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Here's how I see it:

Apple is undercutting everyone on the premium tablet experience. The iPad is beautifully crafted with no corners cut.

Amazon is attempting to own the bottom-end market by using budget parts, cutting lots of corners, and likely by losing money on each tablet sold.

Both are valid. But to me, there really isn't a wide gap in pricing. We're already talking about non-essential purchases, and at $500 the iPad is aggressively priced for something dripping with quality and perfection. Use it side by side with any $800 or less full-on notebook, and the iPad feels like it should be twice the price. Is it worth $300 to go with a sub-par experience? Only if the additional $300 is completely out of reach for you.

I would venture a guess to say that the majority of tablet users are only surfing the web, checking e-mail, watching online videos, and playing angry birds. For the typical tablet user, this is a way to keep $300 in their savings account and still do everything they planned on doing on their tablets.
 
And Amazon's 1-click is a very descriptive term.


Still seems like a fine line to me in how they granted the trademarks.

Fine line how ? It's very clear. Secondary meaning. That's the answer to the Amazon 1 click vs Apple Multi-touch trademarks. When Amazon introduced 1-Click, they had a patent for it, they enforced it, they marketed it heavily. They got licenses out of everyone and everything that implemented it and made sure to remind everyone at every turn that "1 Click" Buying was Amazon technology.

This was very clear from the Apple decision. Apple failed to establish secondary meaning and frankly, if you've been paying attention to their advertising, it's quite true they never really pushed "multi-touch" per se as an Apple technology, only a technology the iPhone/iPad implemented.

You really can't compare both trademark cases. Both are for descriptive terms yes, but both went through a much different history.
 
The Fire is not competing against the iPad. AT ALL. The iPad is meant as a computer replacement device. The Fire is just a content consumption device at this point. And it's not designed to replace anything, just serve as a nice and affordable tablet.

The iPad is not a computer replacement.
 
Here's how I see it:

Apple is undercutting everyone on the premium tablet experience. The iPad is beautifully crafted with no corners cut.

Amazon is attempting to own the bottom-end market by using budget parts, cutting lots of corners, and likely by losing money on each tablet sold.

Both are valid. But to me, there really isn't a wide gap in pricing. We're already talking about non-essential purchases, and at $500 the iPad is aggressively priced for something dripping with quality and perfection. Use it side by side with any $800 or less full-on notebook, and the iPad feels like it should be twice the price. Is it worth $300 to go with a sub-par experience? Only if the additional $300 is completely out of reach for you.

how do you know the kindle would be a sub-par experience?
 
If only RIM can wake up now.

"Like, wait a minute. That tablet looks exactly like ours!"

Then market the hell out of the PlayBook right BEFORE the Kindle Fire is released to avoid looking like copycats and keep the price competitive enough. I always said had TouchPad sold at $199, it would have still sold.

To me, while the QNX UI copied webOS alot, I still feel the PlayBook is superior to the TouchPad. You need to overclock the TouchPad just to match stock PlayBook's speed in web browsing. Only reason why people defend the TouchPad now is because they bought one and want to justify their purchases. Prior to that fire sale, nobody had anything nice to say about the TP. The Kindle Fire looks to have inferior in specs than PB or TP but Amazon rushed it and was too late with the processor, but the price is so cheap, the ecosystem is there, and the timing is right that you can overlook its flaws. There isn't much out there other than Apple products that look intriguing, so the Kindle Fire will still sell anyway this Holiday season because of price, timing, and lack of competition (sans Apple). Not hard getting to #2 in the tablet wars when the rest of the competition can be so inept. Kindle Fire should be a HOT-seller by Cyber Monday since most people by Black Friday are looking for great bargains on gifts.
I thought the Playbook and the KF use the same ODM (Quanta)?
 
What a rip off. Think the same. Their motif like everyone else. What a ripnoff from Apple. Like or hate apple amazon should think fo itself. That Goes for the majority of producers. Apple make great stuff they they don't have all the ideas or solutions. If your designers have to copy then you need to hire new designers. Like me. No joke.

The Fire is clearly derivative of the iPad--like almost all tablets--but it is not a rip off. It's going for a whole different angle--stripping away little used features, relying heavily on cloud storage, and going for much cheaper.

The iPad will continue to sell very well I have no doubt--but it will now appear overpriced to many who just want to read books, watch video, surf the web on occasion and check email. It's also more portable and light--its hard to see how the Fire won't fly off the shelf unless the revised Nook Color trumps it on features and price somehow.

One interesting thought is how the Fire will effect the prices of the plethora of vastly over-priced full featured Android tablets. Who is going to buy a 7 inch Galaxy tab for $569 when they can get this? I'm going to use my Crystal Ball to predict that there will be a price *crash* for all Android tablets for the holiday shopping season.
 
People need to STOP COMPARING IT TO AN IPAD. Look at it as its own device. For $199 you're getting a device that can read books, watch videos on Amazon Prime, browse the internet, and access to an app store from a reputable company. Not bad at all for only $199.

Both are hand held tablets capable of running apps and show reading and movie content. what else would I compare it to? My iPhone? My PC? Nope - the closest thing on the market with a successful user- and programmer share is the iPad. That is why a lot of us compare it to that.
 
The Fire is not competing against the iPad. AT ALL. The iPad is meant as a computer replacement device. The Fire is just a content consumption device at this point. And it's not designed to replace anything, just serve as a nice and affordable tablet.
The web browser is the only thing that really needs to be good to replace a computer for most people. Tragic I know. Most people are at the library looking for employment, Facebook, and/or YouTube
 
I just checked out this video from Amazon talking about Amazon Silk browser. While I think Silk is cool and probably similar to some of things that Opera Mini is doing on mobile, they lose all credibility when they open with "browsers have been built more or less the same way for 15 or 20 years".

I'm sure the guys at Mozilla, Opera, and WebKit all take exception to that. Browser architecture has changed drastically since its inception 15 to 20 years ago. Heck, the first browsers I used in college in 1992/1993 (about 19 to 20 years ago) were radically different than what we have today. And the Opera guys are probably a bit miffed at Amazon for trying to lay claim to the innovation of using the cloud to offload tasks from the device (heck even the Skyfire and iSwifter guys should be upset at them).

Actually, it's not wrong in the sense they are putting it. Browsers have been built on the same architectures since Tim Berners-Lee introduced WorldWideWeb.

IE, we have a piece of software on a local computer that basically uses a URL to fetch a hypertext document and all its associated ressources and then uses the local computer's power to render them on-screen graphically. This is what the video means. Webkit (Safari, Chrome, Konqueror), Gecko (Firefox), Trident (Internet Explorer), Presto (Opera) are all the same as WorldWideWeb and Mosaic were in this sense.
 
It's very hard NOT to make a tablet that looks somewhat like the iPad. I mean what's a tablet supposed to look like ? Round ? 3D ? A box ?. A tablet form factor is rectangular by definition.
 
Will the Kindle Fire work outside?? Or have the same issues as the iPadS???

Bright light kills it??
 
It uses the same type of IPS LCD display with LED backlighting. Pretty much standard in tablets right now.

Thanks! I wound up finding some technical specifications, resolution, etc. To my surprise, most were at Amazon.com :D

It is delusional to say it is not competing against the iPad at all. Many people use their iPads solely as a consumption device. In fact I'd venture to say the majority do.

brad

Yeah, I suspect there are people _willing_ to spend the $499+ on an iPad, but would +prefer+ to spend less if the device fulfills their expectations for a tablet, plus that gives them money-for-content (and their chicks for free...)
 
Jeff Bezos said:
Dear Customers,

There are two types of companies: those that work hard to charge customers more, and those that work hard to charge customers less. Both approaches can work. We are firmly in the second camp.

Quoted from Jeff Bezos himself off of Amazons home page. Damn he's going after Apple hard. However if it's true that you have to use Amazons services, and can't side load your already owned content(Not stating this as fact but I think someone here said this) then this will be a major fail.
 
  • Color screen is not E Ink, so goodbye popular Kindle feature of easily reading in sunlight;
  • Flash included in web browser means heavy web surfers should expect battery life = suck;
  • Based on RIM PlayBook.

Yep. It's the trifecta of FAIL. Perhaps the Fire is aptly named.
 
I made popcorn. Not only can't I wait to see what Amazon has come up with - I just know the comments on this message board are going to be fantastic (especially by those who are so quick to review something they haven't used and who have to slam anything non-Apple)

And those who have to praise anything non-Apple.
 
gotta love the $199 price point.

I really do think folks would gobble up these tablets if the pricepoint were more complementary to also owning a computer.

The price point also means you can carry it around with less worry about it getting stolen or damaged. Part of me hates carrying my iPad knowing that one drop and I'm out $600.

And man I'm alway nervous when my 4 yr old plays with my iPad.

The Fire is not exactly an iPad competitor though. NOt a direct one. I'm sure Amazon wants consumers to think that and, from this thread, you can see some already view it as a direct substitute.

The price point is more complimentary to owning a computer because the Kindle fire seems to be geared towards content consumption ONLY. So, it's not meant to create content that computers can make. Once again, let me say that the iPad is designed to be a device that replaces a computer. It does everything that an average computer user would want to do. For those of us who actually need a little power, we have our macbook pros/iMacs/Mac Pros. The iPad is literally apple's entry into the sub $1000 computer market. The Kindle Fire is Amazon's entry into the Sub-Tablet, or content consumption device market - the Fire is literally an electronic age device to replace all magazines, newspapers, and few other things, and it can browse the web. For $199, that's a fantastic price. All I'm saying is that the iPad is a device that does all those things, and more. Thus, it's in no danger of being eaten by the Fire. The iPad will actually make its way into more homes when People buy a Fire, get used to tablets, and then go to replace their computers. They will be like... why not another tablet? Consider that the iPad is priced at $499. that's about what the average windows user pays for a computer.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_10 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E600 Safari/6533.18.5)

cube said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_10 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8E600 Safari/6533.18.5)



E-ink screens are horrible for reading. For a good screen you need an iPad.

See what I did there? I expressed my honest opinion as if it were true for everyone. It isn't, any more than your opinion is universal.

People should read the screens that work for them. It varies.

Try to read the iPad in the sun.

I have. It works.
 
On another subject - I liked Bezos' presentation. It was very straight forward and I (for one) appreciate the lack of hyperbole like "magical" etc. Jobs is a great pitch man - but it IS a pitch. Bezos' style in that presentation was less pitchy and more like "this is what we had, this is what we have now"
 
As an owner of the iPad 2, the availability of apps for the Kindle will depend on the user base.

At this low a price, it will surely hit critical mass to sway developers. Amazon already has the cloud storage, books, movies, and music. It has enough on offer to make the tablet interesting. Plus, Amazon is running an ecosystem here - the app store is using the same paywall that allows us to buy books. These apps are merely additional purchase from a trusted store that it will be seamless.

The lack of app will be taken care off by time. Critical Mass is what is needed.
 
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