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Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.

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Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.

#31

Post by rryan »

Lewisham wrote: post #3

If Amazon are going to maintain an Android fork, I wonder how well Android apps will be able to play with it. It would be a huge disappointment if 2.2+ apps were unavailable (or installing Google Market for that matter). I can see why Amazon has gone down this path, but I do wonder if it's the right thing, rather than doing everyone's favorite/most hated carrier-specific bolt-ons instead. I also hope that Amazon does…

This seems like a misstep to me that will ultimately hurt users and developers.

If any API incompatibilities emerge (beyond the normal API level that Android uses to distinguish between release APIs) then developers will be forced to fork their own products and maintain 2 separate release channels -- one for the Android market and one for the Kindle market.

Beyond that, Android will continue to fly ahead with each release and the Kindle won't be able to keep up without significant time pulling and merging changes from upstream. I'm not looking forward to continually only having access to last years apps because the Kindle is a year behind the mainline Android release.

Unless Amazon goes through the Android certification process, and keeps their "fork" as a pure UI modification, I'm going to pass on this. It might be bright and shiny on day 1, but on day 365 it could be a different story.

Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.

#32

Post by fuzzythinker »

jmelloy wrote: post #7

I think it's interesting that everybody is attempting to differentiate on top of the Android kernel, and are forced to build their own skin to compete. Free Prime memebership (for life?) is interesting. Amazon has a big content catalog, and it makes a hell of a lot more sense for them to go this alone and not be forced to use Google's shit app store. Overall, I think they'll have trouble differentiating between them…

No way. It will be a year at best to hook people to it. It will be their "blade" to the tablet "razor".

Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.

#33

Post by chc »

beaumartinez wrote: post #18
sodiumjoe wrote: post #2

In certain ways, this "post-PC" era that Apple's brought us into with the iPad seems like a step backward. We're going back to something more like the broadcast television model, where a more or less centralized authority produces the content for passive users to consume. These tablets just keep getting more and more optimized for that. I suppose it's somewhat natural, given the way the market works, but it seems our…

> our tools for consumption are advancing at a significantly greater rate than our tools for production Our tools for production have advanced as far as they can—what major changes have the desktop and laptop PC had over the last five years?

There are countless times over the past several thousand years when you could have said that, but our tools for production have managed to get a bit better since 2000 BC.

Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.

#34

Post by zinkem »

beaumartinez wrote: post #18
sodiumjoe wrote: post #2

In certain ways, this "post-PC" era that Apple's brought us into with the iPad seems like a step backward. We're going back to something more like the broadcast television model, where a more or less centralized authority produces the content for passive users to consume. These tablets just keep getting more and more optimized for that. I suppose it's somewhat natural, given the way the market works, but it seems our…

> our tools for consumption are advancing at a significantly greater rate than our tools for production Our tools for production have advanced as far as they can—what major changes have the desktop and laptop PC had over the last five years?

Production isn't limited to what you can and can't do with a desktop PC... I think what OP is suggesting is that we should be using computers to help people actively build more stuff, as using them to aid in passive consumption of things others have made.

Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.

#35

Post by joebadmo »

beaumartinez wrote: post #18
sodiumjoe wrote: post #2

In certain ways, this "post-PC" era that Apple's brought us into with the iPad seems like a step backward. We're going back to something more like the broadcast television model, where a more or less centralized authority produces the content for passive users to consume. These tablets just keep getting more and more optimized for that. I suppose it's somewhat natural, given the way the market works, but it seems our…

> our tools for consumption are advancing at a significantly greater rate than our tools for production Our tools for production have advanced as far as they can—what major changes have the desktop and laptop PC had over the last five years?

That's part of my point. The R&D is going into optimizing consumption instead of enabling production. I think there's still room for making it easier for people to produce expressive content. I don't think I'm necessarily imaginative enough to think of many, or the best, but I've started to try.[0] I think some people, particularly those working on Web stuff, are also trying. But I think web software is only one vector. Other vectors include: hardware, operating systems, native applications.

[0]: http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/9325300749/a-different-kind-o...

Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.

#36

Post by ugh »

joebadmo wrote: post #23
ugh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whut? I just happily browsed the web, listened to podcasts, checked my RSS feeds and flicked through my Twitter stream for six hours during a train ride on my iPad. All tasks for which the iPad – or more general the tablet form factor – is ideal. I think your argument is incoherent.

You just listed four activites that are consumptive in nature. What was the last thing you produced on your iPad? Not just that, but even the way you use it is not the optimized-for case, I think. Apple wants to optimize you buying music, movies, books, etc. through iTunes and iBooks. Amazon is continuing this trend. Yes, the post-PC devices will continue to allow you to participate in the Web, necessarily, but they…

Yes, I do that stuff. I have always done it. I now do it on a more appropriate device. It’s consumption and it’s fun. Not something to scoff at. (Mine was more a response to the central authority bullshit which is obvious nonsense.)

It doesn’t matter what I did or did not produce with the iPad. Computers are cheap, software is cheap, creation was never as easy as it is today. We are living in a golden age of content creation but content creation is not for everyone. So what.

Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.

#37

Post by sdz »

sliverstorm wrote: post #9
Lewisham wrote: post #3

If Amazon are going to maintain an Android fork, I wonder how well Android apps will be able to play with it. It would be a huge disappointment if 2.2+ apps were unavailable (or installing Google Market for that matter). I can see why Amazon has gone down this path, but I do wonder if it's the right thing, rather than doing everyone's favorite/most hated carrier-specific bolt-ons instead. I also hope that Amazon does…

From the sounds of it, it does not "Run Android" much more than the Kindle "Runs Linux". Sure, my Kindle has a Linux kernel in there somewhere, but it's almost entirely inconsequential and invisible to me as a user; it's just the core the dev team happened to use.

Well, it is Android in the sense that it shares the same API and thus runs Android apps from the Amazon Appstore.

Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.

#38

Post by ugh »

rryan wrote: post #21
ugh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whut? I just happily browsed the web, listened to podcasts, checked my RSS feeds and flicked through my Twitter stream for six hours during a train ride on my iPad. All tasks for which the iPad – or more general the tablet form factor – is ideal. I think your argument is incoherent.

You seem to have misunderstood. joebadmo was saying that the post-PC era seems to be more about content consumption than content production. You responded in the negative by saying you spent 6 hours consuming content, which doesn't make much sense because that would be anecdotal evidence in favor of joebadmo's argument.

We're going back to something more like the broadcast television model, where a more or less centralized authority produces the content for passive users to consume.

That’s the sentence I was responding to. Central authority bullshit and all.

Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.

#39

Post by cageface »

beaumartinez wrote: post #18
sodiumjoe wrote: post #2

In certain ways, this "post-PC" era that Apple's brought us into with the iPad seems like a step backward. We're going back to something more like the broadcast television model, where a more or less centralized authority produces the content for passive users to consume. These tablets just keep getting more and more optimized for that. I suppose it's somewhat natural, given the way the market works, but it seems our…

> our tools for consumption are advancing at a significantly greater rate than our tools for production Our tools for production have advanced as far as they can—what major changes have the desktop and laptop PC had over the last five years?

I think this is a symptom of lack of imagination and not of some kind of conceptual wall. We're still dragging along a lot of old baggage and assumptions.

Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.

#40

Post by superuser2 »

E-ink made the Kindle. Tablets are exciting, but reading a novel on a backlit screen is no fun, and if it were, we'd read on our cell phones, because they're easier to carry around.

This is disappointing. The Kindle 2 (the model I had) did one thing, and one thing phenomenally well. I don't want my kindle to be a Swiss army knife.

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