Why There Isn't a Perfect Ebook Reader | Hacker News Reader

Why There Isn't a Perfect Ebook Reader

i.gizmodo.com

11 pointsmridulkhan10 comments

The feeling I got while reading this was the same one I got many years ago when reading why Microsoft's PocketPC was going to wipe the floor with the simplistic PalmOS. Ironically, I agreed with those PocketPC articles at the time but now see why the simplicity of the Palm made it the winner back then.

Amazon clearly understands readers better than Gizmodo does and the Kindle, if Amazon's sales pronouncements are to be believed, clearly resonates with people. I think that's why Kindle sells so well and will continue to do so.

One final point, the author thinks the disappearance of actual paper books is inevitable but I don't believe that. Paper is easy to produce, easy to recycle and most people like the tactile feel of books. So paper may disappear but it's not inevitable imho. Paper Books are certainly here for a long time to come.

Paper books are to ebooks like the theatre is to cinema. Cinema is more storable, purer, more controllable. It's more permanent in the sense that it lasts in different form. That said, there's an art to theatre that can't be replicated on-screen, and because of those arts, and because of the incredible history of theatre, it won't ever go away. It might not be constantly in the spotlight, but it'll always be there.

Similarly, paper books won't disappear. I'll be able to hold on to my Little Nemo and Krazy Kat and Series of Unfortunate Events and my kids will be able to have that same thrill of opening a new book for the first time. Maybe they'll read more ebooks than they'll read books, but the books will always be there.

I'm kinda in the Cory Doctorow school of thought. Whenever I see it reported that this or that e-book reader will soon be the thing, I can't help but think of: http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2007/03/cory-doctorow-you-d...

Those waiting for the e-book to "arrive" may have already missed the fact that it's here.

I don't want to be a dick and argue with Cory Doctorow, who is bright and famous, but every time I read this article I feel frustrated. I tolerate computer screens, yes. I can read off one for eight hours a day. It is not a good screen for reading a book off of. It's bright and very slightly stresses my eye and most importantly, it's not invisible. I don't sink into the content. E-ink vanishes as I read it. I curl up into it mentally the way I'll physically curl up with a good book. I gladly put down money for the Kindle. It was utterly worth my money.

The problem with Doctorow is that he's a geek more than he is a writer. Yeah, he got himself published thanks to BoingBoing, but he's not from the breed of writer that lives and breathes for language. I'm not the best spokesperson here because I'm lodged in between the two types, but I'm close enough to the one side, and I'm friends with enough people over the brink, to be able to definitely say that the people who are obsessed with language will never tolerate something like a light-based screen. Some people I know are in fact physically sensitive: they won't watch TV because they don't like how jumpy and powerful the screen is. Those same people are fine with e-ink, because it's so neutral.

Maybe most people here either don't get that or don't care. I've been in arguments with people here who think that literature is overrated and overblown by English majors: it's a typical elitist hacker response. Doctorow absolutely has that opinion. But as somebody whose startup is focused entirely on the English language, and on emphasizing beautiful language, I rather disagree, and I'd say that the people who are really pushing literature forward today are still the ones who read ink and write ink, and a lot of those people won't put up with screens as a primary reading type. I'm sure that many non-writers are the same way.

Disagreement isn't being a dick. And I agree more with you that Doctorow, I have cases and cases of books (my back remembers this every time I have to move). But I, and I may have misread Doctorow's article, take it that his point wasn't that "the screen" (phones, e-readers, laptops, etc.) is a good device to read things from but that it is good enough.

I think of this as similar to the comparison between a live concert, a CD and an MP3. The concert is the one that really moves me, that's the one that makes me want to get up and dance or at least tap my feet. A good band vibrates my guts just as well as I hear them.

A CD is nothing like that experience, it's flat by comparison, the tones aren't as low or as high and I can't feel the music thump in my stomach like I can at a concert. But at the end of a great show, I'll plunk down $10 so that I can hear a really great band again.

Now an MP3 is even more flattened, I don't know what the science is but I think that on a lot of rips I can hear some sort of difference from the CD. There are parts that don't feel as crisp, etc. But MP3s, (and by this I mean "compressed digital music files") are doing really well out there. Apple sells a lot of them. In other words they seem "good enough". Or it may just be that when people evaluate different formats, concert, CD or MP3 they choose the most portable one and don't care as much about the quality.

That's what I was trying to cite, without judgment, that it seems people will sacrifice a lot of quality for a gain in some other area. I don't see why it would be different with books.

I remember reading a book ("Scrolling Forward" by David M. Levy, Arcade Pub., New York, 1st ed.) the author was an alum of Xerox PARC; he had written his thesis on one of the first WYSIWYG word processor typing systems, an early machine with a mouse. After this experience he went off to learn the very analog art of calligraphy. He felt that he had lost his connection with the feel of the page and the art of writing, he also wrote this whole book about what "document" means in the digital age. I mean to say that there may also be a more expanded notion of what reading and novel mean in the future. Or maybe not.

  The problem with that E-Ink is expensive, slow (you can't 
  have moving cursors or any kind of video) and boring.

The price will decrease once the technology behind its production improves (and people stop there willingness to actually spend that much), it will also speed up over time (its just how things work. To address the last point: WTF?

Secondly, from the Pixel Qi site:

  Our screens use 1/2 to 1/4 the power of a regular LCD 
  screen, and when integrated carefully with the device can 
  increase battery life between charges by 5-fold.

and from Giz:

  Jepsen says it's even possible to get a week of battery 
  life from LCD tech, of course depending on the device the 
  screens are embedded in.

I really don't see how those two can statements can coexist. Currently we get around 8 hours from labtops, improve that by her 1/4 estimate and we now get 32 hours which fall short of our weeklong estimate.

Lastly:

  Infrastructurally and perhaps historically speaking, the 
  odds are in LCD's favor.

I'm going to need this one spelled out for me...

I think the important part was when integrated carefully with the device. Laptops spend energy on other things than just the LCD. However, reducing energy in other places has diminishing returns when the LCD is draining a lot of juice. Take the 17 inch mackbook's battery and use it to power a dell mini 9 with this type of LCD and you might get a weeks worth of use (7 * 8hours + standby) out of the thing.

Shorter Mary Lou Jepsen: My company's magic vaporware will solve every single display problem by 2010.

It isn't total vapor when the OLPC already was a compelling proof of concept.

Considering I have one of her displays (an XO), it's hardly vaporware. In eBook mode it is very much like an eInk display, super crisp and great in sunlight.

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