MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Very disappointed with the way the tech is developing.

harryE123 · 09-04-2010, 10:28 PM

I 've been following this site a few years now (four, maybe even five) and I have an irex reader.

I am very disappointed at the development of the tec. Compromises, a still not close to paper image quality, drm everywhere, standards and formats havoc and vapourware galore, small screens, crap interfaces, laggy software...

... and amidst all this vapourware, still after all that time no decent 9.7" or larger reader: A couple of years ago there was this bob guy here shilling the aztac for months only to (supposedly) let us know that they had run into technical issues with the 9.7" (funny thing is a lot of people here bought that crap and even called me out for calling it like it is), then the plastic logic vapourware, then irex going bust.

At the same time amazon has taken a stronghold stifling competition and innovation by undercutting in price, and not leading in any creative way (it took them for example four years to add a webkit browser there, wtf?)

Let's face it, amazon is no apple, it's not even microsoft to copy others in whatever they 've created. And then there's the decidedly underwhelming sony who won't even come out with a 9.7" reader and who's fallen victim first to amazon's dominance and secondly to their own (typical Japanese) way of over engineering in all the wrong ways and complete lack of vision for an intuitive product.

As someone who's followed e-readers for a really long time here and elsewhere I am disappointed with all that. And I think it will take a good 5-10 years before these devices become actually useable instead of the occasional reading gadgets that they are, when the formats are sorted out, large and better screens appear, the interfaces become intuitive and so on.

I am sure since most here are, as I used to be, ebook aficionados, and some have vested interests too, that they will disagree vocally, but I am sure some who 've waited for the tec to mature will echo my sentiments of disappointment on waiting for products for a long time that have failed to materialise.

Everybook reader out there at the moment is a big compromise of some sort, pdf reading is a mess still, no real functional large screen readers -other than amazon's wifi-less drm ladden one- are available.

No one would have expected five years ago that in five years time we'd still be in square one: same small screen devices as then with only marginally better monochrome screens, and most of the major players that seemed to make some leeway then (irex, plastic logic) going bust or producing merely vapourware.

09-04-2010, 10:28 PM	#1
harryE123 Banned Posts: 272 Karma: 70 Join Date: Dec 2008 Device: irex reader	Very disappointed with the way the tech is developing. I 've been following this site a few years now (four, maybe even five) and I have an irex reader. I am very disappointed at the development of the tec. Compromises, a still not close to paper image quality, drm everywhere, standards and formats havoc and vapourware galore, small screens, crap interfaces, laggy software... ... and amidst all this vapourware, still after all that time no decent 9.7" or larger reader: A couple of years ago there was this bob guy here shilling the aztac for months only to (supposedly) let us know that they had run into technical issues with the 9.7" (funny thing is a lot of people here bought that crap and even called me out for calling it like it is), then the plastic logic vapourware, then irex going bust. At the same time amazon has taken a stronghold stifling competition and innovation by undercutting in price, and not leading in any creative way (it took them for example four years to add a webkit browser there, wtf?) Let's face it, amazon is no apple, it's not even microsoft to copy others in whatever they 've created. And then there's the decidedly underwhelming sony who won't even come out with a 9.7" reader and who's fallen victim first to amazon's dominance and secondly to their own (typical Japanese) way of over engineering in all the wrong ways and complete lack of vision for an intuitive product. As someone who's followed e-readers for a really long time here and elsewhere I am disappointed with all that. And I think it will take a good 5-10 years before these devices become actually useable instead of the occasional reading gadgets that they are, when the formats are sorted out, large and better screens appear, the interfaces become intuitive and so on. I am sure since most here are, as I used to be, ebook aficionados, and some have vested interests too, that they will disagree vocally, but I am sure some who 've waited for the tec to mature will echo my sentiments of disappointment on waiting for products for a long time that have failed to materialise. Everybook reader out there at the moment is a big compromise of some sort, pdf reading is a mess still, no real functional large screen readers -other than amazon's wifi-less drm ladden one- are available. No one would have expected five years ago that in five years time we'd still be in square one: same small screen devices as then with only marginally better monochrome screens, and most of the major players that seemed to make some leeway then (irex, plastic logic) going bust or producing merely vapourware.