Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
121–130 of 200 posts
Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
The iPad has also had an explosion of content. Why is that not all the evidence you need?
I can't speak for chc, but content creation on tablets and smart phones is real for joe average. Maybe not the kind of content joebadmo is thinking about, but the iphone 4 is the most popular camera on Flickr: photo and video editing power is given to the normal user without learning Photoshop or Avid. Even the customizing of your "personal" news magazine in apps like flipboard, Zite, ... is some kind of "content cre…
Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
#123I 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".
Probably true. I have Amazon Mom and the free Prime is only good for a year, there's no way they'd give away lifetime free shipping on such a cheap device.
Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
#124Earlier 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…
There's a button Safari toolbar that allows you to save a bookmark as an app icon on the home screen. Your argument that Apple hates the web makes no sense.
That is a pre-tablet mindset. It wasn't long ago that GUIs were chided for being "just a fad".
"GUIs are just a fad,when their novelty wears off, users will soon return to true command-line interfaces like DOS", Jon Gladden 1986.
http://www.gladdengraphics.com/academics/GradCourses/Compute...
Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 objectin…
Who has the means for production? Everyone has the means for production! It doesn't take some special equipment to write a book and publish it to the Kindle. People's ability to publish long-form writing is at an all-time high thanks to e-readers. The fact that the device used to create the content is different from the one people prefer to use to consume it doesn't really matter if everybody has both — which they do.
Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 di…
Napster, at least (I don't know about Pirate Bay), also enabled a class of underground/amateur music by giving it a distribution channel that never existed before. In a way that iTunes does not. I think, at least to some degree, you have the causality backwards. People consumed mainstream content because that was what was largely available to them. How much of mainstream content consumption has been replaced by amateur content on the web? As the culture at large gets more and more used to this, I think the idea of mainstream will hold less and less power. Of course, unless devices like tablets continue to convince them that the mainstream is the only valuable stream.
The content is available on tablets, too, but the device subtly privileges its own centrally mediated distribution channels. I believe this privilege will only get stronger.
Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
People who otherwise wouldn't consider themselves content creators can be inspired to become such if their devices come with content-creation features. As the divide increases between content-consuming devices and content-creation devices, more and more people are going to opt for the less expensive consuming devices and just not get the other kind, as they don't anticipate in advance a desire to create. Thus the barrier for becoming a content-creator could go from "hey neat, look what I can make with this!" to having to buy a separate device first. If the creation abilities come packaged with the consuming device, more people are going to feel empowered make the easy leap, perhaps discovering a new passion in the process.
Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 objectin…
Who has the means for production? Everyone has the means for production! It doesn't take some special equipment to write a book and publish it to the Kindle. People's ability to publish long-form writing is at an all-time high thanks to e-readers. The fact that the device used to create the content is different from the one people prefer to use to consume it doesn't really matter if everybody has both — which they do…
But my point is that if tablets, which people refer to as "post-PC" devices, in some significant measure replace PCs, then they only have consumption devices.
Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
#129Earlier 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…
Programming is not a content creation.
Re: Amazon’s Kindle Tablet Is Very Real. I’ve Seen It, Played With It.
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
There's a button Safari toolbar that allows you to save a bookmark as an app icon on the home screen. Your argument that Apple hates the web makes no sense. That is a pre-tablet mindset. It wasn't long ago that GUIs were chided for being "just a fad". "GUIs are just a fad,when their novelty wears off, users will soon return to true command-line interfaces like DOS", Jon Gladden 1986. http://www.gladdengraphics.com/ac…
You've misunderstood me. I don't believe tablets are a fad, if anything I'm lamenting they're inevitable success.
I also don't claim that Apple hates the web. I just think it's in their interest to privilege 1. Consumption over production; and 2. Consumption through their centrally mediated channels of distribution.