Apple has sold its millionth iPad in just 28 days
ipadwatcher.com
ipadwatcher.com
Although I'm personally not surprised that books aren't that popular on iPad, but I was curious if people would overcome the above deficiencies with the form factor. Early reports seem to indicate not yet.
My camera is a lot better than my iPhone as a camera, but the best camera you have is the one you have with you. In the iPad I can carry enough of what I need with me without having to carry multiple devices.
I have not bought any books in the iBook store, as the store is not available in my region yet. But I got books from Baen Books, as well as O'Reilly, in ePUB format.
The attraction to me with the iPad is that I have a choice. An open format reader and a choice of books stores. I did buy a book from Amazon on the iPad Kindle app, but haven't started reading it yet, so time will tell.
You'd still need to bring a phone though, as it can not do voice calls.
I've only bought one book on my iPad (just got the 3g on Friday), but the reason I haven't purchased more is that I'm still reading the first one. Once I finish that, I'll be another, etc... so I wouldn't count the iPad book sales just yet, I'd look at them over a longer time frame.
The idea that the iPad is difficult to read on has been spread mostly by.. surprise surprise... people that haven't actually read on it.
I'm sure some people may not be able to look at the screen for long. They're the same people that can't look at any computer screen for long.
Yes, you can have glare issues on rare occasion. They're usually solved by shifting the iPad slightly.
Most of us stare at screen over 8 hours a day. I can understand if you want to go home and look at something else but honestly, it has yet to bother me.
The reason so few eBooks have been sold is because the selection is weak. The books I want are almost always in the Kindle store and are rarely in iBooks. However I still use my iPad to read those Kindle books.
Additionally, that's 1.5 books a person via iBooks alone, over a 4 week period, that doesn't count the Kindle purchases. That number seems pretty good to me.
I prefer the Kindle DX by a wide margin when reading books.
The iPad is not unusable for reading, but the kindle with a bright reading light is much nicer. The Kindle is superior outdoors.
I can read without my glasses with the Kindle DX, but I always need glasses for the iPad.
The iPad is much better for everything else.
I read the entire robots and foundation Asimov novels in it, and also about 20 of the discworld books.
So, for some people it works, YMMV.
This is commonly claimed, but I've never seen a cite to any science to back it. All I've been able to find is scientists saying its a myth.
So: Reading on a kindle with a bright light closes down your pupils and makes it easier for your eyes to focus on the words without using the muscles in your eyes for focusing. This is especially important for readers over 40 who are starting to get farsighted.
An iPad has a glossy screen, which limits the contrast. (comparing signal to noise, well the reflection is all noise)
An e-ink screen has very high brightness and contrast, even (epecially) in bright sunlight.
I'm not saying it's impossible to read with the iPad or iPhone or a computer. Just realize it may take more unconscious effort for some people.
I have both an iPad and a Kindle and love both.
The kindle has room to improve on usability but it's far more practical.
By itself, reading on the Kindle is likely superior, but I've had no problem with eyestrain reading on the iPad.
Everything is comparable once you own one or the other. The risk to the Kindle is not that people shopping for e-readers will choose the iPad over it for that purpose, but that people who buy iPads for any number of other reasons will be less likely to buy dedicated e-readers.
I have an iPad but haven't bought any books, but I don't have a Kindle either. I imagine there are people who are buying iPads instead of Kindles, and they are responsible for a disproportionate number of the 1.5M books.
Also, I've read a lot of comments on how it is hard to read on an iPad (and some in the other direction) but for what it's worth, I'm in the latter camp. I've done a lot of reading (hurray Instapaper!) on my iPad and it has been a very good experience.
Even if we had that number, I'm not sure it would tell us much because the two devices are very different. On the Kindle, buying books is the primary thing to do. On the iPad, it is just one of many.
So while many iPad might be sold to people who will never read e-books, these people probably aren't reading on Kindle or even on paper anyway.
The Kindly simply isn't bought by these non-readers, so the average number of books sold per device means something different.
The Kindle is a single purpose device that has been on the market for a couple of years and every single one of them was sold to a person who is a regular reader, otherwise they would not have bothered buying a reading device.
This presupposes that people will be willing to buy (and carry) multiple devices or that they'll prefer a reader over a more general purpose device with a less pleasant reading experience. It's possible that they'll buy an iPad and stick to paperbacks. Another possibility is that they'll simply forego reading altogether.
Why read when I can just as easily kill the time playing Harbor Master HD on my shiny new toy?
Don't get me wrong, I love my Kindle and still use it for reading around the house or when I go out with that specific purpose in mind, but the iPad is what ends up in my bag on most days.
As a side note to those considering both a Kindle and an iPad, I'd go with just a Kindle 2 rather than a DX. The DX's larger screen is only really useful for reading PDFs, and the iPad is (for me anyway) better at this.
I know it sounds simplistic, but I can make the words bigger or show more of them.
iPad doesn't work worth a damn in the sun (the finger smudges show up, and the screen washes out), and even in the dark it's just not as nice as reading from paper or kindle.
I've found a bunch of use cases where the iPad excels, but there's little to no overlap with the Kindle.
What are those ?
edit: why would a genuine question out of curiosity be modded down? I'm really weirded out by that. The ipad is a reasonably new form factor and new form factors bring new use cases, and I'd like to know what those are.
Your question is totally relevant. The iPad has been presented as being great as many things, but I'd also be curious to know the opinion of people who've used it extensively. During a brief test with one, I just didn't what to do with it. It's the kind of device that you need to really use to see the benefit I think.
There must be countless others. I'm still in 'wait and see' mode about the ipad, especially with the way Apple has been behaving lately but there is bound to be competition and form factor related applications are likely going to be portable from one platform to another.
I used to own a DX, & I'm sure you can find posts of me praising it... until I got an ipad. The DX is just barely big enough to read arxiv pdfs, so I'm sure the kindle2 is much too small. More importantly, e-ink refresh rate is so slow it's a pain just switching books, or even flipping around a reference book. Then the kindle has a very bad music player & browser, & can't play video. I keep trying to tell people the ipad backlight is a complete non-issue because you can darken it http://imgur.com/h5NEi.jpg . The reflection is a bit of an issue, but you can definately work around it given the other advantages.
I go nuts when reading light text on a dark background on one of these (yes, I'm that old ;)), it's like looking straight in to a mirror.
The Bloomberg app is light text on a black background and it's very easy on the eyes.
- read my RSS feeds and Bloomberg News with my coffee and breakfast, just like I read the newspaper. I never did this with a laptop (too large, too vulnerable) and it's nice to start the day with all my news in one spot. (I also make my scrabble moves during breakfast now.)
- taking notes while in meetings / at a conference. Again, I never liked using laptops for notes because they create a physical barrier between me and the other people in the room. I didn't love paper because I didn't get a digital copy of it, unless I used my logitech pen and special paper, and it was annoying to write with and had mediocre battery life.
- auxiliary information. I now use it in lieu of printing recipes, and I use it constantly while watching sports (there's a great F1 timing and scoring app, and I love having some basic live sports data available while watching sports.)
- 'just in case' laptop. I've taken to bringing it with me in situations where I don't think I need a laptop, but where I could conceivably need better electronic communication / internet / etc than is provided by a blackberry / iphone / etc.
- 'keep the kid occupied' pad. my daughter has some quasi-educational games installed on it, and I have a few videos on it for her. Good for emergency entertainment.
Things it sucks at:
- being a full laptop. It's too small. I haven't tried using a keyboard with it, but I'm also not tempted to do so.
Cost: $1,999 Euros.
For that price I can buy 4 iPads and hook them up through Wifi to control any MIDI devices or DAW.
He is using both an iPad and an APC40 to control Ableton Live using a custom Max/MSP app that was built inside Ableton.
http://binaryally.tumblr.com/post/557336763/apple-ipad-akai-...
I have read a ton of Project Gutenberg books on the iPad already, and it is fabulous. The screen does wash out in direct sunlight, but it’s still very readable—I took it to the beach in Hawaii last week a ton and read it for hours. Beyond the beach I can’t imagine anywhere I would ever read something in direct sunlight during the course of my normal life—it’s an enormous edge case for me. Ironically, I’m unable to read a real book at the beach in direct sunlight, because too much light reflects off the page and I can’t stare at it.
And I don’t agree that it’s not as nice as reading off paper or e-ink. Everyone mentions eyestrain but my eyes have never felt ‘strained’, even after reading for six hours. I guess different strokes for different folks, but I don’t think the Kindle and iPad are any comparison. It’s like comparing a calculator and a laptop.
It does one thing, and it does it well: reading books.
When you look at a spec sheet or list of bullet-point features, and can't seem to see the attractiveness of a good-selling product, you are probably missing the forest for the trees.
[edit] Also, a futon is a bed and a couch - two use cases for the price of one! Yet it hasn't exactly taken over beds altogether. There's something to be said for devices that excel at a single primary task.
If the iPad is a BMW, then the Kindle isn’t a Toyota that costs ⅓ as much—it’s a golf cart that costs exactly as much as the BMW. If they made a futon that is better than both a stand-alone mattress and a stand-alone couch, then, yes—it would take over beds altogether.
If you meticulously remember to turn the kindle off _and_ you don't use it, you might limp to two weeks. But then you actually start reading a lot and maybe playing just a smidge of music to drone out crowd noise and you're at maybe 2 days of medium use.
Better than an iPad, but it's not some magical perpetual motion reader.
2 weeks if you don't use the Kindle? I'm confused as to how you came up with that. Some quarters I will go months without a chance to read. I turn off the wireless, my Kindle 2 auto-sleeps, and it still has a mostly-full charge months later.
If you don't use the wireless and don't play music (I find music distracting, and prefer my iPod or my stereo anyway) the battery life is truly epic. Though, this may be different for the DX.
Having used both the Sony Reader and the Kindle and finally the iPad to read books, I'd have to say that the iPad is superior to both. I can't speak for those who have their own experiences so I'm just relating mine like Cody.
I also think it will only be a matter of time before a company comes up with a screen protector that will address the 'glare' and and reflection issues. I've personally never had to deal with them and I've used the iPad both in direct sunlight and under a bright lightsource. Just a matter of angling it another way.
In addition to all the freely available titles in the Book store, everyone who downloads iBooks is also prompted to download a free Winnie the Pooh title. I expect virtually nobody selects "No" for this.
I would be very interested to know how many titles that have actually sold. I expect it's a fraction of 1.5 million.
It is to early to estimate how much the iPad will be used for reading based on the number of downloads. Too short a period of time to gather meaningful data.
imo you're making a mistake in looking at the "average" number across all iPad owners. Many of these people will probably never buy a Kindle anyway.
Before you use any "average" numbers to make conclusions about the iPad, you should be looking at the average number of books purchased on an iPad within a more narrow segment of the market - e.g. among iPad owners who have bought more than 3 e-books on any device.
In my anecdotal experience, the selection is very limited in the iBooks store. I found much wider selection using Kindle, and the Kindle app is pretty nice. The only drawback to using the Kindle app is that it uses Safari to do all of your purchasing, but you're still able to purchase a book in Safari and download it immediately in the Kindle App. Books that cost $9.99 in the iBooks store were $5.99-7.99 on Kindle.
For now, I'm a happy Kindle customer, since all of my library transferred over to my iPad, but if Apple does manage to increase the selection and lower the prices, I might consider shopping there.
Also, not everybody has the iBooks applicaiton, since as you say, it is a download, and does not come with the device.
And yes, I'm aware that iphone apps work on the ipad, but my friends who have ipads won't install iphone apps on their ipad because they come out looking so pixelated.
Try to use a touch pad that is at a 45 degree angle away from you, you'll find your wrist straining over. I'm sure they tried a curved mouse, but then realized the touch gestures would be too painful on the wrist.
I thought it was too flat to be comfortable. I'd love to be able to use gestures, but with my limited demo, I found my hand was cramping up.
Maybe I'm just use to those nicely contoured Logitech mice, though? Now that I think of it, the Magic Mouse is probably less "resting" and more "pushing" when compared to other mice...
I agree that it seems pretty magic, but at the end of the day different physical buttons are preferable to a single flat surface that affords everything; The mouse gives you no physical hints on how to use it.
It's not as nice of an input device as Apple's trackpad, but it's my favorite mouse to date. (and the first Apple mouse that I actually enjoyed using.)
1. bluetooth latency issues with older MBP
2. the scrolling is too sensitive to the touch. have you tried Google maps? it's unusable.
The flatness doesn't bother me. I hold it in my fingers, thumb,ring,pinky on the edges, two fingers for driving.
The mighty mouse always annoyed me for the randomly sensitive side squeeze clicker. Of the various units I had some required a great effort to click and some would click if you looked at them sternly. I just disabled the functions for that clicker. Oh, and don't get me started on the eventual failure of the little top balls. Nothing quite so irritating as a top ball that will scroll down but not up.
Unfortunately I have to buy a new keyboard. They moved the control key and I can't keep my brain straight so I have to make my keyboards match.
I think that's a Safari bug. It's sending pixel-resolution scroll events to web pages (like Google Maps) instead of line-resolution scroll events.
Firefox gets it right, surprisingly.
And not an actual knock against the magic mouse as this is not its intended purpose, but: worst gaming mouse of all time :)
Instead, I'd love to see Apple release a bluetooth keyboard that includes a multitouch trackpad for use with Mac Minis, Mac Pros, iPads, and other devices that support multitouch.
Just my thought/hope.
I would suspect you'll see a new remote that uses Magic Mouse like touch tech and the new development tools will make it easy separate out the visual representation from the control interface.
I would also assume that you'll be able to use an iPad/iPod/iPhone as a remote, or multiple devices for multi-player gaming.