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Apple and the Kindle

aaronsw.com

21–30 of 101 posts

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#21
I have to wonder: does Apple spend more time playing with each new piece of technology internally before releasing it?

I can see in the rush to launch that you can certainly hit 100% of your feature list and still not hit the things that count.

When you see something like a ".com" key on the keyboard whenever an internet address is requested, you have to wonder if it wasn't in the original design but eventually someone played with it enough and thought it up.

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#22
post #10
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?

[deleted]

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#23
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.

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.

Does eBooks have iCloud support for non-Apple books yet? Amazon now allows me to upload all of my non-Amazon books by email, and I can re-download them onto any Kindle device like books I purchased from Amazon.

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#24
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was not clear to me that he purchased one of the offers by accident. I thought he meant he accidentally ordered one of the subsidized kindles by accident.

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#25
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…

I can't speak for the ugliness, but as for the slow to react...

I think the reason it feels sluggish are two reasons: The screen technology has a slow response time. This is alittle difficult to fix, due to the nature of the technology: an electic field turns on or off causing tiny balls to be pulled to the top or bottom of the screen causing light to be reflected/absorbed. Due to the size of these balls (microns), it can take much longer to reorient these balls then the molecules in liquid crystal (nanometers).

The other reason it probably feels sluggish is that the processor is a little slow. Fortunately, amazon has been able to work around this a bit by caching the next few pages. (But if you go backwards it can sometimes take a bit longer to load).

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#26
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…

Do the special offers have anything to do with your reading materials? Do you have design/architecture books on the kindle? Do you think ther offers targeted towards your demographic?

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#27
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…

I can't speak for the ugliness, but as for the slow to react... I think the reason it feels sluggish are two reasons: The screen technology has a slow response time. This is alittle difficult to fix, due to the nature of the technology: an electic field turns on or off causing tiny balls to be pulled to the top or bottom of the screen causing light to be reflected/absorbed. Due to the size of these balls (microns), i…

Bookeen seems to have fixed the slow response time of eInk with the Cybook Odyssey (supposed to be released this month). http://bookeen.com/blog/web-page-scrolling-on-eink/

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#29
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was not clear to me that he purchased one of the offers by accident. I thought he meant he accidentally ordered one of the subsidized kindles by accident.

I also thought that was what he meant.

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does eBooks have iCloud support for non-Apple books yet? Amazon now allows me to upload all of my non-Amazon books by email, and I can re-download them onto any Kindle device like books I purchased from Amazon.

They don't... yet. iCloud just launched last month. I expect support will be added as the service grows.
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