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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.

#171

Post by ugh »

varunsrin wrote: post #162
ugh wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wh…

Some of the R&D. The world is a big, big place. Tablets are not some big black hole that suck away all brainpower from all other tasks.

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

#172

Post by Adaptive »

trotsky wrote: post #49
Adaptive wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It won't have android market access without a hack, just Amazon's market. The lack of a camera (among other things) means it doesn't meet the hardware standards google requires for shipping google apps which includes the market. Not that Amazon would want to anyway, they clearly would like to drive traffic to their store.

That all sounds right but still, what kind of compelling is an android tablet without gmail? I can't imagine they expect people to put up with imap. I can understand the drive-traffic-to-our-content-ecosystem, but there's some stuff a tablet just has to do these days.

Then again, no camera, maybe they are positioning it as a fancy kindle, in which $250 is too much.

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

#173

Post by scotu »

roadnottaken wrote: post #103
moultano wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 backgro…

It's impossible to read a non-e-ink screen in bright sunlight. I love my iPad, but I'm considering buying a Kindle just so I can read at the beach at my next vacation.

It's also not healthy for your eyes to stare at a lamp... we already do it long hours in front of a pc. Better not to do so also for reading books...

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

#175

Post by [deleted] »

estel wrote: post #96
wccrawford wrote: post #6

Earlier 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.

If this device has no physical buttons, then it seems likely that it would have to be a true fork.

[deleted]

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

#176

Post by niklas_a »

joebadmo wrote: post #118
nigham wrote: post #110

Earlier 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…

My iPad is my primary device for blogging. Since it is so accessible I end up blogging more now that I have it than I did before.

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

#177

Post by niklas_a »

joebadmo wrote: post #35
beaumartinez wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> our tools for consumption are advancing at a significantly greater rate than our tools for production Our tools for production have advanced as far as they can—what major changes have the desktop and laptop PC had over the last five years?

That's part of my point. The R&D is going into optimizing consumption instead of enabling production. I think there's still room for making it easier for people to produce expressive content. I don't think I'm necessarily imaginative enough to think of many, or the best, but I've started to try.[0] I think some people, particularly those working on Web stuff, are also trying. But I think web software is only one vect…

I think it seems you have decided on this view and regardless of all the evidence of the contrary you are sticking with it..

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

#178

Post by HSO »

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…

I'm growing more and more irritated by the classification of "reading" as "consumption". Consumption is usually defined as a sink of goods (as opposed to "investment" or "production").

Reading per se, however, does not result in anything vanishing from the system. It _can_ mean that but usually the ideas or perspectives contained in the book or article change the ideas or perspectives of the reader. Reading _can_ be pure consumption, for sure, but that describes a specific type of reading.

One could argue that buying a physical copy and tossing it after you're done is the act of consumption. But then the consumption really concerns only the physical medium, not the content.

Am I splitting hairs? I'm not sure, to be honest, but I feel the more people talk about reading as something "for passive users to consume", the more it narrows the industry perspective on what transmitting ideas between people means or could mean.

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

#179

Post by cwp »

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.

But post-PC devices are only partially replacing the PC - in those areas where they're better than PCs. We're not losing anything, only gaining something new.

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

#180

Post by sandGorgon »

shinratdr wrote: post #164
sandGorgon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 excep…

actually this is the 1024x768 res display. I dont know why the disparity in description.
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