Quote:
Originally Posted by ardeegee
Yes, that's the opinion that I'm leaning towards. Someone threw together fake screenshots as a joke/hoax. I'd be very easy to do.
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It would, but there is one major reason I think the screens are real.
The PRS-305 looks like a mini PRS-600. Every time I held a PRS-300, I thought there was too much wasted space at the bottom. TONS of wasted space. Yes, the buttons were there, but they made the device look too klunky, not as clean as the PRS-500/PRS-505 (which had similar hard keys, but were more proportional, and looked "right"). The PRS-600 layout also seems the way Sony wanted to go -- nice, clean lines, good button placement, attractive and functional,
most space devoted to the screen, with a small bezel -- heck, the PRS-900 looks like an stretched 600.
Sony may be bad at some things, but their "industrial design" is second to none. The PS3, for example, is an engineering work of art. Their Blu-ray players are things of beauty. Their shiny-black bezel TVs scream style. Or the best example yet: The PRS-500 compared to the original Kindle 1. O.M.G.!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by SensualPoet
But sometime after Amazon arrived, and truly legitimized the ereader experience (building on Sony's momentum), Sony management paused. They had two huge battles on their hands: establishing Blu-ray as the new HD standard and ensuring PS3 maintained its market position. By contast, ereaders were small fry and management clearly pulled support. They coasted instead of leading. Let's face it: Kindle 1 was not a Sony killer.
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I disagree with your interpretation here, for a few reasons.
First, Kindle didn't so much "legitimize" e-readers as popularize them. They leveraged the fact that they were a book store, had an insane library of content, and put a device
directly in front of the audience that would use it: avid book readers. Sony could never do that, since they didn't have the largest book store in the world behind them.
Secondly, while the TV division is in the same building as the Reader division at Sony San Diego, my understanding is they are different divisions entirely. They have different funding and different staff. I
always got the impression -- from the PRS-500 on -- that Sony had a small staff working on their Readers. But I
never got the impression it was due to Blu-ray or the PS3, both of which are outside the San Diego offices.
The fact of the matter is, Sony makes billions more money from TVs and games (literally), so those areas get more resources, and have for years. YEARS! The Reader is new, small, and -- let's face it -- risky and not nearly as profitable. And in
any company, this means less resources and support. As I said, it's felt like that from the PRS-500 all the way to now. I don't think it had a single thing to do with Amazon, since this sort of "low key presence" pre-dated the Kindle for year and a half.
-Pie