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Daring Fireball: Amazon's New Kindles

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Re: Daring Fireball: Amazon's New Kindles

#101

Post by alttag »

CJefferson wrote: post #82
spiralganglion wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as we see people getting work done on the Kindle Fire, I'll grant you that. If your work involves a lot of writing, then the iPad isn't an obvious boon [1]. But if you can do your work more efficiently by treating data and actions as symbols, the iPad is just overflowing with potential, much of it already being realized. Musicians, artists, animators, logicians, teachers, doctors, researchers; the list of pro…

You mention researchers and logicians using the iPad. Can you give any examples? I tried using the iPad, but the lack of support for LaTeX or papers in svn, git or mercurial repositories made it completely unusable for anything resembling work.

In my field (Information Systems), most papers are served as PDFs. My advisor has switched almost entirely to his iPad for most work, especially when reading/annotating articles.

Most journals in my field require Word docs, and don't use LaTeX. It's been my observation that the field is filled with business people who use computers, and relatively fewer computer people who ended up in business. Sure, there are some of each, but the former seem to outnumber the latter.

Re: Daring Fireball: Amazon's New Kindles

#102

Post by lukifer »

dascripter wrote: post #3

One thing that I have a problem with is the complaints about the Kindle buttons. As much as I see people try and use the Kindle as a touch screen, I would not want it to be. I like the button press because I don't have to move my hand from holding the device. If I had to physically swipe my finger everytime I wanted to move to the next page I could see that being very annoying. The two reasons I really love my Kindle…

I really like how the Nook Touch handles it: subtle physical buttons (with little risk of accidental presses), or you can swipe, or you can tap on the screen. I use all three methods, depending on how I'm holding it in that moment. I don't even have to think about it, and the immersion of reading is unbroken.

Re: Daring Fireball: Amazon's New Kindles

#103

Post by pyre »

cageface wrote: post #64
spiralganglion wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have made a living as a musician, as a 3d animator, and as a software dev. My parents are both teachers. I did a lot of research in my University days. In all of these areas, I can see the potential for multitouch-based applications that go far, far beyond what we're currently seeing, or have ever seen on a traditional mouse/keyboard computer. In fact, in my current line of work as a developer, I'm pursuing these v…

The problem with touch interfaces is that they're low-resolution. Most "professional" software allows manipulation of a large number of parameters. With a keyboard and mouse you can do this fairly efficiently but you just can't pack that many widgets onto a touch screen unless you make it much larger than 10". Compound gestures may be more expressive than mouse clicks but they're also more error-prone and much less d…

  > much less discoverable
That's not necessarily an issue if we're essentially talking about power users. If the app is worth its salt, then professionals that can make use of it will learn the ropes (so long as there is sufficient material -- help docs, tutorials, screencasts, etc). A good example is to look at text editors like Vim or Emacs. Much of their functionality isn't very 'discoverable,' but the power locked inside drives people to learn. Especially if you plan on diving into a particular profession. You want to use tools that make your job easier, even if there is a steep initial investment of time to learn the system.

Re: Daring Fireball: Amazon's New Kindles

#104

Post by pyre »

jurjenh wrote: post #86
dascripter wrote: post #3

One thing that I have a problem with is the complaints about the Kindle buttons. As much as I see people try and use the Kindle as a touch screen, I would not want it to be. I like the button press because I don't have to move my hand from holding the device. If I had to physically swipe my finger everytime I wanted to move to the next page I could see that being very annoying. The two reasons I really love my Kindle…

Funny that you complain about page turning... for hundreds of years, it has required an extended physical movement to turn the page. Amazing the times we live in, that page turning has become an effort that becomes annoying. Combined with our tendency to be less physical active, we are heading to a (physically) stationary future...

Well, we've removed the 'annoyance' with the original Kindle, why make an effort to put it back in? What does touch add over the use of buttons (other than, "Look! We're using a new technology, therefore it's better and you should buy one!")?

Re: Daring Fireball: Amazon's New Kindles

#105

Post by tsm »

wanorris wrote: post #37
tsm wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I have the money, I'd be just as glad to separate my ebook-reading from everything else. When I read an ebook, I do want an eInk screen, ridiculous battery life, and no distracting apps or websites.

My problem is that I ultimately find an e-ink Kindle too limited as a reading device. I have a substantial number of ebooks in PDF format, and only a minority of them are effectively readable on my 2nd gen Kindle. (There are other use cases like comics and cookbooks where e-ink falls down on the job as well.) Honestly, my Android phone with ezPDF is a better reader. So something like this looks just about perfect.

My completely subjective personal preference is better than your completely subjective personal preference!

No, in all seriousness you make a good point about PDFs. I eventually realized that reading, say, a programming book was best done with a dead tree and that I should stop struggling with my Kindle. As a PDF, the text was a bit too small. As a converted document, the reflowed text killed the formatting, which was also no fun. Full-size PDF would be nice.

Re: Daring Fireball: Amazon's New Kindles

#106

Post by rg »

OpieCunningham wrote: post #28
dascripter wrote: post #3

One thing that I have a problem with is the complaints about the Kindle buttons. As much as I see people try and use the Kindle as a touch screen, I would not want it to be. I like the button press because I don't have to move my hand from holding the device. If I had to physically swipe my finger everytime I wanted to move to the next page I could see that being very annoying. The two reasons I really love my Kindle…

Not sure how the Kindle Touch or Fire work, but iBooks and the Kindle app on iPad both have tap once to flip to the previous/next page (swiping is not required).

Kindle app on Android phones also uses single tap to page; it's extremely convenient (compared to the old Kindle with physical buttons which I also use). Touch for paging is certainly no worse than the old buttons, and--really--the keyboard and cursor control on the old Kindle are just about useless. ("Up, up, up, left, down, down, up, ..." is hard to take after having a touch device.)

Re: Daring Fireball: Amazon's New Kindles

#107

Post by InclinedPlane »

Steko wrote: post #87
InclinedPlane wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it? It's raw, unfiltered bias of course. There's very little reason why the Kindle Fire won't be a strong iPad competitor. Tablets are primarily used for browsing, reading, and casual gaming. It seems like Kindle Fire will succeed in hitting each one of those bullet points.

Did you even read the article? He's very complimentary of everything Amazon's doing here. Leave it to HN to zero in on the one critical thing he says and blow it up as HUGE BIAS TYPICAL GRUBER FANBOY.

Sure, he's very complimentary, in an "imma let you finish, but the iPad is the best laptop replacement of ALL TIME!" sort of way, which is to say rather derogatory at the same time. He tries to place the iPad and the Fire as distinctly different products serving distinctly different market segments: the iPad as the high-end "laptop replacement" the Kindle Fire as the low-end, low-cost, blue collar, half-assed substitute which lures users into buying it through content delivery rather than device or experience excellence.

That's not terribly complimentary when you boil it down. My take is that the Fire, keeping in mind this is a 1st gen product too, is a quite suitable iPad competitor head-to-head. It will provide a high-quality browsing experience similar or superior to the iPad and it will provide a high-quality e-book reading experience similar or superior to the iPad. The Fire's lack of dependence on any sort of syncing with a PC is also a point where the experience is outright superior. The biggest difference is the size and perhaps the hardware / performance / efficiency, personally I don't think there's an objective reason to pick one or the other as obviously superior in this category. Perhaps an 11" screen is vastly preferred to a 7" screen, perhaps both are suitable, perhaps the 7" is more preferred, I don't know, and it's too soon to tell how well the Fire will stack up against the iPad performance wise. The other big difference is the app/game ecosystem. The iPad definitely has a head start and there are plenty of popular games and apps that are iOS only at the moment, but to be honest I don't think that network effect is big enough to drive the market a whole hell of a lot at the moment, especially in the face of a $300 premium on the iPad. The Fire doesn't have 3G, but it remains to be seen how important that is.

Overall, I think the Kindle Fire is a pretty strong competitor to the iPad, regardless of price. As I said, I think many people will find it to be a decent laptop replacement. Moreover, I think over the next year or so there are going to be a lot of moments where people who bought Kindle Fire's at or near launch will be having experiences that will make a lot of iPad 2 owners jealous.

Re: Daring Fireball: Amazon's New Kindles

#108

Post by jonknee »

rjd wrote: post #50
sliverstorm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it that makes the iPad a possible laptop replacement, but the Fire not? I don't think the iPad is that much more a real laptop replacement than the Fire. I think people bill it as one to themselves to help justify paying for an iPad.

The screen size is important. If you've tried to use the web on a nook its lucky to be an average experience, generally its actually pretty horrible as its so small. The iPad as a slightly better experience due to size alone, but even still I don't like using safari. Anecdotally most people I know with iPads have stopped using laptops outright. Disclaimer here that the majority of owners are older. The interesting th…

The Kindle Fire has nearly the same resolution as the iPad--1024x768 for the iPad and 1024x600 for the Fire. The Fire is higher res (because it's smaller) so text will appear sharper. There is simply no reason that the iPad is a laptop replacement but the Fire is not.

In fact, there is a good reason that it would be the other way around--the iPad requires a computer but the Fire does not. Open an iPad up new in box and you'll need to find a copy of iTunes to use it. The system requirements for the Fire? "None, because it's wireless and doesn't require a computer."

Re: Daring Fireball: Amazon's New Kindles

#109

Post by jonknee »

tomkarlo wrote: post #52
vailripper wrote: post #7

I don't understand this:"The iPad is a credible laptop replacement for many people and with iCloud and another year or two of hardware improvements, that’s going to be true for more and more people. The Kindle Fire is a laptop replacement for almost no one. It’s a peripheral, not a second computer and it’s priced accordingly. " What is it that makes the iPad a possible laptop replacement, but the Fire not? To me, the…

I love the Kindle, and I've already pre-ordered the Fire, but I can't see how it's a decent laptop replacement compared to the iPad. First off, there's no 3G, which is one of the major reasons people like using the iPad as a portable computing device. Also, while it does have a browser and email clients, I'm guessing it won't have nearly the level of support from Exchange and other corporate email systems that the iP…

From what I've heard, the iPad WiFi models outsell the 3G models, so it can't be that important. Also, the premium you pay for 3G is more than half of what the entire Fire costs. (And for that matter, the 3G iPad premium fee is also just $9 less than the entire 3G Kindle, which shows you how much of a rip Apple's 3G premium is.)

Re: Daring Fireball: Amazon's New Kindles

#110

Post by ja2ke »

"The iPad and Kindle Fire are emblematic of their makers. Apple’s primary business is selling devices for a healthy profit, and they back that up with a side business of selling digital content for those devices. Amazon’s primary business is as a retailer, including as a retailer of digital content. They back that up with a side business of low-cost digital devices that are optimized for on-the-fly purchasing of anything and everything Amazon sells. The Kindles are to Amazon what the printed catalog was to Sears a century ago."

That's the best articulated philosophical breakdown between the two products and the two companies that I've seen. The two devices look similar at a glance, but the reasoning behind their numerous differences boil down entirely to those two different philosophies. Apple wants you to buy an iPad to buy an iPad -- they get you to do that by pointing out how it has apps and music for sale. Amazon wants you to buy a Fire to buy a ton of Amazon digital content -- they get you to do that by making the Fire itself cheap.

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