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.
When I want to use an iPad (for something other than reading books), then I'll just use my iPad.
"No- it's just for reading books. Nothing else."
The problem is, I realise that it can go on the internet. It's just so damn slow that it makes everything else look way better. Not offering web browsing would stop feature creep.
You can download books straight from the internet to your device. You can go to the Project Gutenberg website (http://www.gutenberg.org/) browse for a public domain book, and download it straight to your device. You don't need to use an intermediate computer.
I think the reason it feels sluggish are two reasons: The screen technology has a slow response time. This is alittle difficult to fix, due to the nature of the technology: an electic field turns on or off causing tiny balls to be pulled to the top or bottom of the screen causing light to be reflected/absorbed. Due to the size of these balls (microns), it can take much longer to reorient these balls then the molecules in liquid crystal (nanometers).
The other reason it probably feels sluggish is that the processor is a little slow. Fortunately, amazon has been able to work around this a bit by caching the next few pages. (But if you go backwards it can sometimes take a bit longer to load).
For me these things bug me:
The keyboard is missing some obvious keys like comma and apostrophe. You have to go into [Sym] for them but you use them all the time when making notes. They're important keys that have been inexplicably relegated to the extra menu.
There's no first letter capitalization when you start typing a note or start a new sentence. Extremely irritating.
The bookmarking system is confusing, inconsistently named and clumsy.
Some things take a silly long time to figure out, like switching between your present page and the chapter list and back. This is mainly because the menu in a book has silly options in it (Turn Wireless Off is the first option? wtf?).
The arrow rocker doesn't work at all well in landscape mode.
Some things require a full screen refresh while others do not (opening a menu doesn't, closing it does). It's just that little bit jarring.
You can't zoom on pictures enough, very irritating for books which have little maps of battles or such like.
I've had it go titwozz more than once when plugging it into my PC. Is it charging, is it not, screen suddenly resets.
Apple wouldn't have let any of that obvious stuff go out of the door, you notice pretty much all of it within the first few days.
Patents exist for better eInk displays: http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20080238894 I look forward to a fast-updating book reader. One day I may even be able to flip through an eBook! Until then they have a long way to go, to reproduce the book-in-hand feel.
Yeah, and I'd lose the ability to side-load books, and would have to void the warranty on the device to be able to read books from non-approved sources.
As someone who's never bought an e-book from Amazon for my Kindle, no thank you.
I would think that when the primary use-case is reading, then books are to e-readers what apps are to smartphones, and I'm not really a fan of the "single point of acquisition" model.
Apple is about as permissive as Amazon when it comes to selling and playing or displaying media.
You might be confused by apps. Apple is indeed less permissive with them.
The Kindle hardware is great and all but I'm still wishing Apple would get in on the game. Apart from better software they'd address the issue of an elegant screen protecter (as with iPad 2), and the iCloud already synchs highlights to books between devices (even if you didn't buy the books direct from Apple).