Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story • Hacker News Board

Re: Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story

#91

Post by tallanvor » Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 8:48 AM UTC

jayvanguard wrote: post #23

This person seems extremely picky. I have pretty much every generation of kindle and they just keep getting incrementally better. Resolution, backlight, multiple dictionaries, x-ray, etc.

I don't have a Voyage yet (will probably upgrade the next time I'm in the US), but I mostly agree that each device has been a small but good upgrade. I do dislike that they removed the physical buttons, and the first version where they did that was a bit of a pain, but you get used to it.

The Paperwhite screen is just fine for me, and the justification problems the poster refers to have only been annoying to me a few times - the free public domain books are often not converted decently, and side-loaded books aren't always formatted nicely. Other than that, no problems here.

Re: Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story

#92

Post by WalterBright » Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 8:49 AM UTC

Derbasti wrote: post #67

After having owned three kindles, I have switched to a kobo about a year ago. The kobo has many of its own problems, but it gets the reading experience right: it uses (very un-aggressive) hyphenation, and the lock screen displays the book cover. I miss going on Amazon, clicking some button, and immediately start reading a new book. Now that's a multi step process that involves a computer and a DRM removal tool. But t…

> the lock screen displays the book cover.

That's almost right. It should display the last page read!

Re: Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story

#93

Post by Red_Tarsius » Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 8:50 AM UTC

I love the virtual bookshelf concept. I love not to waste time wandering through libraries and that almost any book is two clicks away from me.

That said, I'm also a graphic designer and many book layouts are awful. I can't tell how many times I read 1 star reviews of good books which were worthless as an ebook.

The ebook is thrashing 500 years of typographic tradition. It's trashing everything we know about making a good reading experience. This is not only insulting, but insightful. Amazon is telling his costumers:

  "We are a GOOD ENOUGH company. We are not striving for excellence."

OT: I've recently tried Audible as well. I felt dirty and cheated on. I gave a chance to Amazon Kindle, but I'll never compromise with Audible's business tactics.

Re: Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story

#94

Post by bitL » Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 8:57 AM UTC

My biggest gripe with Voyage is the silly restriction to 4GB and no SD card in order to make PDF viewing far less likely. A lot of scientific papers are available in PDF only as well as older books and magazines and they are considerably larger than Kindle's own format yet preserving layout nicely, so they are my preferred media. I don't care about uneven lighting (yellow-blue cast across the screen) as I turn the light completely off.

Is there any e-reader with "retina"-style e-ink that is optimized for viewing PDFs/PostScript and allowing a SD card?

Re: Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story

#95

Post by taylorling » Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 8:58 AM UTC

I think he has some valid points in his rant, although I must say I enjoyed my Paperwhite 1st Gen very much and I don't find those issues (especially on the justification and font choices) to be a blocker for me from enjoying the books.

Re: Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story

#96

Post by ane » Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 9:12 AM UTC

cthalupa wrote: post #78

>and white light is the worst for reading in bed. It’s proven to keep you awake. This is not a great argument. First, because the Kindle allows you to dim the screen, and in fact, does so automatically in dark rooms. Pulling my Voyage out and comparing it to my screen with Flux, anecdotally, it looks to be producing less light than my laptop does. And what are the alternatives? Not lighting the kindle display, and ha…

Plus, the article gets it wrong: the Paperwhite screen isn't backlit, the leds are oriented perpendicularly from the reading angle, so there is no direct light shining your eyes. Add that to the automatic dimming, the Paperwhite isn't going to keep you awake.

As an anecdote, I am immensely susceptible to falling asleep when reading in the dark with the Paperwhite.

Re: Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story

#97

Post by stupidcar » Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 9:25 AM UTC

cthalupa wrote: post #78

>and white light is the worst for reading in bed. It’s proven to keep you awake. This is not a great argument. First, because the Kindle allows you to dim the screen, and in fact, does so automatically in dark rooms. Pulling my Voyage out and comparing it to my screen with Flux, anecdotally, it looks to be producing less light than my laptop does. And what are the alternatives? Not lighting the kindle display, and ha…

It's not the luminance of the light that's a problem, it's the colour. White light contains a lot of blue, which is associated with melatonin suppression that in turn throws out sleeping patterns[1]. This problem remains even with very dim light sources.

The alternative therefore is to use LEDs with a lower colour temperature[2], producing the kind of orange light associated with flames and traditional incandescent lights, which people have been using to read by for centuries.

This isn't obscure or novel science, it's something the Amazon product team should know, or at least discover through basic research into their chosen field. The fact that they haven't backs the article author's suggestion that they're incompetent or uncaring about the quality of their product.

[1] http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/blue-light-has... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_temperature

Re: Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story

#98

Post by Shivetya » Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 9:42 AM UTC

having owned both a touch and button kindle I would prefer a marriage of the two. keep the physical page buttons that many of us want but use the touch screen for entry, high lighting, and even selection.

If anything I give Amazon credit for making it so easy to read again that I find myself forgetting to do much else

Re: Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story

#99

Post by lucian1900 » Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 9:43 AM UTC

elemeno wrote: post #87

ursidae wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One frustrating thing about side loaded books, you cannot read them with Kindle for PC, Kindle for Mac, or Kindle cloud reader.

I was under the impression that you can, though they might show up under Documents rather than Books - assuming you've side-loaded by sending the files to your kindle e-mail address. It's not something I try to do very often though, so I might be mistaken - they don't seem to appear in the Cloud Reader though. In any case, since you can just open the files in the desktop version of Kindle, it doesn't seem like it wou…

It's annoying because I rely on Kindle's progress syncing. Why do some of my books randomly not support this useful feature?

Re: Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story

#100

Post by cwmma » Mon, Apr 13, 2015, 9:44 AM UTC

As a commuter the kindle paperwhite was such a step back, the removal of the side buttons effectively prevented you from reading it left handed, I find myself halving to turn the page with my nose if for some reason I have to hold on with my right hand while on the subway.