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The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

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Re: The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

#21

Post by draw_down »

mikestew wrote: post #9

The Kindle is fine...but for one thing. The author says using the software is like walking through soft sand. Eh, more like mud to me. C'mon, you've been making these things for over ten years, and I still hesitate to do any action more involved than turning a page. Fix that, and I don't need anything else. It's the paperback book I always carry with me, only the book can be swapped out at a whim.

> The author says using the software is like walking through soft sand. Eh, more like mud to me.

Sorry, what distinction is being made here?

Re: The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

#22

Post by knorker »

I've had kindles since version 1 (yeah, the big ones). They've all been great except the Voyage. Voyage moved the power button so that it constantly gets pressed in your pocket, unlocking and losing your place in your book. I had to put a screen lock on as a workaround.

I don't know if this is a sign that "people who care" have left the Kindle team. It's just so plainly wrong.

Other than that, if you're listening: Please give me Dvorak keyboard. My kindle is the only device I own that can't do Dvorak.

Re: The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

#23

Post by Finnucane »

dgarrett wrote: post #7

Everything the author complains about is a feature of the Kindle. Just use your iPad if you want more than an “electronic book”.

Apple’s iBook software supports a larger part of the ePub standard than Kindle does, and does a better job of handling tables, math, and SVG graphics. Plus, it allows scripting, and Kindle doesn’t.

Re: The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

#24

Post by danso »

mcherm wrote: post #18
danso wrote: post #13

> The Kindle can’t even display web pages well! Its browser is slow and bad, though if you do manage to navigate to a page with an article on it, you can enter “Article Mode” and have a mediocre reading experience. This statement is made as if the author thinks rendering the contemporary web is a trivial achievement.

It IS trivial. Now, I'll admit that there is an enormously complex process required to render modern html and css properly. But there are several engines that do this rendering and are available as open source. So it is easy to render web pages... use one of these engines.

What examples are you thinking? Are you talking about Chrome and Webkit, and that these would be trivial for a Kindle to adopt? The Kindle Oasis is the highest spec Kindle, and it tops out at 512MB RAM. I see that Firefox 70.0 has 512MB for its minimum requirements, but how performant is that kind of computer on today's web?

Re: The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

#25

Post by liability »

The demise of TTS was truly unfortunate. I got a 'Kindle Paperwhite' a few years back but I still primarily use my 'Kindle Keyboard' because it has TTS and the paperwhite doesn't.

From what I understand, the publishing industry is to blame, thanks to their fear of cannibalizing audiobook sales. I will never forgive them for this.

Re: The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

#26

Post by hombre_fatal »

liability wrote: post #25

The demise of TTS was truly unfortunate. I got a 'Kindle Paperwhite' a few years back but I still primarily use my 'Kindle Keyboard' because it has TTS and the paperwhite doesn't. From what I understand, the publishing industry is to blame, thanks to their fear of cannibalizing audiobook sales. I will never forgive them for this.

Why assume everyone knows an acronym instead of spending the extra 1000ms to type it out once for us?

Re: The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

#27

Post by liability »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #26
liability wrote: post #25

The demise of TTS was truly unfortunate. I got a 'Kindle Paperwhite' a few years back but I still primarily use my 'Kindle Keyboard' because it has TTS and the paperwhite doesn't. From what I understand, the publishing industry is to blame, thanks to their fear of cannibalizing audiobook sales. I will never forgive them for this.

Why assume everyone knows an acronym instead of spending the extra 1000ms to type it out once for us?

Text-to-speech.

Sorry, I assumed people here were familiar with accessibility tech. (If I recall correctly, the marketing material for Kindles used to use the term 'TTS', I don't think it's that obscure.)

Re: The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

#28

Post by hombre_fatal »

lemoncucumber wrote: post #11
dgarrett wrote: post #7

Everything the author complains about is a feature of the Kindle. Just use your iPad if you want more than an “electronic book”.

Bad typography on a device whose entire purpose is reading is not a feature by any stretch of the imagination. Even if all you expect from the kindle is an "electronic book," they should at least attempt to reach parity with the typesetting of paper books, but they clearly don't care to.

I read a book per week and don't notice any typography issues. Now, I'm sure it can be improved, and I don't doubt that a typography nerd could certainly spot issues. But "bad" seems like quite an exaggeration. I like to protest against this modern trend of exaggerating how "bad" we supposedly have everything just because someone can ID some improvements that could be made.

Re: The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

#29

Post by grepthisab »

I have an Oasis, and have since the previous version came out (2017ish?). I was just saying today it's my favorite piece of tech. So lightweight, works great, battery lasts forever in airplane mode. I've been reading a book every 1-2 weeks for the past couple years because of it, and Audible, and WhisperSync.

Re: The Kindle is fine, but could’ve been much more

#30

Post by hombre_fatal »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #6
throwaway69173 wrote: post #4

I wish electronic ink hardware were not so expensive. I have a lot of ideas that would like to use it.

Big displays are spendy, but small ones aren't so bad[1]. They would be good for a sensor readout or something, at least? 1: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1028

Thanks for this. Looks like a good excuse for playing with hardware finally for me.

Had a chuckle at the garish nails on the model of this one: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4243

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