Huawei MatePad Paper – eInk Tablet

>> Chinese MANGA equivalent enters the chat with their own hardware financed from other business units and potentially subsidized.

> If China wasn't in this conversation [...]

Substitute "China" for "Amazon" and my point still stands.

> [...], the above would be criticized as an example of greedy MBAs nickel and diming the consumer.

That's exactly my point though. We're too critical of small businesses with expensive products. It's unsustainable and unrewarding for small biz to innovate in hardware or expensive ventures that can easily be cloned and ripped off by big businesses that have fantastically mature revenue streams at scale.

I'll take my point further. Consumer behavior won't change and there is no solution in trying to shore up customer empathy. Instead, top down policy is the solution. Patents need to be given asymmetric teeth in order to fend off the bloodthirsty giants. That way we continue to allocate capital to innovation rather than the act of subsidized carbon copying.

A recent success case is Sonos in their patent litigation against Google's blatant copying of their multi-room audio product.

(Granted, we also need to tamp down on no-product patent trolling. Those people are nothing more than fancy thieves wearing suits.)

The Kobo Sage is slightly cheaper (in the US) for a comparable product. Still over $200, but not a lot if you get a Sage on sale and buy via Rakuten for an additional rebate.

I've had a Kindle Oasis (the non-ad-supported version) for a couple years. A couple months ago I got a Kobo Sage.

Same in both Oasis and Sage: - Screen quality - Battery life (in my experience; this doesn't match the actual specs of the products though) - "Waterproof"

Differences: Favoring Kobo Sage: - Screen is a bit bigger without a significant penalty in size and weight - Compatible with a pen and has built-in drawing/OCR/note-taking capabilities - Really easy to borrow eBooks from library via OverDrive - Easier to side-load and sync free eBooks - Slightly cheaper (US)

Favoring Kindle Oasis: - Slightly lighter weight and more compact - More responsive buttons (touch screen is same responsiveness) - Amazon's book purchasing and browsing features are a bit easier to use - Amazon selection is better - "Family" sharing - Built-in free cellular wireless data for Amazon downloads and browsing

I'm happy owning both devices. If I had to choose one or the other, then:

eReader only: I'd choose Kobo only because library borrowing is so much easier. If my local library didn't have OverDrive, then I would choose the Kindle + Amazon Unlimited in a heartbeat.

eInk tablet: Kobo, no question. The Kindle is an eReader. Amazon hasn't made any effort to make it anything more. It simply doesn't make sense to me to compare any eInk Kindle to the Kobo, MatePad, ReMarkable, Boox, etc.

My partner likes eInk tablets for note taking and diagramming, not for e-reading. He has both a ReMarkable 2 and a Boox. The ReMarkable is fine, but He much prefers the Boox because it's easier to use without a subscription. But, now that my partner has used my Kobo Sage, he is unsure whether he'd buy a Boox over a Sage. He says it's a very close call and it would probably come down to price.

People do not possess ideas, ideas possess people. There is no escaping the memeplexes driving these and our posts.

I don't live in China. The Chinese are many miles away. I am not worth nuking, and I am not at risk of being involved in a genocide.

I live in a surveillance state. I don't really like being surveilled. Big companies share data between each other, and it influences my ability to do things like obtaining a house, or getting insurance.

The Chinese have nothing to do with my data. Western companies, on the other hand, can make a good deal of profit from data in aggregate, and don't care if it harms other people.

The Chinese stick to their own people (and what they believe to be China). Western companies, on the other hand, will track everyone on the globe, without any consent at all: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clearview_AI

I don't use Chinese software; it's just that the person's claim isn't nearly as insane as you're making it out to be. They're acting more rationally than you are, here. It's not Chinese scaremongering or anti-anti-Chinese scaremongering to acknowledge that China can't really do much to the average Western citizen in aggregate.

Short term thinking at its worse. China isn't going to stop at its borders. Their tech companies not only answer to their government, they are just as greedy western big tech, if not more. Your info is going to be sold to the highest bidder, plus shared with the Chinese government.