Report: Apple building a Kindle competitor | Hacker News Reader

Report: Apple building a Kindle competitor

thestandard.com

13 pointsilamont13 comments

The manufacturer the article refers to, PlasticLogic, presented a prototype at DEMO 08.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOWQvrgdZRE

Pics: http://www.plasticlogic.com/assets/PlasticLogicPreviewsElect... http://www.plasticlogic.com/assets/PlasticLogicElectronicRea... http://www.plasticlogic.com/assets/PlasticLogicElectronicRea...

I predict you'll see a convergence here similar to Smartphones and GPS. Only it will be netbooks and ebook readers. Look up the LCD design company Pixel Qi.

What Apple and Steve Jobs get that eInk, Sony Reader, and Amazon/Kindle didn't, is that interactivity is key! When you enable fast, responsive interactive search and navigation, you increase the value of information by an order of magnitude. Apple's new device is going to be multi-touch, and it will own!

Apple will introduce the device at a higher price point than netbooks and the Kindle. This will enable them to partner with Amazon, and it will also fit Apple's usual strategy of high margins for premium design, integration, and usability.

Hopefully Apple won't forget that battery life is also key.

Read up on Pixel Qi. Their technology gives you 5X power efficiency, but preserves interactivity.

Well, if so why did they let the awesome Amazon Kindle App onto the App Store? If they had any serious competitive plans they would not have given such crucial foothold to Amazon on their dear walled garden. Apple is quite shameless about leveraging its control over the platforms it owns. Something just doesn't add up here.

You have it the wrong way around. That's not Amazon getting a foothold to Apple. That's Apple's foothold to Amazon! The Apple netbook/reader will undoubtedly be able to install the Amazon app, or do something equivalent.

That might be true but I can't see Apple developing a device to sell primarily from someone else's marketplace. They are leaving a huge portions of the profits on the table.

Granted Amazon has a stellar relationship with publishers, and Apple would want to take advantage of this. But we're talking about a company that started its own retail wing when everyone was fleeing from retail like it was the plague, just because it wanted to control the full customer experience. They would not give an inch if they had skin in the ebook game.

That's funny, I see just the opposite. Apple, as I recall, barely breaks even on the music part of the iTunes store, and makes all their money on iPods. Has that changed?

Selling a high-end, upscale device that plugs into Amazon's online sales sounds like a perfect fit for Apple.

Do they really want to be in the eBook game, or are eBooks just a way to sell lots and lots of stylish $600 Apple hardware?

An Apple touchpad device would also be a planner, a media viewer, a household remote control, a communication device, a gaming device, and a platform for running App Store apps. (1) eBooks would only be a small fraction of what it would be about, as opposed to music on iPods, which are more-or-less about music.

(1) - The iPhone is all these things as well, but form-factor is significant. There are times when you want more screen real-estate and can do with less portability.

I feel confident saying it's only a matter of time before the newspapers from Harry Potter become reality.

They've been possible since animated gifs.

It is not a "kindle" competitor, it is a full-fledged computer, a tablet, an iPad if you wish, in all colors, in all its beauty, in all its power.

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