Apple and the Kindle

> Or (and this is incredibly aggravating) when you select a word in the Kindle, depending on how common a word it is, the option that comes up highlighted by default is either “full definition” or “start highlight”. Since e-ink’s refresh rate is so slow, you typically don’t see what’s actually come up until you’ve pressed the button for the second time. So I often “double click” on words to highlight them, but some percentage of the time this kicks me over into the dictionary and I have to hit back twice to get out.

I'm on my third Kindle. The latest one, sans keyboard, is the first to have this problem. It's so annoying. Literally sometimes I'll be in the middle of a great passage and try to highlight it and then I'm brought to the dictionary page for a word like "the".

Is there anyone on here who is on the Kindle team and knows when a fix for this will come out?

*Also, as a general commentary, I think the Kindle is a revolutionary device. Moreso than the iPad. I think Bezos knows full well what he is doing and would prefer to keep it under the radar how absolutely amazing and big this thing is going to be. It shocks me that Apple hasn't come out with an eInk reader yet. It's an order of magnitude better for reading than an iPad.

To me the Kindle has two killer features: the screen (because I can read it like paper for hours) and its weight (can hold it for hours like a paperback book). Those two things made it a 'wow' device. The 3G access made it effortless.

None of those things seem very clever and have been pretty easily duplicated in the Nook. The software itself (and this applies to Kindle and Nook) is rather ugly and it feels slow to react. Both need Apple to come in and make them work.

I'm beginning to develop a theory that this kind of Apple-fandom is somewhere between being an audiophile and a mentally contagious form of OCD.

I've had complete strangers, totally normal people (picture the exact opposite of a stereotypical techie), raving to me in a shop about how great their Kindle is because they saw me play with the demo device. That's a home run in anyone's language.

But Aaron, who seems to have trained himself to appreciate the finer details, has this joyous experience ruined for him in much the same way a wine snob can no longer enjoy an even passable glass of wine.

I guess the missing factor is how much effort is expended on these nicities versus the return on that investment.

If the text below a main icon is cut off, is that a sign of how shoddily the entire thing is put together, or is it simply not important, compared with the many benefits the device gives you?

There's a theory of interpersonal relationships that says you need 4-5 positive interactions to balance every 1 negative interaction, if a friendship / relationship is to be sustainable. I'd argue that with devices and software, that ratio goes way up - maybe at least 10:1 or 20:1. That's why even a small annoyance can balance a largely positive experience.

Aaron! Font size! Bigger!

I love my Kindle. One of the best tech buys in recent memory. The thing I want to be able to do is share books with my wife as if they were 'real books'. In other words, one of us at a time gets a lock on it, but there's no time limit.

I really wonder why no ones mentions typography. In terms of great typesetting the Kindle is somewhere in the 60's. Since at least LaTEX (not talking about Adobe and Apple products) ligatures and other niceties found their way into computers. Any by all means - this is a dedicated reading-machine! I still love my Kindle, mainly for jgrahamc's reasons.

I used to be quite skeptical of Kindle and a dedicated book reading device until I was gifted a Kindle. My wife got tired of my buying hundreds of books and having it fill up the house and the Kindle TV ad did the trick.

Now that I've used it for a few months, I'm a Kindle convert. I carry it with me all the time - conveniently fits into my coat pocket and weighs so little - and I whip it out whenever I'm a line or at an airport and all those otherwise wasted time.

It has remarkable battery life - I normally get 2-3 weeks between charges - and more if I turn off WiFi. The more I use it, the more I like all the small details which while quirky and not quite upto iPad levels of overall usability adds up to a very convenient book reading experience. I used to lament the space wasted on the physical keyboard but I'm not such a fan of the new touch Kindles.

Now I wish I had all my books on my Kindle.

I wish they had the same "attention to detail" on their website. One reason I stopped buying from them was every time I went to the website I was bombarded for offers for Amazon Prime, Credits Cards, Free Shipping and other products.

The problem was that if I clicked on any of those offers the website would eventually work out I was a non-US user and tell me I wasn't eligible. But Amazon already knew that when they showed me the offers in the first place.

Any site that has 30% of their frontpage taunting me with cool stuff I can't buy obvious doesn't want me as a customer.

So far I've had a pretty frustrating experience with the Kindle (Kindle 4 no keyboard, no touchscreen) from the get-go. Sure, the box was nice, but as soon as I powered it on it was frustrating.

Since the Kindle was a gift, I had to enter in my Amazon account information before I could do anything else. Total buzzkill. I wanted to flip through a book and see what the screen was like and how it worked, but instead I have to laboriously type in my 35-character password like I'm using an NES controller.

After that, there's no sample books on there- you'd think they could put a public domain book on there for free. Every MP3 player I've ever bought comes with a few sample songs. Ok, fine. Now I have to hook it up to my computer via USB. Put an epub file on there. It doesn't support epub? Ok, fine. Put an RTF file on there. That doesn't work. Ok, fine.

Finally put a .txt file on there of a book I'm halfway through the paper version of. Apparently the Kindle has a weird concept of pages for txt documents, so I have to hit the "Next Page" button 97 times, or guess what "location" I'm at (1456 out of 4452 I guess?) and enter that in.

All of that frustration, in the first 30 minutes, just to get an idea of what it is like to read on it and page through a book. Never had that kind of experience with an Apple product. "Unboxing" experiences with Apple products have become a religious experience for a reason. Amazon is still far short of that.

> small details that delight get buried under small details that annoy

Must point that even Apple software/hardware have their own trivial features that prove to be annoying for some users (remember no right-click anyone?).

Amazon has achieved a very usable device with the Kindle in such a short foray into consumer electronics, for which Apple has had around 3 decades of experience to build on. Here's to hoping attention to detail and UX takes giant strides at Amazon improving upon what is already a very good product.

I have to wonder: does Apple spend more time playing with each new piece of technology internally before releasing it?

I can see in the rush to launch that you can certainly hit 100% of your feature list and still not hit the things that count.

When you see something like a ".com" key on the keyboard whenever an internet address is requested, you have to wonder if it wasn't in the original design but eventually someone played with it enough and thought it up.

I was a big fan of the original Kindle's wheel navigation. It just felt right, like a Model M keyboard.

> lifetime unlimited worldwide data plan

Unfortunately the web-browser that makes this useful (beyond buying books) is still labeled "experimental", years later. Meaning it can be dropped at any time.

I didn't know about Kindles being already logged in. That's clever--"out-Apple-ing Apple". I'd worry a bit about package thieves but that's probably mostly irrational.

Whatever UI ugliness exists in the Kindle and its apps don't matter much to most Kindle owners. They just want to read. [typo edit]

I loved my Kindle(s), but the screens are very fragile. I've already cracked two of them.

If you have a Kindle, you need a case, and should never take it out. iPads seem much more durable (and indeed heavier)

"And this is all before I’ve even got to the disastrous incompatibilities between the Kindle device, the Kindle for Mac app, the Kindle for iOS app, the Kindle Online Reader (read.amazon.com), and the kindle.amazon.com social network — all of which are full of gruesome interface annoyances of their own."

I just bought a Kindle, and besides my first attempt at buying one resulted in returning it to Best Buy because of a damaged screen, I love it. I had been reading Kindle books in my iPad and also loved the app experience. Mostly, the ability to highlight and annotate at will, and have an online repository of that to refer to, were the little details that sold me.

But what are the incompatibilities that he refers to?

However, on the $79 kindle, the details are definitely flubbed. The page turning/return/home screen keys make no logical sense. I apparently ordered one of those "Special Offers" by total accident...I must have pressed a confirm button when I meant to press whatever the hell stands for the "Cancel" button.

At $40 (for an interior design class), that's almost half the Kindle retail price. Not a bad monetization plan, I guess.

I cannot highlight/annotate samples. I have a second generation kindle. Is this a new feature of the newer models?