Facebook is forking Android in a similar fashion.
Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
81–90 of 200 posts
Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If you want to reach a wide audience on Android, you already need to be prepared to support older Android releases, because most phones don't get upgraded after purchase.
Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
#83Earlier 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…
I think the disconnect here is you're simply seeing the ipad as a pc replacement when the reality is the ipad is a new category that while partially replacing PCs also can partially replaces many other things: books, magazines, newspapers, the radio on your desk, the bedside clock, photo albums, etc.
Someone like Ugh or myself sees you call all of this awesome a "step back" and laughs.
I think you've sold the iPad short too early. Intent or not it will be a huge device for content creation the same way the iphone is a huge device for content creation -- the best camera you have is the one you have with you and as Flickr attests, iPhone 4 is used by millions every day for creation.
Similarly the iPad will be huge and Apple has already recognized this with signature first party apps like GarageBand, iMovie, Pages, Numbers. I have a feeling in years to come a lot of musicians will say that the best keyboard, drum set, guitar, etc that you have is the one you have with you.
Do you like to write sometimes? There's an app for that. When you're not at your desk will the best typewriter be the one you have with you? Probably.
Do you like to draw and doodle sometimes? There's an app for that. When you're not at your desk will the best drawing and painting studio be the one you have with you? Probably.
Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article says there's no Google Market. Only Amazon's. As for forking, I'm guessing it's not really a fork. It's just got their own UI on top, but they'll continue to get the rest of the updates from Google.
In that sense of a fork, all manufacturers of Android have forked it. I assume if they (or the person who showed it to MG) called it a fork that would be more significant than just a custom UI (which Android is designed to facilitate).
The "Google Experience" has always been an optional part of Android that required additional licensing, but all the major Android manufacturers have licensed it. The lack of it means that this diverges from the typical Android device much more than Samsung, HTC, or Motorola devices. When you throw in the fact that the main shell is considerably different (a content browser rather than a widget environment), I'd say that the use of the term "fork" is understandable, even if not quite right.
Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
#85First you think its a revolution, then it calms down to en evolution.
From tablets to Notebooks
1. First come tablets
2. Then tablets gets a stand (so you dont have to hold them all the time)
3. Then tablets gets a keyboard (so you can type quickly)
4. Then tablets gets a mouse like device (so you dont have to touch the screen while on the stand)
5. Then they run (your favorite distro of) linux
6. Then they become keyboard-less more portable laptops
7. Then we call them notebooks
Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The iPad and other tablets are not great tools for writing. Emails or comments on HN (another one of those things that wasn’t possible for very many people one or two decades ago) work great, longer or more complicated stuff quite often not. There are, however, quite a few use cases where tablets are better tools for content creation than, say, a PC or at least could become better tools given time and software. But I…
Again, I agree that it's not one-dimensional. Tablets are making the consumption and light interaction aspects of computing accessible to a huge section of people for whom they were inaccessible before. And that's great. But the PC represented a tool that made the production aspect of computing accessible to a lot more people, too. And the web was a continuation of that trend.
Tablets look like the end of that side to me. It looks like an optimization of the consumption aspect at the expense of the creation aspect.
You may see it as a third device, but I think a lot of people see it as a replacement device, and those are exactly the people who could benefit most from tools that make it easier for them to produce things.
I think my ultimate lament was that the way the market works, of course large companies are going to privilege consumption, because they can make more money that way.
(Meta: Thanks, I accept and appreciate the apology!)
Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Could you elaborate on that? Do you mean apps? Or some other kind of content? I'm not quite following what you mean.
Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
#88E-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.
>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.
Speak for yourself! I do this and love it. I find that the faster page flipping more than makes up for the slightly less readable text. The thing that I think most phone/tablet makers get wrong at the start is not putting it in "night mode" by default. White text on a black background on a phone screen is so much more pleasant (at least for me) that it wouldn't surprise me if bad defaults are a large part of people's aversion to it.
Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
The iPad and other tablets are not great tools for writing. Emails or comments on HN (another one of those things that wasn’t possible for very many people one or two decades ago) work great, longer or more complicated stuff quite often not. There are, however, quite a few use cases where tablets are better tools for content creation than, say, a PC or at least could become better tools given time and software. But I…
Again, I agree that it's not one-dimensional. Tablets are making the consumption and light interaction aspects of computing accessible to a huge section of people for whom they were inaccessible before. And that's great. But the PC represented a tool that made the production aspect of computing accessible to a lot more people, too. And the web was a continuation of that trend. Tablets look like the end of that side t…
At least Apple, I think, sells music and videos and books and apps because people want them. Sure, they make some money (not much compared to the rest of the business) but they mostly do it to turn their devices into something people actually like to use.
People want music, want videos, want books, want apps. The market gives them what they want. This is not a case of the market delivering something consumers don’t actually like.
This is not a conspiracy of big companies to dumb people down. People are already that way. The PC didn’t help with that one bit and tablets certainly also won’t help.
Again: there is no problem.
Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
#90Earlier 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…
I'm not convinced that Amazon will be marketing it in the Kindle sector. Kindle at the moment is very much associated as a device incredibly well suited to reading a book, and the existing third generation one is incredible at this. If I'm paying three times as much for a Kindle tablet, they've got to be selling it me on features that compensate for the less-optimal reading screen and massively reduced battery life. They've got to be selling it on the basis of tablet-like apps.
This might mean a focus on magazine/more graphically designed newspapers, perhaps distributed through the Kindle Store, that take advantage of the nature of the Tablet's screen; but at the very least it will have to be a tablet with an exceptionally capable browser.