Comments on: Touchscreen Alone on Kindle Isn’t Enough to Compete With Future Devices

By: wooosh

wooosh — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 08:43:04 +0000

Actually Apple has already been surpassed by the likes of Samsung and others in terms of hardware quality and features. For example in late 2009, early 2010 they had phones that could do high definition which the iphone for example could not do, plus more features. It’s just that the apple cult continues to hold on to the ASSUMED notion that if it’s Apple, it must be the leader in technology. Not so. Instead Apple often just gives the APPEARANCE of being the leader and that’s their trick. Sometimes they are the leader, it’s true. But many other times they are not. They certainly aren’t the leader in the computer world either. I got an i7 based cpu, on PC, a year before apple even introduced it to their line. I could render and edit video faster than a $2500 mac pro, using similar adobe software etc. My PC only cost me $730. But again, it’s usually the kids and college crowd who have mommy”s and daddy’s money to spend, and are typically uninformed that go out and buy apple to meet status quo. I know someone who works in a phone store and he says that over 90% of iphone buyers have ZERO clue about how it works or what it can do. Instead it’s usually kids going in with their parents who want to make sure they will look hip on the street next week. I’m, rambling, but Apple is NOT the leader in technology. They are the leader in appearing to be the leader and hold that distinction.. However, some people catch on to this and that’s why other products sell.

By: Ziyad Dadabhoy

Ziyad Dadabhoy — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 07:23:51 +0000

Maybe rather than pay to use the tech they just bought the company and also they restricted anyone else from using their tech.

By: Milenkod

Milenkod — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:55:22 +0000

Dear Jeff Bezos,

1.) License the webOS 2.) Make a Super Kindle Tablet 3.)... 4.) Profit

By: Sam

Sam — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 17:41:03 +0000

One thing that perks my interest: why did Amazon buy the company? You can use their products without having to buy the company, so there should be reasons why they bought the company rather than just buying their products. For larger technology companies, small company acquisitions can be a shortcut to hiring a specific group of people (Cisco was famous for this) or to get exclusive access to certain technologies. Apple bought Fingerworks, a capacitive touch input company, several years before the iPhone; that seems to have been very productive for both those reasons. This points out something important: these are long term reasons. If you just want to slap a touchscreen onto something next year, buying a touchscreen company is a rather expensive way to do that.

By: Patrick Fairlie

Patrick Fairlie — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:11:54 +0000

Interesting points. Im not sure the Kindle needs a touchscreen.You may be interested in reading my blog which covers the iPad vs. Kindle debate.

By: johnrock

johnrock — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:49:14 +0000

this is true
………………..
john
KEWORD

By: gman

gman — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 04:34:54 +0000

This debate is starting to get on my nerves. The ereader market is…….ready for it? DIFFERENT THAN THE COMPUTER GEEK MARKET. Accept the fact that people buying books don’t give a crap about 3G or apps. They want to read. They most likely have a…..ready for it? A freaking computer at home or they have a laptop. They aren’t geeks who need a device for every single possible computing need that may come up in the next three years. Reality is much different in the real world.

By: bjtheone

bjtheone — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 01:37:44 +0000

Doesn't the Kindle have some sort of sorting in its reader program?

I use fbreader on an Android phone, and it even has a sorted by author style library. Nothing like Calibre, but it makes it easy to find a book... and I have around 350 books on the phone

By: Nicholas

Nicholas — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 19:44:06 +0000

The visual display is important, but not from the perspective of computing. They could maintain an ePaper display, make it color and add computing functionality. The question is will it matter?

Amazon is not a computing company per se. I am looking at AWS for supporting my efforts at social book buying in education (k-8). That is exactly what Amazon does well. As with the iPad, does the OS matter? Create something like Chrome using Firefox and revise the presentation mechanisms. Incorporate social channels.

Leading the publishers down the iTMS path will simply result in the gutting of their channels.

By: bob

bob — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:52:20 +0000

I have the Kindle DX (moved up from a Sony Reader) and read from just about every night. The screen is wonderful as everyone has said but where the device fails (for me) is when I want to move beyond reading.

For example I'm reading a book on 50 marathons in 50 days, good book and all that but the author is talking about different antioxidants he uses and I wanted to lookup what they were (on the net). The Kindle does have a web browser and so I tried to wikipedia it. The response time and usability just don't work well. So I grabbed my iPhone from the nightstand and went with that.

This is why I think the iPad will work for me. That and the fact that my reading is limited to 30 minutes to an hour max.

So the iPad will probably replace the Kindle (assuming it does pdf's well) and that's ok with me.

I do look forward to reading the occasional graphic novel too. I tried a graphic novel on the DX that was supposed to specifically done for the larger screen and it was barely viewable.

I do hope that the iBook app has folders, with 200+ books on my Kindle, the lack of folders is just painful.

the good news is that I don't think that Amazon will just roll over and that means better devices for all. The lack of competition has made them pretty slugish.