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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.

Well, compare that to unboxing an Apple product. Like an iPad. Instantly, you have to enter your Apple ID, regardless if you bought it yourself. The device is a brick until this happens. Then, once the set up is complete, the device has zero sample content on there. No music in the music app. No videos. No eBooks. Arguably, the only sample content they provide is web access.

Sound familiar?

"Unboxing" experiences with Apple products have become a religious experience for a reason

Really? Unboxing my Macbook Air cavalcade of annoyances. First wanting my address and phone number just to boot up, then having to create an Apple account and enter a credit card number just to download the latest updates to the software it ships with. How is that a religious experience?

It's not really obvious, but you're free to skip the registration and Apple ID portions of the Mac OS X installation process. I hit command-Q, which brings up a dialog with a Skip button.

.txt files are not paginated to begin with. There is a physical keyboard option available for people who insist on having 35-character passwords.

On the other hand, when you get a Kindle in the mail you don't have to connect it to a computer with iTunes on it to get it to work.

I can also load books from my computer onto the Kindle using drag-and-drop without needing iTunes (or any Amazon software) installed.

Connecting with iTunes is actually no longer required for iOS devices starting with iOS 5.

You can also add PDFs to iBooks on the device without iTunes -- not sure about epub files though.

The fun bit about Kindles being registered at the factory is that if you've ever bought a Kindle book before (on an old Kindle or an app) your books get pre-loaded as well. I wish they hadn't released a 3G-less model though; it's a major convenience boost (no need to even think about a network unless you're in a very remote bit of the country)

But iTunes is required to update my ipod to iOS 5 :-)

I've never been able to get large pdf's onto my ipod without itunes. Can't email them because they're too big, and the ipod cannot browse local shared directories.

Dropbox?

In an even nicer twist, when I upgraded to the latest model from my original Kindle, the new one showed up with all of my books already synced so I could literally just open the package, turn it on, and pick up right where I'd left off with the old one. This is pretty small and probably caused more by coincidence based on how the system works than actual intent but it impressed me a lot. I've been a big Kindle user since it came out though.

(FWIW, I use mine to buy books that I previously would've got in paperback form, allowing me to slowly begin the process of rebuilding my physical library by pruning out paperbacks and things I don't care much about in favor of high quality hardbacks.)

No, this is a fundamental difference I believe. Amazon understands the cloud, knows you have leased access to certain materials and lets you read them anywhere.

Isn't it true that media is per-device on the Apple platform? That you have to pay again for each reader you own? Even an upgrade can require paying again.

My iPods (1G and Video) never had sample songs on them. Just saying.

Scumbag commenter: has 35 character password for security, discloses precise length of said password publicly anyway.

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