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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.

#71

Post by spa942 »

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…

I don't buy the idea that tablets are getting more optimised for consumption. Just take a look at the app store to see the huge amount of music production software available, some of it replacing music $500+ hardware for $30. And even with its approval process, I find the app store a bad example of the cathedral model considering how all app makers are treated equally. Sure, you have to buy an external keyboard to write longer content on the new tablets, but if the post-PC era happens, I find it hard to believe that content creators will be stopped by that. Time will tell, of course.

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

#72

Post by cwe »

9999 wrote: post #51
joebadmo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vect…

In terms of desktop publishing you might be right, but I think we've seen amazing strides in the realms of audio and video production in the past ten years. It's now possible to buy cameras and audio recording gear for pennies on the dollar of what you used to pay for tools with similar capabilities. Meanwhile the software side of things has advanced just as rapidly... For example, I had to do some noise reduction on…

I am optimistic that we will see those higher-end tools in tablet form sooner, rather than later. All it would really take is a step up in multi-touch precision. Steve Jobs has famously ripped on the stylus, but to have fine pen precision (like Wacom already offers) in additional to simple finger manipulation could end all doubt about a tablet's ability to replace a PC. It could switch from writing/drawing/manipulating with a gigantic crayon, to a fine mechanical pencil.

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

#73

Post by nutjob123 »

officemonkey wrote: post #54
rryan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

You're seeing this as a crippled android tablet. It's not. It's a kindle. There's a big market out there for people who just want to read a book. They don't want to GPS with Google Maps, they don't want to install Yelp, or Trulia, or GrubHub apps. They just want to read, listen to music, and watch a video when they're on the bus or on the couch. Amazon has done well by providing focus to the Kindle. Where I commute i…

That's not the point. Amazon IS including their android app store with the tablet and if the tablet only supports old android api's then developers will need to write seperate code for regular android and kindle android.

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

#74

Post by [deleted] »

Steko wrote: post #63

Five or Six Things That Occurred In My Brain When I Read This Article: (1) $250 with free Prime? Buying one for sure, maybe two. (2) No camera? Ugg. At least a front facing camera for Skype pls, I'll pay extra. (3) November, meh I was hoping late September. (4) Eclair fork? That has to be wrong lots of optimizations made in Froyo which has been available for over a year. (5) Maybe this provided some additional incent…

[deleted]

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

#75

Post by achompas »

By far the most interesting quote from Siegler's article:

Overall, the UI of this Kindle felt very responsive. You can flick through the carousel seamlessly. This is something Amazon has apparently been working on quite a bit, I’m told. And they continue to.

If Amazon gets this right, they're a long way towards recreating the iPad UX. In fact, this entire article suggests that the Kindle tablet will be the first widely adopted non-iPad tablet. In addition to the above:

1. The interface sounds great. I am a humongous fan of the Kindle Cloud Reader and iOS interfaces, and I believe they're designed very well. Users can expect a well-designed tablet from Amazon.

2. Users can draw from a central source for their content. Amazon will provide all the movies, music, and books you need--something every other Android tablet has lacked so far. Mainstream users will appreciate the centralized content provision, especially from a company as respected as Amazon.

3. Cutting the Android Market solves a lot of potential issues: no spyware, no OS incompatibilities, no apps with large hardware requirements. Everything in the Amazon Appstore will work on this Kindle (I expect it to be a requirement for admission).

This tablet sounds very...Apple-like. A very closed ecosystem with access to interesting content and a curated app store. I would buy it if I was shopping for a tablet.

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

#76

Post by chc »

joebadmo wrote: post #58
Hawramani wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me things haven't really changed. The non-techy users never made good use of the freedoms of the PC-era, so to them their environment was just as restricted as the Kindle or iPad environment. As for the geeks, things haven't changed either. We find ways to open up the devices and get the freedoms we want.

I agree with you on the extreme ends of the spectrum. But there are plenty of people in the middle who can be encouraged in either direction by the way we construct our tools. I think the explosion of content on the web, or Web 2.0, is all the evidence you need.

The iPad has also had an explosion of content. Why is that not all the evidence you need?

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

#77

Post by cwe »

joebadmo wrote: post #52
ugh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 is much easier today, it's true. And for a while, it looked like the old model of a few rich broadcasting/production companies making things for the rest of us to sit at home and passivel consume was going away, replaced by a model where we all have the means to produce better and better stuff, where merit, originality, expressiveness, communication were rewarded more than the means to invest the necessary c…

This whole trope about creation vs consumption is pointing fingers in the wrong direction: why blame the iPad, when a lot of the creativity is going into tweets and likes? You mention 3 older social networks as being some kind of revolution, well, what about FB, twitter, G+, etc? We are all consuming each others creations, so the whole centralized authority bit is overblown. That's not to rip on social tools, or the iPad. Just pointing out that your global conversation has evolved, not died.

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

#79

Post by bishnu »

psychotik wrote: post #11

This could become a potential nightmare for app developers. Assuming they don't break public APIs in their custom fork, developers are still going to need to worry about backward compatibility and not being able to provide advanced features for their apps on Android devices. Couple that with problems with payments/in-app purchases and this is just a nightmare waiting to happen for Android developers. If the forked-OS…

Or, It's a nightmare for Amazon's competitors making Honeycomb tablets, the sales of which are so mediocre that if the Kindle Tablet gains any traction at ALL developers will wonder why bother with any other Android tablet?

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

#80

Post by OWaz »

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…

If you don't mind would you elaborate on what type of content you meant when you said: "centralized authority produces the content for passive users to consume". When I think of content the first thing that comes to mind is stuff like image editing (Photoshop, LR3,Aperture etc) and video editing because those are two realms I spend my free time in. I didn't get what you meant by your statement so that's why I asked.

And just to be clear I do believe that tablets are aimed at content consumption and not so much content creation, and I believe that to be a good thing. Why? Well people don't need a $2000 laptop to surf the web and check email.

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