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Apple and the Kindle

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Re: Apple and the Kindle

#11

Post by msbarnett »

shrikant wrote: post #6
jgrahamc wrote: post #4

To me the Kindle has two killer features: the screen (because I can read it like paper for hours) and its weight (can hold it for hours like a paperback book). Those two things made it a 'wow' device. The 3G access made it effortless. None of those things seem very clever and have been pretty easily duplicated in the Nook. The software itself (and this applies to Kindle and Nook) is rather ugly and it feels slow to r…

> The software itself (and this applies to Kindle and Nook) is rather ugly and it feels slow to react. Both need Apple to come in and make them work. Yeah, and I'd lose the ability to side-load books, and would have to void the warranty on the device to be able to read books from non-approved sources. As someone who's never bought an e-book from Amazon for my Kindle, no thank you.

You can side-load non-DRM'd books from any outside source in iBooks. That's no different than Amazon's support for outside ebooks.

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#13

Post by ugh »

shrikant wrote: post #6
jgrahamc wrote: post #4

To me the Kindle has two killer features: the screen (because I can read it like paper for hours) and its weight (can hold it for hours like a paperback book). Those two things made it a 'wow' device. The 3G access made it effortless. None of those things seem very clever and have been pretty easily duplicated in the Nook. The software itself (and this applies to Kindle and Nook) is rather ugly and it feels slow to r…

> The software itself (and this applies to Kindle and Nook) is rather ugly and it feels slow to react. Both need Apple to come in and make them work. Yeah, and I'd lose the ability to side-load books, and would have to void the warranty on the device to be able to read books from non-approved sources. As someone who's never bought an e-book from Amazon for my Kindle, no thank you.

iBooks supports ePub and PDF, iOS supports MP3 and AAC and can play h.264 encoded videos. Apple sells music without DRM (just like Amazon) and videos as well as books with DRM (just like Amazon). Loading your own media without DRM is never a problem.

Apple is about as permissive as Amazon when it comes to selling and playing or displaying media.

You might be confused by apps. Apple is indeed less permissive with them.

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#14

Post by shrikant »

MrScruff wrote: post #8
shrikant wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The software itself (and this applies to Kindle and Nook) is rather ugly and it feels slow to react. Both need Apple to come in and make them work. Yeah, and I'd lose the ability to side-load books, and would have to void the warranty on the device to be able to read books from non-approved sources. As someone who's never bought an e-book from Amazon for my Kindle, no thank you.

Are you inferring it's not possible to read material from a non-approved source on the iPad or iPhone? Because that's not the case. Neither is it the case with videos or music for that matter.

Nope, I know all of the above (have both devices).

I would think that when the primary use-case is reading, then books are to e-readers what apps are to smartphones, and I'm not really a fan of the "single point of acquisition" model.

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#15

Post by danso »

ianferrel wrote: post #5
danso wrote: post #2

"And this is all before I’ve even got to the disastrous incompatibilities between the Kindle device, the Kindle for Mac app, the Kindle for iOS app, the Kindle Online Reader (read.amazon.com), and the kindle.amazon.com social network — all of which are full of gruesome interface annoyances of their own." I just bought a Kindle, and besides my first attempt at buying one resulted in returning it to Best Buy because of…

I'm 100% sure you can cancel whatever you accidentally ordered on Amazon.com. Just like One-click ordering, the point is to make a purchase easy and let only the people who don't want to go through with it cancel, not to bilk people out of money via misclicks.

So this "Special Offer" was a LivingSocial deal. I would agree with you but I looked over the email many times, and my own account page. There is not only no easily visible option to cancel, there is no email contact. I have to call to complain.

Even more befuddling is that every Amazon purchase I have ever made has resulted in a confirmation email minutes after the purchase. This "Special Offer"'s confirmation came to me at 2AM, well after I went to bed. I'm willing to chalk this up to me mistakenly hitting the buttons and ordering the offer while awake and that there's a delay to process it on the LivingSocial end. Either way, it was not reassuring.

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#16

Post by dfc »

dfc wrote: post #10
danso wrote: post #2

"And this is all before I’ve even got to the disastrous incompatibilities between the Kindle device, the Kindle for Mac app, the Kindle for iOS app, the Kindle Online Reader (read.amazon.com), and the kindle.amazon.com social network — all of which are full of gruesome interface annoyances of their own." I just bought a Kindle, and besides my first attempt at buying one resulted in returning it to Best Buy because of…

"At $40 for an interior design class"? What is the connection between interior design and the kindle? And/or what is the connection between the monetization plan of a night class at a CC and the kindle?

Why would somebody downvote my question? Is it inappropriate to ask someone what they meant?

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#17

Post by ConstantineXVI »

danso wrote: post #15
ianferrel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 100% sure you can cancel whatever you accidentally ordered on Amazon.com. Just like One-click ordering, the point is to make a purchase easy and let only the people who don't want to go through with it cancel, not to bilk people out of money via misclicks.

So this "Special Offer" was a LivingSocial deal. I would agree with you but I looked over the email many times, and my own account page. There is not only no easily visible option to cancel, there is no email contact. I have to call to complain. Even more befuddling is that every Amazon purchase I have ever made has resulted in a confirmation email minutes after the purchase. This "Special Offer"'s confirmation came…

Amazon seems to delay the confirmations on some of their digital purchases; definitely MP3s and maybe video (IIRC). Believe at least in those cases, it's to make the CC processors happy (batching lots of small single purchases). Apple does the same thing for the iTunes/App store, though it seems to be on the scale of days instead of hours there.

edit: to be clear, by "delay the confirmations" I meant to say "delay the actual purchase"; the purchase(s) doesn't actually get charged until their time threshold hits.

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#18

Post by msbarnett »

shrikant wrote: post #14
MrScruff wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you inferring it's not possible to read material from a non-approved source on the iPad or iPhone? Because that's not the case. Neither is it the case with videos or music for that matter.

Nope, I know all of the above (have both devices). I would think that when the primary use-case is reading, then books are to e-readers what apps are to smartphones, and I'm not really a fan of the "single point of acquisition" model.

If we want to know what terms Apple would apply to ebook readers and sell books under, we don't need to reason by analogy from the restrictions on smartphone app loading and the terms they use to sell apps for smartphones. They already sell ebooks and make ebook readers, which allow sideloading.

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#19

Post by msbarnett »

dfc wrote: post #16
dfc wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"At $40 for an interior design class"? What is the connection between interior design and the kindle? And/or what is the connection between the monetization plan of a night class at a CC and the kindle?

Why would somebody downvote my question? Is it inappropriate to ask someone what they meant?

He has a Kindle with Special Offers, and at one point accidentally bought one of the Special Offers that came up, said offer being $40 for a class on interior design.

His post seemed fairly straight-forward, so people appear to be downvoting you for asking a question that a cursory re-reading of it should have made clear.

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#20

Post by euroclydon »

breck wrote: post #3

> Or (and this is incredibly aggravating) when you select a word in the Kindle, depending on how common a word it is, the option that comes up highlighted by default is either “full definition” or “start highlight”. Since e-ink’s refresh rate is so slow, you typically don’t see what’s actually come up until you’ve pressed the button for the second time. So I often “double click” on words to highlight them, but some p…

After reading ebooks on my iPhone and now iPad, I couldn't go back to the kindle. The UI was just so terrible and slow. I use white on black for night time reading, and can still fall asleep.

Incidentally, this is the same reason I could only use Duck Duck Go for one day before going back to Google search. The Google search UI has just spoiled me with its responsiveness.

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