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.

#161

Post by bradleyland » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 5:17 AM UTC

achompas wrote: post #146

enjo wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we already have that. Why woud you buy it? Is it just that it's cheaper? Are developers going to want to build apps for it? I think breaking away to complete Android incompatibility is a huge mistake.

It's not just cheaper--it's 50% less than the price of a new iPad. That's a substantial difference.

I think you're the first person in this thread to really "get it".

To answer some of the parent's questions:

Q) Why would you buy it?

A) Because it's significantly less expensive (more within reach). Because it's Amazon, and it will have ready access to: music, movies, books, and an exemplary shopping experience for a wide variety of products. This experience will be well integrated with the device, and in the traditional Amazon way, everything will be extremely easy. "From the people that brought you 1-click purchasing."

Q) Is it just that it's cheaper?

A) You say "just that it's cheaper" as if that's insignificant. Did you see the way HP TouchPads flew off the shelves at $99? Do you know anyone smart enough, or with enough experience, to say that a properly priced Amazon Tablet won't fly off the shelves at half the cost of an iPad?

Q) Are developers going to want to build apps for it?

A) On a cached copy of their "Inside Amazon" page [1], they state: "Over 137 million active Amazon customer accounts". If I recall correctly, Steve jobs was proud of the fact that iTMS had over 100 million customers with credit cards on file. With 137 million active customers, they've got a massive base to which they can market.

1 - http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:CwHkwbS...

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

#162

Post by varunsrin » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 5:46 AM UTC

ugh wrote: post #115

varunsrin wrote: post #56

Earlier 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.

"The iPad is the wrong tool for creating that stuff. But it is awesome for consumption."

Exactly, OP's point is that most R&D by large co's these days is focused on building consumption devices similar to the iPad. About 10 years ago, most R&D was around enterprises/PC's, and that benefited both producers & consumers of content.

No one is arguing that one particular model is right - it was simply an observation of where R&D is focused these days, and what that means for producers of content.

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

#163

Post by rwmj » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 6:16 AM UTC

SwellJoe wrote: post #139

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 r…

I'm liking (not "loving") my rooted Nook Color with CM7 nightlies. It was, above all, a cheap tablet, and given the limitations of the price it works rather well.

However for the reasons you outlined in your comment, it's not a great e-reader. The Nook is better as a sort of cheap web browser for looking up recipes in the kitchen, looking at Google Maps, and web browsing when my wife is using the main computer.

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

#164

Post by shinratdr » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 6:18 AM UTC

sandGorgon wrote: post #22

ajg1977 wrote: post #10

If there's one thing they need to nail on this device (beyond the Kindle app) it's web browsing. a $250 7" tablet with a top class browser is a hugely compelling product all by itself.

There have been several white-label 8'' multitouch tablets for a long time. http://www.androidtabletspcs.com/8-Inch-Android-2-3-Tablet-P... For example - the tablet above has A8 Cortex, gingerbread and dual-cameras.

Not to mention this:

> resolution 800*600(4:3)

Yeah, I think I'll pass. This is the problem with all of those off label Android tablets (and the cheaper brand name ones too, looking at you Viewsonic & Acer) they have runoff parts from production of knockoff phones so they frequently have serious issues, they can be completely unusable depending on how much or how little slack the community picks up, and without exception the screens are absolutely atrocious.

I just picked up an Acer Iconia A100 for $300 and it has the shittiest TFT screen I have seen on a tablet, ever. It's going right back to the store because of it. A tablet comes together. It's not a good screen, a good OS, a good CPU, a good GPU, etc... It's all of those things executed well and working harmoniously.

If it's not, it might as well be a paperweight. If you like screwing around constantly to get things working, inconsistent features and completely random manufacturer support, then grab an off label tablet or a cheap non-Google sanctioned tablet. You want a device that can do more than read e-books, browse the web poorly and play Angry Birds at 75% framerate if you're lucky, then consider waiting a month or two and saving up the money for something that you won't grow to hate.

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

#165

Post by shinratdr » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 6:32 AM UTC

enjo wrote: post #141

achompas wrote: post #75

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 wide…

But we already have that. Why woud you buy it? Is it just that it's cheaper? Are developers going to want to build apps for it? I think breaking away to complete Android incompatibility is a huge mistake.

I think waiting for Google to deliver on its promises of the world all while Apple is eating the tablet game for breakfast was, is and continues to be a huge mistake. Gingerbread isn't acceptable, Honeycomb isn't acceptable, and ICS is a ways off.

If anything, breaking Android compatibility and using it like an embedded OS is your only option right now. Google simply either refuses to polish Android for tablets or has too much on their plate right now to do so. Fixing that problem without Google's help will definitely cause compatibility issues. The question is what do people expect from a $250 tablet? I would say "vast app compatibility" is not high up on that list.

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

#166

Post by tricolon » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 6:45 AM UTC

hugh3 wrote: post #151

tricolon wrote: post #132

I really don't get the point of a Kindle with a battery life of only 10 hours.

Do you read for more than ten hours at a stretch? Personally I'd kill for a tablet that could last the eighteen hours door-to-door from SFO to SYD, but hey, ten hours is a good start.

Only sometimes. Right now, though, my Kindle is very convenient: I only have to charge it every couple weeks or so. Just like my trusty Nokia from 2002.

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

#167

Post by drivebyacct2 » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 6:47 AM UTC

Adaptive wrote: post #44

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #17

Google's applications are not part of Android. Putting a skin on Android and not shipping it with Google apps is NOT a fork. Even if you want to consider it one in a technical definition, it's not a significant one. It's as much a fork of Android as CyanogenMod is. (CM does not come with Google Apps, though they can be added after-the-fact).

You made the most important comment in this thread. I really would like to see TC clear this up. Do they really mean fork or, as I suspect and as you state, is this just Android without the google apps baked in? Market is a bigger question. Without considering manually side loading the apps, I'm assuming that users will be able to install google apps on the device as they are, for the most part, all available via And…

I feel slimy making this comment, but "trotsky is completely correct".

Users can't side load Google Apps, because they require the Market. The Market (and it's underlying dependency of Google Talk [yes, it sounds funny, look it up, I wish I were kidding]), requires special installation and components that frankly I can't explain (I don't know how to). But I know enough to tell you that you can't simply download Market.apk and install it.

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

#168

Post by ugh » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 6:54 AM UTC

crenshaw wrote: post #136

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 (…

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.

Way of missing the point. Also: There were no podcasts and hardly any blogs a decade ago. Both exist today (in their massive numbers) because the tools for content creation and distribution have become simpler to use and cheaper.

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

#169

Post by ugh » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 7:00 AM UTC

joebadmo wrote: post #126

ugh wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 amate…

Getting rare music through file sharing sucked. I know it, I was trying to get it. The iTunes music store has a greater selection of rare music than any file sharing I ever tried in the early 2000s.

Of course, unless devices like tablets continue to convince them that the mainstream is the only valuable stream.

Why should that happen? Why? I don’t understand. Non-mainstream content is a first class citizen on tablets.

I … I really don’t get it. You are postulating a effect that seems so wildly implausible and absolutely absurd to me.

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

#170

Post by jcitme » Sat, Sep 03, 2011, 7:01 AM UTC

sandGorgon wrote: post #22

ajg1977 wrote: post #10

If there's one thing they need to nail on this device (beyond the Kindle app) it's web browsing. a $250 7" tablet with a top class browser is a hugely compelling product all by itself.

There have been several white-label 8'' multitouch tablets for a long time. http://www.androidtabletspcs.com/8-Inch-Android-2-3-Tablet-P... For example - the tablet above has A8 Cortex, gingerbread and dual-cameras.

Hm, what are the downsides? The obvious ones are interface lag (speed) and battery life. I am thinking about taking a plunge, but if the interface is bad (doen't need to be FAST, as long as it's not SLOW) and it can last a day of moderate use, this could be an amazing market.