Large-Screen Kindle Won’t Mean Squat if Apple Tablet Arrives
wired.com
wired.com
Even if Apple releases a kickass tablet, I still want a Kindle. I hate reading books on an LCD screen and having to worry about battery life. I want a simple, thin device that doesn't strain my eyes that I can leave in my bag and not worry about. Oh, and I can buy and download books instantly without worrying about wifi. Sold.
Certainly, an Apple tablet could do a lot more than a large Kindle, but it won't necessarily "render it moot." The Kindle might still provide a better experience for the one function is it meant to: reading large quantities of text... and if there is a market for for a device that just does that (and there seems to be judging from the Kindle's early success so far), then it will likely continue to do well.
Task: read a book. Choice 1: miniature computer, 5 hours battery. Choice 2: a book with digital annotation and search, 20+ hours battery... is there a choice?
Oh and did I mention the task is to read a book?
Sure, there are people who are fine with a glowing, back-lit reading device that lets you check email simultaneously. But, the mobile phone replaced the tethered phone. The computer did not replace the book. ebook devices are what will replace them. Where the line is blurred, does not warrant a discussion of "don't mean squat if..." at least not in the next 10 years or so.
Apple has a strong history of entering existing markets and reinventing it. The brought considerable style to desktops, they brought sleekness to laptops and they turned an mp3 player from an exercise/geek accessory to a fully fledged consumer product and they're doing the same with touch-screen phones.
Apple has never been the first into the market. It waits, looks and acts. Unless they have some truly amazing idea for a touch-screen-only tablet, they won't touch the market with one, because they all seem to have flopped (or ended up getting shipped with a docking station with a keyboard that could collapse to the body of the tablet: something Apple would never do, after the whole iPod nano thing in Europe of having to ship with a case, I doubt they want the embarrassment again). Honestly, I can see Apple shipping a fully functional tablet, however it will be running OS X and not the iPhone port.
Honestly, if I saw something like their mock-up it would be instantly rejected by me. I wouldn't, nor couldn't touch the thing. The iPhone is cool, making a foot wide iPhone is not cool.
Something similar to the iPhone OS port but customized for tablets would be ideal.
E-ink is the best technology just for that purpose and if I'm going to buy a Book Reader I want it to be perfect for reading books, not a half-assed compromise for surfing the web and spamming useless Twitter updates to all my friends.
-- Make no mistake: There are many more people who would be interested in a general-purpose tablet than in an e-book reader.
The "many more people" are called tech nerds and their holy grail has already been realized as the open-source CrunchPad, which will be far cheaper than any mega-sized iPhone.
The only thing I'll be doing in response to this Apple rumor is day trading AAPL options.
And that's why they are a win. I have a 15" laptop, a 10" laptop, a Sony Ebook, a G1, a 5.1mp camera and an MP3 Walkman. Each one has a niche and that's where I use it. I don't use the ebook as an mp3 player (though it can) and I don't want to hook up a keyboard to it (though I could). I use it to read books on the bus.
Primary notivation is to make the itunes video store stop sucking so bad: currently the only pleasant way to watch videos from itunes is on an appletv (at home), or on a computer (clunky, most people don't carry laptops), or on an ipod (invitation to eyestrain, especially for older people), or on a handful of ipod docking solutions (niche products).
Figure the screen resolution is big enough to show full 720p content and is just large enough to fill the field of view held at the reading distance used when reading "books".
It might have a fancy OLED screen (for power consumption and aesthetic reasons; you don't want the battery running out midway through a 2-hour film, and you don't want the device getting unpleasantly warm to hold midway through a 2-hour film).
Like the other ipod touches it'd be iphone-os compatible, with special optimized clients for eg youtube and sites like hulu (if hulu wants) but not necessarily a general-purpose flash capable browser. It'd be capable of being a nifty pda but apple isn't going to try to hard on that; it's marketed as a media tablet that can run productivity software from the apple store if that's your pleasure, and has ical and so on built in.
Having always-on wireless internet (either from at+t or verizon) makes sense; since the apple aesthetic is to make stuff that "just works" selling it with an always-working internet connection is a big win (even if eg you're not allowed to download films from itunes over the 3g nework).
If it sells it'll be a decent platform for ebooks even if it's not using an eink screen: nice form factor, amazon and other ebook-reading clients, capable of buying ebooks anywhere, and already in a lot of people's hands (via eg the iphone, which is platform-compatible).
At the moment, I simply want neither e-ink devices nor LCD devices. While color & refresh time are attractive, LCD devices come at a cost when it comes to serious reading (eyestrain, battery life). Also, like others have mentioned here, I'd want a dedicated reader w/o the distractions. However, the prospects are still enthralling though, with Mary Lou Jespen's Pixel Qi developing LCDs specifically designed for reading for example. Whether it's new e-ink devices, CrunchPad, or the Apple tablet, the innovations (& lowering costs) are just so exciting for an avg. consumer here.
I'm curious about the extent to which traditional publishers will shape this market. They must face the similar dilemma at the moment... As for the large Kindle, there's the monochrome constraint & Amazon's control over functionalities, pricing, etc. With something like Apple's tablet, they would be reluctant since users would simply browse free content available on the Internet.