121–130 of 170 posts
The remarkable tablet is attempting to address everything mentioned in the post. If it succeeds then maybe amazon will get off its butt and do something about it - https://remarkable.com/
They're right that it could've been more. Back in the early days, after the launch of the second version, many people internally saw this. If this works for books, it should work for magazines! Newspapers! Websites! Crosswords! Apps of all sorts! Social networks! The possibilities were endless. Teams scaled up, rapid category expansion ensued, Amazon started grappling for dominance in eBooks and all these other categories.
Then the iPad came out. I remember going with my boss to the Apple Store on launch day and buying one; the future of the Kindle felt pretty clear. Our product was stuck with a shitty general-purpose display technology and a clunky SDK not suited to external developers. Then, Android launched. The writing was on the wall. eInk was going to be niche, the Kindle group pivoted to the Fire, we all know how that turned out.
The failure of Kindle as a better, more general purpose device is a great lesson in business strategy. Thousands of smart engineers and product people were dedicated to making it the next big computing device, but in the end they failed to build a platform, and the platform players ended up on top. They're still trying to get over this failure with the Alexa series of products, we'll see if they succeed.
The KKB's screen looks better to me than the paperwhite's (the text seems to be more on the surface rather than below it) and it's got buttons -- but no back light.
The paperwhite's backlight makes it convenient because I can read it in bed -- but no physical buttons and the backlight is very blue, which I find annoying. Sometimes it hurts to read it in a dark room.
The phone is almost perfect. I can set the text to white on black, use Night Shift to make it even warmer, so I can read for hours in a dark room. It's always with me so I can read anywhere -- but I don't feel like I'm reading a book when I read a book on a phone. It feels like I'm cheapening the experience somehow.
Physical books are the least convenient. The reading experience is the best here though and it feels most like what I think reading should feel like. I can easily flip around if I've forgotten some reference. I can easily see my progress. I can put it on a shelf and see it as a reference to a reading experience.
It gets to the point of me buying a book, starting it on a kindle, switching to the phone, buying the physical copy, reading that for a bit, then back to the phone. And the problem here is that switching formats feels even less like I've read the book than reading it on the phone alone. It's like it wasn't a homogenous experience.
I just want to settle on one way of reading a book but can't. I think this is what is called option paralysis.
The remarkable tablet is attempting to address everything mentioned in the post. If it succeeds then maybe amazon will get off its butt and do something about it - https://remarkable.com/
How does the Remarkable store notes? Do you need to use their cloud service or can I use it as an offline notes/sketchpad then access the files via USB? And can I load ebooks directly via USB? I’m happy to use the cloud service in general but I also am regularly in areas with absolutely no internet access and love that I can load ebooks directly onto my kindle via USB and that Highlights/notes in Kindle are a standar…
And you can use the device without the cloud connection.
Source: https://support.remarkable.com/hc/en-us/articles/36000264829...
That's the problem with many proprietary consumer devices (take the iPad into this category as well). 1. Vendor lock: You can't install or change most of the things including OS and Apps. 2. Locked down OS: You can't do anything with your device. If you try to change the OS you'll maybe brick it. 3. Planned obsolescence built in: If the vendor decides it's "time to say goodbye" you won't get updates anymore and proba…
All that aside, you can run debian on a kindle: https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Debian_Installation_on_Kind...
You can also run most linux applicaitons, provided you can cross-compile them. This guy has a bunch: https://www.fabiszewski.net/kindle-terminal/
The Kindle is fine...but for one thing. The author says using the software is like walking through soft sand. Eh, more like mud to me. C'mon, you've been making these things for over ten years, and I still hesitate to do any action more involved than turning a page. Fix that, and I don't need anything else. It's the paperback book I always carry with me, only the book can be swapped out at a whim.
> The author says using the software is like walking through soft sand. Eh, more like mud to me. Sorry, what distinction is being made here?
Walking through soft sand is simply slow and tiring. That’s it; you can do normal things, it is just slower. But the Kindle is like walking through mud in that mud tries to pull your boots off, you get filthy, if you get in too deep, it’s hard to get out. I’ll walk through soft sand, but I avoid mud if I can, just like I avoid clicking on anything other than the Kindle’s page turn area if I can avoid it.
I started to buy physical books last year. Nothing beats the user experience of a real book. I have had an iPad, big iPhone 7 Plus, kindle paperwhite but I don’t use them of serious reading anymore. I occasionally read fictionals on the kindle but that’s about it. It’s collecting dust.
It's better in almost every way. The only downsides are: DRM, no colour, too small for books with diagrams and A4 PDFs (scientific papers), slower to navigate through pages, requires occasional charging, more likely to be stolen, doesn't appeal to people who like to make themselves feel superior by eschewing new things.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The author says using the software is like walking through soft sand. Eh, more like mud to me. Sorry, what distinction is being made here?
You’re shadow-banned, BTW, but I think your question is valid, so I’ll vouch your comment so that I can reply. Walking through soft sand is simply slow and tiring. That’s it; you can do normal things, it is just slower. But the Kindle is like walking through mud in that mud tries to pull your boots off, you get filthy, if you get in too deep, it’s hard to get out. I’ll walk through soft sand, but I avoid mud if I can…