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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.

#131

Post by officemonkey »

estel wrote: post #112
cpeterso wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Existing Kindles have email, web browsing, music, and games. True, there are limitations. Movies are the only "new" thing.

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

#133

Post by kreek »

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…

While I do agree it's mainly a consumption device I think it's already quite useful as a creation platform (I write/sketch out music on it). IMO it's a reflection a culture where most people are consumers not creators.

Mainstream PC use is for games, netflix, and facebook. All passive. I guess facebook is 50/50, if you call writing a never ending Christmas card update letter creative :)

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

#135

Post by greyish_water »

joebadmo wrote: post #128
chc wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How is it consumption when someone e.g., records a song in GarageBand?

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

#136

Post by crenshaw »

ugh wrote: post #43
peterbraden wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your reply exemplifies his argument - you used an ipod to 'consume' media for si hours, rather than creating, which older computers may have been better suited for.

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 (…

Aren't all these available to people with desktop/laptop computers? Aren't there something like an order and a half magnitude more of those than tablets?

And this was all possible a decade ago. There were at least 50M people with web connections a year ago.

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

#137

Post by srdev »

rshm wrote: post #28

$250 is too much. Ebay/Amazon has similar specs 800MHz/7"/Android 2.2 for $87 and below with a free shipping.

My wife has one of those $87 Android 2.2 tablets and they're near-unusable. We had to replace the clunky firmware to a real Google Marketplace rather than a Chinese knock-off. Even then, the performance was sub-par. The thing struggled to even perform the most basic UI operations. There is a market for a quality tablet at a $250 price point.

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

#138

Post by megablast »

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…

If a tablet has the android market place, and google apps, users do not have to use them. Surely it would be better to include these apps, and get both markets, rather than concentrating on those who do not want to run other stuff on your tablet.

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

#139

Post by SwellJoe »

I was momentarily excited...until I read the description of the new Kindle.

I played with a Nook a few weeks ago, and almost bought one. $249 is nearly an impulse purchase price point. But, I already had a netbook, a Kindle, a laptop, a Nexus One (which broke a few days ago, to be replaced by a Sensation), a desktop, and a DS, so I talked myself out of it.

One of the big reasons is because I wouldn't be able to get rid of my existing Kindle. The Kindle has a killer feature, which I can't replicate: International 3G Internet for free. It's a piss poor excuse for a web browser, but when I'm out of the country, I can google "wifi hotspot city-name" and find a place to connect my netbook or laptop and get some work done. This is a miracle for someone that travels as much as I do.

The battery life is also spectacular. Since I travel in a motorhome, and sometimes go days without plugging in, the ability to read books without having to think about charging my ebook reader is awesome.

So, the two really awesome things about the current Kindle that I have, are not present in the Android Kindle. Also, the fact that they've forked Android hard makes me more than a little hesitant to consider it. My new phone is only a slight divergence from standard Android, and I find it annoying as hell...I'll probably be rooting it and putting a more standard Android on it when I have more free time. The notion of a total fork without a standard Market and all the Google apps (Maps is my lifeline when travelling), and possibly without some of the other apps I rely on, is just crazy. It's hard to imagine such a thing not sucking.

In short, it sounds like I'll be better served by a Nook, should I decide to buy a little ebook/tablet. At least it is readily converted to a standard Android device. Or, maybe I'll just wait out the next round of tablets...or, maybe I'll just not buy a tablet. I still have yet to figure out what I'd use one for. They seem to be highly focused consumption devices, and I do enough consumption as it is.

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

#140

Post by glassx »

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…

Well, I never really used the iPad as a consumption device. Of course I loaded it with movies, e-books and pdf papers, but it gets old fast. I still buy 4 books a month and watch Netflix on the living room exclusively... =\

However it instantly became my go-to e-mail client at work, reminds me of appointments (integrates with Exchange), holds my to-do list, has my personal issue-tracking database (Bento), browses trough our github projects, syncs with Dropbox, allows me to connect to SQL Server, is on Skype all day long and I even did some (simple) presentations on Keynote for our meetings.

I also use it for online banking when I'm not home and I have Amplitube and iRig to play guitar trough it on weekends.

I also know some people who use it in college, my sister borrows mine sometimes when she's in town and her classmate also owns one.

Granted, I'm a developer, not a manager, so those apps aren't critical to my work... but I LOVE having only two apps on my Windows Workstation: Firefox and Visual Studio. Talk about focus!

Also, I work on a university, and we're in the process of buying tablets for the whole staff. Probably not iPads, idk.

Of course, it's a weird use case, but well, it is possible...

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