Amazon Enters Gadget Market with Kindle, an eBook Device

[vassillios]

First of all FUGLY!

Second of all, I have seen no mention of it, but with a keyboad you better be able to type in notes. I can see lot's of promise for this device in education, research and professional sectors if you could view, say, research docs and enter things like footnotes right into the document. Better yet, be able to create documents as well....

 

[mdriftmeyer]

If we're looking for a revolutionary eReader, this is not it.

I'm thinking to myself, who would benefit the most from having all their books digitized? and the answer is definitely students. I know not everyone was a physics major, but most people have experienced thick science books. For me, there would be days where I would have to bring 3 heavy physics books and a laptop to campus and carry them around with me all day. At day's end, my back would kill. Having a eReader of my science books would've been a back-saver.

The thing about science books, though, is that so many of them have color illustrations that are instrumental in conveying information. I would not be able to imagine a Physics 101 book without them!

But it's not just science books, and it's not only college kids. Even young middle-school kids have thick books to carry around, and while they usually have lockers nearby, the back strain on such little people can't be healthy.

While wallstreet types may be a large market, I think schools and students are the ones to aim for. Until eReaders support color illustrations and are priced where they can be afforded by students and schools, they won't be good enough for the mainstream market. Once an eReader does breech that barrier, however, you can expect widespread adoption to shortly follow.

-Clive

We all had big books to carry around. If this is your selling point you'll never convince the average person to buy one. You won't convince your engineering students, chem students, bio students, etc., to buy one.

When I was on campus I sure as hell didn't lug my textbooks around.

I bought my lecture notes, went to lecture and took some notes to supplement the lecture notes.

I had my books when I worked in teams or had some assignments to do while at the student union building.

The book or two I lugged while walking across campus wasn't a burden.

If your selling point is "Do you want to have to lug those heavy books around" to an ever expanding populace (dimensionally) I think you'd better get used to selling vaporware.

I sure as hell don't see parents buying these products for their grade school, middle school or high school students.

There is no way in hell Amazon is going to get passed the Teachers Union on this as a switch from traditional print books.

What are you going to do, offer a lease program for these devices?

At the end of the Semester kids, just turn them in so the next semester can use these devices.

Get real.

 

[ckurowic]

Can we not already download PDF versions of books and view them on our computers/iphones?

 

[mdriftmeyer]

I strongly disagree -- a lot of reading happens at the beach, at the park, on vacation, on the deck, in the back yard, etc. For an e-reader to fly, it HAS to be readable in sunlight.

So far as the Kindle is concerned, can we just call it the Missfire? For a device that doesn't do e-mail or word processing, it needs the fugly keyboard why?? I don't have a problem with a dedicated e-reader, but if that's what it is, it should be a screen only, light, thin device.
The "can download directly to the device" concept? Not much of a feature. Unless you want to keep your entire book collection on a portable device without a backup, you'll need to sync to a PC sooner or later.

Right and just what you want at the beach: An electronic device being doused with moisture and sand.

 

[ckurowic]

Right and just what you want at the beach: An electronic device being doused with moisture and sand.

Good point. The last time I accidently took my cellphone to the beach (didnt even take it out of my pocket, didn't go in the water) it was ruined with sand dust embedded in the display.

College students will never go for this. Ever. You can't really resell these things like textbooks, they are not durable like a text book, and I would bet that the UI is much clunkier than simply flipping the page in a real book.

 

[mdriftmeyer]

Are you in college? Most of us would NOT prefer this. Somtimes you have to have multiple books open at the same time with the ability to highlight, scan pages, flip back and fourth quickly. Also consider the outrageous level of book theft in college. Someone steals your Kindle and your screwed in ALL your classes, not just one or two.

All observations true and constant for the past several decades.

Can we not already download PDF versions of books and view them on our computers/iphones?

Sure can and I've got thousands of them already. Put them on a network drive behind a DMZ secured network for me to access via WebDAV or what not and I've got portable global access via my laptop.

 

[chr1s60]

Are you in college? Most of us would NOT prefer this. Somtimes you have to have multiple books open at the same time with the ability to highlight, scan pages, flip back and fourth quickly. Also consider the outrageous level of book theft in college. Someone steals your Kindle and your screwed in ALL your classes, not just one or two.

Actually, I am a recent college graduate. I said there is huge potential for a product like this, not that this product is perfect. Changes in a similar product that would allow for highlighting and sidenotes that could be saved would be huge. Not all classes I took had multiple books, in fact some just had one huge text book that was extremely heavy or multiple books for use at different times throughout the semester. I am thinking of classes like that for use with this. Obviously if you are using multiple books at once this would not be ideal for that class. In high school and jr high, most of my classes had one text book or multiple novels and many had to be in class daily. I would have much rather carried around a product similar to this instead of breaking my back lugging around heavy books all day. As far as theft goes, that is kind of a useless statement. One could just as easily have their entire backpack full of books stolen by leaving it out of their site or by not paying attention. Theft happens all over school campuses, regardless of the product. I think a product could be developed that could eliminate the need to carry at least some text books. Not only that, think of the money that could be saved buying an etext compared to an overpriced school bookstore.

 

[EagerDragon]

There are some things in common between toilet tissue and sand paper, but they are not the same.

 

[Unspeaked]

You can say what you want about this device, good or bad, but the fact remains that:

1) It's getting a whole lot of interest in the forum, the type usually reserved for a new Apple release.

and

2) It's on the cover of Newsweek, so unlike a lot of the iPod/iPhone competitors that get debated about around here, it's already got some crossover potential with the mainstream consumer.

 

[Guntis]

Kindle looks ugly...

The idea is nice, features for v.1.0 are ok, but the look... it's ugly! One corner thicker than the other, strange angular cut corners... They should really ask Apple to make it look nice! - Rounded corners, on-screen input, touchscreen. Then it could be iPod for book reading.

 

[Digital Skunk]

I live in the SF Bay Area.

Here's the scenario:

I go to Barnes & Noble, In-N-Out Burger, Safeway, the gas station, etc...

everywhere I buy something, I have to dig out my wallet, get a credit card, swipe it, enter pin number, accept the, transaction, sign the receipt, show my ID.

I should be able to do that all electronically... from my secure iPhone to the vendor's secure "cash register".

Currently, If I am standing in line & decide I want to pay for something with my ATM debit card, I can go online and check if I have enough in my checking account to cover the transaction. If not, I can transfer money from my savings to checking...

Ironic: I can move the needed money (and much more) around to make it available... but I have to do this 19th-century rain-dance to move the manna from me to the seller.

To replace the wallet assumes a secure iPhone (or, whatever) that cannot be used by anyone else. Done properly, losing the iPhone would be less of a security disaster than losing your wallet.

As to the laptop: There are times when it makes sense to carry a laptop, too.

But for me, most of the time it is extra baggage:

1) Hiking
2) Music/Sports events
3) shopping
4) grandkids Soccer Practice/games
5) yadda, yadda, yadda

"Pretty soon now" you will be able to do CS3 online-- this won't entirely satisfy your needs, but may be good enough to use in a pinch... Maybe one less reason to carry your laptop, case, extra batteries, cables, adapters/chargers everywhere you go.

I like the idea of having access to my account to transfer money while in line. I hope the banks actually capitalize on that, my credit union takes about an hour to transfer money online. I still think it would work better as a chip inside the wrist or finger of the user. That way the only way someone could steal the wallet would be to cut off the limb, and knowing which limb to cut off is another thing for thieves to deal with.

I think that putting my entire wallet into the iPhone is still going to be problematic. I can see losing my wallet, or getting held up for my expensive iPhone toy/gadget/cell phone, and I can see getting my laptop stolen from me while waiting in line or something stupid; but to loose all of those and then some would be insane. I still think some devices are meant to be separated. My wallet can be a chip in my finger, my cell phone can be my everything personal communicator, and my laptop can be my heavy lifter, but combining them all together and putting my life on it is an accident waiting to happen.

I agree about the carrying the laptop everywhere bit. There are times in my life that I really don't need to whip out the MBP, like when I write posts on MR.

 

[DaBrain]

I don't know if anyone will have the foresight to do it properly, but I'd think an "adequate" solution to the DRM problem might be tagging the e-book with some kind of "authorized to view" key at the time of initial purchase/download. This would presumably be a key based partially on your hardware's unique serial number.

I'll tell you what I found so dang simple and effective. When I use to use a Pocket PC and one of the readers that I used required my CC number when purchasing the book and it became part of the opening page of the ebook! Sure was a deterient in my letting anyone else have a copy of my purchased ebook! I thought that was very simple, yet very very effective! I would rather `have that then all that DRM Crap! It's fair and effective!

 

[genshi]

As far as eBooks and the use of the eInk technology, good idea. But as far as industrial design, this thing is very outdated. One of the whole points of using the eInk technology is to have flexible "roll-up" screens such as these:

This is the company to watch, imho: http://www.polymervision.com/Section-13823/Index.html

 

[DavidLeblond]

Right and just what you want at the beach: An electronic device being doused with moisture and sand.

This is no joke. I use to have a Rocket eBook back when they came out. Want to read at the beach or even while soaking in the tub? Not while holding an electronic device!

Books for the Kindle cost more than paperbacks yet, because of the above point, have reduced functionality. This is why the Kindle will fall short. This is why all the other eReaders fell short. If you're going to give us an expensive device to read books you have to bring something new to the party. Also I can't sell books when I'm done with them, and I can't buy used books. Also $.10 to view my own PDF? This whole thing is a joke.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and no built in backlight??? Even my old Rocket had this.

 

[50548]

this is so ugly -.-. oh my god..

how can this relate to iPod??

the Design...the UI.....

the keyboard??? LOL....gosh.....

Ditto...it's ridiculously FUGLY, especially for the keyboard. I think we'll have to wait til Apple comes up with something that REALLY works in this area...sorry, Amazon, you'd better stick to books and CDs...this device is CRAP.

 

[chicagostars]

not interested

Um, not for me, thanks. But hey, if it does fill a need for others out there, may this device add a little happiness and convenience to your life.

 

[EagerDragon]

As long as I can copy and paste off this thing, I'm all for it.

Not likely you will be able to do cut and paste or have a way to share your book with freinds, DRM will get in the way.

Can you store the eBook in your computer to make room for more?

Can you play it in something else if the unit breaks or is the content horribly tied to the device?

 

[50548]

I said it before and I will say it again I would give my right *cough* to have Apple come out with an e-book reader. However after the review of the latest Sony E-book reader it is pretty obvious that while the text of e-ink is ready for prime time and is almost if not AS good as printed text....there are still some serious issues with e-ink. Namely flashing the screen every time you change a page or even trverse menus. This wouldn't be a complete deal killer if it was for the fact that at least in Sony's implementation it also takes 2 seconds to flip a page, traverse a menu, change a setting, etc. Again from what I understand this is an issue with e-ink itself at the present time and not simply Sony's implementation.
So I think I know why Apple has maddingly stayed out of this market that is in the EXACT in every way, shape, and form to where the MP3 market was prior to Apple coming onto the scene. Crap designs with too many buttons, and real though in the design, crap software to integrate the hardware to the computer in an easy fashion, crap format support, and realistically crappy book support.

You want to see a grown man soil himself? Have Apple come out with an e-book reader that resolves the above issues along with allowing easy markups and highlighting, team up with ebook.com to allow all those e-books that were sold to god knows how many PDA users to be used on the iReader, integrate ebook.com's inventory into a store in iTMediaStore, convince most of the major publishers to get on board with the ebook train, get some of the more major collages to create ministores in iTMS to allow students to download their text books, and finally allow spotlight indexing of all your books along with the markups. I'd wet myself.....OK maybe not but I'd have to run to the bathroom fast.

I'm 100% convinced that its the tech because the concept that Apple wouldn't want to go after a market who's heart and soul IS the education sector is beyond stupid. We all know that Apple targets schools for the Mac. This is beyond a natural fit. It simply is a no brainer. And screw the iPod and Music. Nothing. Absolutely NOTHING is more universal then books. Come on Apple. Wake up and smell the freaking innovation.

I have to agree with you on this...ONLY Apple can do better, a LOT better, just by sniffing a market that is ripe for taking with so many CRAPPY and FUGLY devices...only Apple is able to create demand that was NOT originally there, as it did with the iPod and the iPhone.

Once more, Amazon is great...for books and CDs.

 

[pagansoul]

LOL. Yup.

Q: How many buttons do you need to read an amazon ebook?
A: Apparently more than 50!

In other notes, another publication reports "Zinio, a company specializing in online publishing, is now offering free online editions of popular magazines for users of the iPhone or the iPod touch. Titles include the likes of American Photo, Car & Driver, NME, Popular Mechanics and Playboy." http://www.zinio.com/iphone

I love Zinio. I have been getting MacWorld for the last 3 years from them. I also get Entertainment Weekly and Elle. What I would love is National Geo. Zinio is so beautiful to look at on my computer. I'm one of those people who have thousands of books on my computer, some I read with Adobe, some on nice 3rd party text readers. I still think the price of ebooks is too high for what you are getting and what you are saving the publisher but sneek in a novel or two a year. I still usually get my romance fix at Good Will or Flea Markets for under a buck. The end result is...I would rather spent 1k on a small notebook than half that on this reader.

 

[gifford]

Yes, it has nothing to do with input of any kind, pen or otherwise.

It's simply a different type of electronic display that uses a film.

"Kindle uses a high-resolution display technology called electronic paper that provides a sharp black and white screen that is as easy to read as printed paper. The screen works using ink, just like books and newspapers, but displays the ink particles electronically. It reflects light like ordinary paper and uses no backlight, eliminating the eyestrain and glare associated with other electronic displays such as computer monitors or PDA screens."

Yes thats EXACTLY what i thought it was. i presumed it was obvious i didnt think the pen driven part was part of E-ink technology. but most devices i have seen go hand in hand with it.
And i stand by my thoughts, E-ink is fairly crummy technology IMO (currently). As far as im aware you are still limited to some sort of resolution ( some of them are 150dpi), albeit a high one (but not significantly higher than other technologies).
And all it has over other solutions currently doing the rounds is battery life. But i dont see this as particularly a large selling point. because until any of the flexible screen technologies mature, i dont see an iBook from Apple being pocket sized. Therefore more space for battery.

 

[ckurowic]

Actually, I am a recent college graduate. I said there is huge potential for a product like this, not that this product is perfect. Changes in a similar product that would allow for highlighting and sidenotes that could be saved would be huge. Not all classes I took had multiple books, in fact some just had one huge text book that was extremely heavy or multiple books for use at different times throughout the semester. I am thinking of classes like that for use with this. Obviously if you are using multiple books at once this would not be ideal for that class. In high school and jr high, most of my classes had one text book or multiple novels and many had to be in class daily. I would have much rather carried around a product similar to this instead of breaking my back lugging around heavy books all day. As far as theft goes, that is kind of a useless statement. One could just as easily have their entire backpack full of books stolen by leaving it out of their site or by not paying attention. Theft happens all over school campuses, regardless of the product. I think a product could be developed that could eliminate the need to carry at least some text books. Not only that, think of the money that could be saved buying an etext compared to an overpriced school bookstore.

Do you think the publishing companies would really allow this to happen? Or the college book stores? Would they REALLY carry this product? I think not. Nothing is ever going to compare to physically having a textbook. Even my online courses (of which I have three this semester) have physical text books. I don't have to worry about backing up my math book. Where do we draw the line as far as electronics go? When is it too much? An e-book? Give me a break. I don't need yet another electronic device to worry about batteries, backups, etc.

As far as heavy book loads go, what is this junior high? Suck it up. Try a 70 pound ruck sack.

I love Zinio. I have been getting MacWorld for the last 3 years from them. I also get Entertainment Weekly and Elle. What I would love is National Geo. Zinio is so beautiful to look at on my computer. I'm one of those people who have thousands of books on my computer, some I read with Adobe, some on nice 3rd party text readers. I still think the price of ebooks is too high for what you are getting and what you are saving the publisher but sneek in a novel or two a year. I still usually get my romance fix at Good Will or Flea Markets for under a buck.

Actually, I was quite impressed with Zinio when I tried it a few years ago.

 

[dvkid]

I write publication work at a minimum 600 dpi with 1200 dpi being more standard.

That seems odd. As most offset presses and plate-burning mechanisms typically read at roughly 150 dpi. We use 300 dpi here for our prep work mainly so we can scale photos and other graphical elements up and down safely as needed.

 

[andiwm2003]

How dose this have anything to do with macs or Apple? Looks cool thou.

from the first page of this thread by godfather himself:

before anyone says that this isn't apple related... let me cut you off.

I think this is very interesting and affects Apple. Certainly a company the size of Amazon entering a market like this which certainly overlaps some iPhone and/or iPod Touch functionality.

Also, there's talk of Apple going into the mini-tablet market in some form or another.

Based on the early description of the Amazon service, I think it's a potentially compelling solution. Wireless everywhere, downloadable books and web. Service charge remains an unknown.

arn

if i was you i would be worried about the "cut off" part of the quote.
if i was you i would hide in a save place till your blasphemy is forgiven or forgotten.......

 

[mescalito]

Why?

I really doubt this thing will take off. It's ugly-looking, it can't even browse the web.

I already have a MacBook and an iPhone. Why would I pay $400 for something that can only read books?

I guess for a very select group of people, it would be a good solution. But I don't think it's going to have mass appeal.

Damn that thing is UGLY!!!

 

[tkidBOSTON]

What needs to happen is they should sell actual hard copy books with Kindle codes for a $1-3 more than a codeless book, much like they're selling a lot of vinyl records these days with mp3 download codes. You get the hard old style medium with the ability to enjoy the new up-to-date version of the same item.

Solves the "how do I take it to the beach" or "give it to a friend" problems mentioned earlier.