran faster than the Kindle can on a 8 or 12 MHZ CPU with very little memory.

Kindle also extremely lacks options, like different fonts, text that goes to the edge (no border), no justify on/off (on by default), and so on.

My point is that I can write a better ebook reader than Amazon, on a device with a tiny amount of CPU and memory, and it's shameful that the Kindle software is SO awful.

I think it's more to do with eInk than anything else.

The app looks amazing. However, I think this will be the Google Voice of the iPad. Under review ad infinitum, always possible never approved :-)

Still, the effort Amazon seems to have put in show that it is clearly focused on selling books, not the hardware the books are read on. That the app is almost certain to make it into the App store shows that the reverse is true with Apple: it wants the iPad to be the go-to media device, whatever that media may be.

Yeah - but "almost certain to make it" is not the same as "made it", you know? Not being cynical, just basing my opinion on previous actions on Apple's part.

It's a completely different scenario from Google Voice. Apple's rejection of Google Voice has more to do with AT&T than anything. Google Voice was a substitute product for AT&T call plans, therefore not good for AT&T.

iPads and e-books are complementary products. Amazon doesn't care how many Kindles are sold, as long as they keep selling books. Apple doesn't care how many e-books are sold, as long as they keep selling iPads.

Want to take a bet that the Kindle App will be approved?

No bet really, don't have enough data to decide ;-)

Apple is building a bookstore, analogous to the iTunes music store. Google Voice was a poor analogy on my part, a better analogy would be an app that was rejected for trying to sell music or ape the iPod functionality on the iPhone. Sure, apple wants to sell more devices (razor/blade analogy) but they're also very anal about protecting their monopolies.

But anyway, at this point this debate is pure conjecture so we're gonna just have to hold out till the iPad comes out and the app gets approved :-)

  Apple is building a bookstore, analogous to the iTunes
  music store.

Does not matter. Apple has ITMS bet they never did try to stop anyone loading iPods with the music no matter what source of that music was. Same will be true for iPad — it does not matter where content comes from, as long as it helps to sell more hardware.

Google Voice is not VoIP. You still need a voice plan to make phone calls. It is not a substitute product for AT&T's call plans.

You're absolutely right. Though, I still think that Google Voice was more dangerous to AT&T than Apple. I don't know how blocking the Kindle App would benefit Apple in any way, except if they want to exert complete monopoly over the platform/market.

Podcaster was rejected initially because it duplicated the functionality of ITunes. However, a re-branded version of the app called RSSPlayer got approved.

Let's see... I'm willing to bet that Apple will not approve the app for the iPad. After all, they now provide their own ebook reader and we all know their stance about third-party apps duplicating functionality that's already available on the device.

Maybe they'll even remove the existing iPhone app because that would run on the iPad too.

The stance about third-party apps duplicating functionality has always referred to functionality of the device's built-in software. iBooks is a (free) App Store app and does not come preloaded on the iPad.

I am pretty sure at this point in time Apple care more about getting this device off the shelves. They said themselves that the app store doesn't actually make them any money and I can't see the iBook store making them much either. The money really comes in when they shift the hardware.

Looks great. I bought a lot of books on the Kindle for iPhone so I'm happy to see that they platform is alive and growing.

But I'd also like to see Amazon create apps for other devices. I can't change phones easily because too few of them have a Kindle app.

Looks good. Makes me wish even more that Amazon had been able to keep the $9.99 pricing on ebooks. At that price, I'd probably buy many ebooks. But for 50% more, the public library will still be my #1 choice.

I don't mind the higher prices, but they do need to add features to compensate.

$10 was a hard-sell because it was only available on platforms Amazon feels like supporting, only has the features Amazon feels like supporting (no search? no annotation?) can't be lent, can't be resold/gifted/donated, etc.

FairPlay is (slightly) more consumer-friendly as a DRM package, but I'm still bound to the 'blessed' apps of the service, the features and platforms they feel like supporting, still can't resell/gift/donate, etc.

Again, it's not price that keeps me away from most ebooks. It's price/performance. I still buy a few. Here and there. But I'm not building a library of the things the way I have with mp3 and h264.

Doesn't this "duplicate functionality of one of Apple's apps"?

I smell a storm coming.

Not a built-in app: iBooks is an App Store app.

Whether or not it's approved, it seems this may well "pay" for itself in terms of PR.

The article notes:

You can adjust "paper" color

I wish that Safari Online offered this feature. Reading extensively from a transmissive (or strongly lighted reflective) white background is tiring. I'd welcome the ability to tint the background to something more tolerable (preferably a user-defined setting).

Stanza (an ebook reader on the app store) does this by allowing you to slide your finger up and down the middle of the screen. I found it a really nice feature as you can constantly adjust it while you are reading.

On a Mac you can hit CTRL-OPTION-CMD 8 to invert your screen. I do this often when I want to read with a darker background. It inverts everything so images look awful, but it is a really easy way to make some things easier to read.

I spend a lot of my day on a Windows machine. There's an AutoHotKey script ("Ghoster") that tints (by default, with a medium gray) all but the focused window -- as a means of lessening distraction. I haven't tried writing any AHK scripting, but now that I think of it, it shouldn't be too hard (?) to adapt it to instead tint (with a lighter shade) the focused window. Since it paints over everything, it should affect the Safari Flash widget.

I supposed I could instead park the Safari browser window in the background, but that would be kind of a pain with regard to usability.

Also, use Readability: http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/

to customize your viewing experience.

Safari Online has re-instated an HTML view on some items, but others are visible only via Flash. (I know, but $30 / month (promotional price) for access to their entire library outweighs my Flash aversion.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com