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

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

#111

Post by ugh » Fri, Sep 02, 2011, 11:38 PM UTC

joebadmo wrote: post #105

ugh wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

I think you could have used the same argument for the media distribution model that existed before PCs were widely accessible: look, everyone is sitting on the couch, watching television, clearly that's what they want. But once we gave a lot of people access to PCs, we saw an explosion of interaction, content creation, communication, participation. I don't think it's an overt conspiracy, it's just self-interest and c…

You do know Napster? You do know The Pirate Bay? People want access to mainstream music, mainstream videos and mainstream books, no matter the device. If the big companies don’t give it to them people will go to great lengths to get said access. That’s just how it is, always has been, always will be. You are again and again creating false dichotomies.

The media distribution model of all the mainstream stuff is not different between PCs and tablets. Tablets might be a bit more convenient when it comes to buying stuff (probably not even that) but that’s it. You can get mainstream stuff on both. People want mainstream stuff on both. Napster and all the later filesharing is a testament to that.

But that’s not the whole story. Far from it. All the other content out there is perfectly accessible with tablets. They are just as good at accessing non-mainstream content as PCs. They are not limited in that respect. They all have awesome browsers (the most modern stuff you can get), they allow you to download podcasts or to subscribe to RSS feeds. It’s all possible.

Tablets are the content consumption Yin to the content creation Yang.

I just don’t understand how one could see that any other way.

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

#112

Post by estel » Fri, Sep 02, 2011, 11:39 PM UTC

cpeterso wrote: post #100

estel wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Mom 'n' pop users don't care about "apps". They want books, email, web browsing, music, free streaming movies, and whatever silly game is popular at the moment (Angry Birds, Sudoku, and Bejeweled). A Kindle tablet can do all of these.

Against the baseline of an existing Kindle, email, web browsing, music, movies and Angry Birds are all apps.

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

#113

Post by estel » Fri, Sep 02, 2011, 11:40 PM UTC

nigham wrote: post #110

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…

A step backward is hardly the way I'd put it. Consumption-related technology as well as production related technologies are improving dramatically; we perceive the pace of consumption technology as being faster because consumption technology is far more applicable, and affects more users, and so it's more on the news. This is not a problem, there have always been more readers than writers, movie watchers than movie p…

With respect to app development, which has been incredible in how widespread it's become, it's possible it's just an extension of what the Web started: incredible democratisation of creation.

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

#114

Post by ugh » Fri, Sep 02, 2011, 11:41 PM UTC

orangecat wrote: post #108

ugh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Improving consumption doesn’t imply much about creation. So what if consumption is easier? Does that mean less people will create something? Why? Creating something doesn’t get harder because consumption gets easier. I don’t see the causal connection. (That central authority bullshit is just patent nonsense.) Oh, and our tools for creation still are rapidly improving. Prices for computers have gone nothing but down.…

Creating something doesn’t get harder because consumption gets easier. You're absolutely right that there's no necessary dichotomy, but in practice that's what's happening. The iPad could be an awesome platform for a Squeak-like development environment where you create and program a bunch of objects and have them interact with each other. But Apple won't allow such an app in their store which makes it unavailable to…

Apple is not the only company in the world.

Tablets will improve.

You predictions of doom are way overblown.

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

#115

Post by ugh » Fri, Sep 02, 2011, 11:48 PM UTC

varunsrin wrote: post #56

ugh wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wha? If I want to create I can. It’s never been as easy as today. You are creating a false dichotomy. The content I was consuming on my iPad – and that was my point – did not come from a central authority (no more than before when I consumed on my Laptop) and it’s enabled by the cheap tools available for content creation today. I was listening to one awesome podcast by a guy who made podcasting his job and survives (…

Was the podcast created by a guy on a iPad? How about the webcomic, do you think it was done in the iPad / Android version photoshop? Was the HP fan fiction typed on a tablet keyboard? The point the OP is trying to make is not that tablets discourage production of content at a higher level. It's that companies are spending a lot of money improving consumption device /software , instead of creative devices/software It…

No it wasn’t. The iPad is the wrong tool for creating that stuff. But it is awesome for consumption.

Argh. This is sooooo frustrating. Why does everyone believe that it’s either the iPad or nothing? That just doesn’t make any sense at all. I don’t get it.

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

#116

Post by kemayo » Fri, Sep 02, 2011, 11:58 PM UTC

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…

I'm very interested to hear the details of "free Prime". Depending on the implementation then this might suddenly become a thing I will buy because it makes financial sense, regardless of its technical merit.

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

#117

Post by chc » Fri, Sep 02, 2011, 11:59 PM UTC

joebadmo wrote: post #87

chc wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Apps, optimized websites, content-sharing networks like Instagram, etc.

Basically, the flip side of the increased consumption is that it's a lot easier to get your work out to other people, which means people who previously couldn't or wouldn't are now becoming producers. For example, a lot more people are publishing books for e-readers because those platforms make it so easy — with Amazon, it's pretty much as simple as logging into your Amazon account and uploading a text file. Web series (e.g. "The Guild") are a viable medium because so many people have these easy-consumption devices.

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

#118

Post by joebadmo » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 12:29 AM UTC

nigham wrote: post #110

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…

A step backward is hardly the way I'd put it. Consumption-related technology as well as production related technologies are improving dramatically; we perceive the pace of consumption technology as being faster because consumption technology is far more applicable, and affects more users, and so it's more on the news. This is not a problem, there have always been more readers than writers, movie watchers than movie p…

That's an interesting take.

I guess the way it looks to me is that the last dramatic production advancement for lay people was the advent of blogging. The two major advancements after that have been social networking and tablets, which both somewhat degrade production signal.

The observation that an optimized consumption experience gives producers a bigger audience is an interesting one. But I think what I'm objecting to is the further distinction between those classes. The PC and blogging revolutions were profound to me in that they closed the gap between the producers and consumers. Tablets, on the other hand, make the distinction more overt. Same with the Kindle.

You cannot have better and better consumption oriented devices in a vacuum. Someone has to produce what the masses are consuming.

While this is true, my point is about who has the means for production. I would rather see that power distributed than concentrated.

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

#119

Post by dogwelder » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 12:30 AM UTC

joebadmo wrote: post #57

9999 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 imagine developers will produce interesting productivity software for these platforms, but I think the form factor inherently privileges consumption. There are the ergonomics, for example. Also limited screen size, and necessarily limited input. Maybe my overall point, though, is that with development going into optimizing consumption, less goes to figuring out more robust ways to interact with a more powerful plat…

It might be just an inherent lag between optimized mass consumption, and new innovative production. Scaling the Web out to the mass market happened first, next-generation innovations like Google showed up later. It is discouraging the direction is moving toward walled gardens. But there's a plus side to getting the platform out there to millions, making it more valuable to build innovations on. I can live with it as long as it's not one company owning the whole market, or a hundred small incompatible ones.

Machines optimized for creating stuff keep getting better, and aren't going away. I don't think it's necessarily bad if those machines drop to a smaller market share. It's usually a much smaller percent of people who create the apps and content that aren't crap anyway, and most of the consumer audience goes to them. Getting optimized video production machines out to the masses via cellphones is cool, but it's not really improving the average video on YouTube.

For creative ideas at the OS and interaction levels though... yeah, the platform owners need or want to own most of it. I think they're OK with jailbreaking the platform to the extent it creates a testing ground for new ideas, that they can then adopt.

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

#120

Post by joebadmo » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 12:35 AM UTC

siglesias wrote: post #109

joebadmo wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that it's certainly a step forward for consumption. What I meant is that it's a step backward for what I saw as the trend toward a world in which the power to create things is more evenly distributed. Don't get me wrong, I have a kindle, and I love it. But it's not just optimized for reading, it's optimized for reading content that's distributed through a centrally maintained distribution channel. (And w…

Let's try to clarify a little. There are two pillars to your argument, from what I can tell. 1) Content on post-PC devices is mediated through a central authority. You argue this is bad because presumably you cannot read whatever you want, but only what the central authority allows through. But reading whatever content you want is not enough, you also would have expected that any content you find out there that is op…

1) I actually don't have that much of a problem with the Kindle (the e-ink one), at least not as much as with the iPad, because it's not a replacement for the PC, which is a production device as well as a consumption device.

The iPad, on the other hand, is a replacement for device for a large class of people, and it's optimized for the consumption of centrally mediated content. It's not strictly at odds with the web, but it privileges its own distribution channels. I believe that has an effect.

2) Again, not an argument against the Kindle so much as the iPad for reasons stated in (1). But the iPad offers a degraded experience for writing blog posts, for example, compared to a PC. I believe that friction matters. I believe this optimization will only continue to privilege consumption and specifically mediated consumption as time goes on, because that's where the incentives lie. This makes me sad.

[Edit: I'm not necessarily trying to criticize manufacturers as nefarious. They're just doing what the market dictates. I am saying the phenomenon is unfortunate, and I'm trying to raise awareness of the issue to get people thinking of ways to empower more people to create more, better, richer, things. I was also pointing out that Google is maybe the one large corporation that has the power and the motivation to do so.]