01-27-2010, 05:56 PM | #16 |
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I suspect the iPad has some potential to transform the periodical industry. Newspapers are pretty hopeless on the Kindle, but look as though they will be considerably better on the iPad. In terms of ebooks I think it is very much a case of horses for courses - some books e.g. technical/image based will be clearly better on the iPad due to the fast colour screen, whereas in the case of standard print only books it will be pretty evenly matched - depending on other issues such as need for long battery life/ability to read in bright sunlight etc. These devices are merely tools, no point in becoming too wedded to the actual technology. I wonder what people were expecting of the iPad...world peace? epaper is merely ok as a technology, it suffers from poor refresh rates and relatively poor contrast, albeit with excellent battery life. I am not sure there is far to go with the current crop of epaper devices, I think they will be a commodity item fairly shortly. Content that is the important factor, I think for commercial publishers there may be a lot more mileage in producing content for an iPad type device. The hardware is not the issue here, more the interaction of the software and the media content.
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01-27-2010, 05:56 PM | #17 |
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01-27-2010, 05:58 PM | #18 |
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I agree with some of the posts.
It will sell like crazy. It will popularize e-book reading. It will spell the end of e-ink unless they can come up with color. The horizontal view should allow reading of pdf files. I am surprised it has no camera. Overall - not excellent but very good. |
01-27-2010, 06:01 PM | #19 |
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I think it's a great thing for tablets. It may just kill Sony's Vaio P. Which is currently priced at the premium of the netbook market. . . And that one costs more than a full size laptop!
I think it's an interesting concept for the future of eBooks. I think it will do for them what the iPod did for music. And that's rattling of cages. I think the iBook application has the prettiest GUI that I've seen. It does a good job of mimicking the look/feel of a real book. That's based on the programming they did where the pages flip and stuff. As far as the clarity, I don't think it will be a very good thing. In all honesty, I think it'll suck. I hate reading on a computer and looking at an LCD backlight for so long. I was hoping that Apple would stun the world and go with some form of Mirasol or another next gen eInk and make it do things no other developer could. But for a big iTouch, I think it's pretty flippin' sweet. Just hope that the ePub/Apple store is DRM free. But I doubt that. Highly. |
01-27-2010, 06:02 PM | #20 |
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01-27-2010, 06:06 PM | #21 |
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01-27-2010, 06:06 PM | #22 |
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One of the major reasons Microsoft became the dominant force it did is because they realized that growing the market gave them more sales than cornering the market. IOW, they marketed PC's to non-PC users (in the generic sense of PC).
Apple, I think, is attempting the same with the iPad. It doesn't appear to me that they're marketing this for people who currently read ebooks, but that they're trying to pick up all the casual readers & convert them to ebooks. A color screen will help with that, as will the ability to do 'other things' besides read. But it'll need to be a fairly decent ereader or people will try it, then treat it as 'just a tablet netbook'. Until it's actually in use I have no idea how well it will work as an ereader-but I seriously doubt it'll work well enough to satisfy most MR members. We're already ebook readers so we're not in the target market, IMO. |
01-27-2010, 06:12 PM | #23 | ||
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Quote:
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01-27-2010, 06:23 PM | #24 |
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Expand the market for ebooks to more than avid readers who read enough to own a dedicated reading device, or to have been reading on programs on their PCs, PDAs, smartphones etc.
It's no threat to e-ink devices as there's a sizable niche of avid readers who need the screen, battery life etc. And anything that expands the market for ebooks to more casual readers is as good thing as it means better selection and prices for everyone. People who buy this will buy more e-books, magazines, etc. than people with laptops and netbooks and the form factor will be much more comfortable to hold and read. It's terrible trying to read on a laptop on your lap, can't curl up with it in bed easily etc. |
01-27-2010, 06:24 PM | #25 |
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Student textbook readers and homework devices. Yep. A school district could make them mandatory for all students from grade school up.
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01-27-2010, 06:25 PM | #26 |
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I wonder about the 'casual' reader though. Most 'casual' readers I know are people who have made comments to me like 'I can just get a paper book when I want to read' or 'I could never imagine reading off a screen.' Even my skeptic parents did not believe they could ever read off a screen until they saw the e-ink on my Kindle. I set up eReader app on my stepmom's iPhone for her and her comment was 'it's ok but I spend all day at work reading off computers so the last thing I want to do when I come home is turn on another screen.'
So who will this 'get' then? Maybe the people who currently read on their phones or iPod Touch type devices and don't already have a Kindle or something. As for me, I consider myself a 'serious' reader in that I read very often, and reasonably prolifically (close to 100 books last year). And there are features I have in my Kindle that I bought the Kindle specifically for and will not give up (for example the French-English dictionary and text to speech). If the Kindle 'app' included these features, I would absolutely sell the Kindle and get something like this, but it doesn't and I need these features and read often enough that I feel okay about my Kindle investment. What this device *might* do for me is serve as a laptop and iPod Touch replacement. My iPod Touch has been in need of replacing anyway and I have been holding off because I am not a huge music person and couldn't be bothered. So this will allow me to upgrade my iPod Touch and also get the functionality of my netbook for mobile uses (for example, to take with me when I babysit so I have some games and video to watch when the kids are in bed, or to use for the music I teach with in lieu of my netbook which is pretty much a glorified jukebox). But for reading at home, taking to the gym etc. I will still use my Kindle for sure. |
01-27-2010, 06:28 PM | #27 |
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An interesting and desirable gadget which will satisfy the casual bestseller reader. I'll wait for the next Kindle update with folders and (hopefully) font choices.
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01-27-2010, 06:30 PM | #28 |
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01-27-2010, 06:32 PM | #29 | |
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Quote:
Very few will by this to mainly use as a reader. People will buy it for all the other features, or because it's the trendy new gadget to have. And all of a sudden they own a device that's a pretty decent e-reader for a casual reader who isn't going to read for hours on end very often. And the device has a built in book store. So it stands a good chance of turning some more people on to e-books, e-magazines, e-newspapers etc. even if they didn't buy it with that use as a main factor. |
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01-27-2010, 06:33 PM | #30 |
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I'd like to think that Apple is aware of that shortcoming..and in order to get mom and dad to shell out for college kids they'll want to make one...it just needs to work with theirr capacitive sensors
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