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Originally Posted by cmdahler
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Originally Posted by MR. Pockets
One reason I like the Kindle so much is that Amazon has shown itself to be dedicated to the Kindle being an ereader first and foremost. But will that change once ereaders have the option of adding other things (like video)?
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Well, of course it will. When you have a device that is capable of rich media in addition to merely displaying text, why would Amazon or any other company artificially limit it to text display? That's just leaving money on the table - marketing an ereader with the ability to also browse the full-on web with email, etc., is a huge plus. Are you saying you would refuse to buy such a product simply because it had those added capabilities in addition to being able to read books? Because then, you know, ah, you sort of have, well, an iPad... Hmmm. |
There was a New York Times report that the Amazon unit that designed the Kindle was working on other things, and devices intended to consume other media might be on the way. I think it likely: Amazon is the world's largest catalog retailer, and electronic content is compelling. If it can be delivered electronically, warehousing and distribution costs go away, and the infrastructure already exists to provide fulfillment.
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Because ePub and Mobi are child-like efforts at typography that produce disgusting formatting that is so entirely irritating and distracting that a satisfying reading experience is simply impossible for me. To me, part of reading a well-written book is the appreciation of the visual art of good typography. EPub and Mobi are years away from being able to do that. The formatted text produced by these infantile layout engines looks like something a kid slapped together on TextEdit. But then, that's just me.
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I concur with reservations.
I was a print designer/production guy once upon a time, and love good typography. Current ebook offerings are distinctly limited in what you can do, and the platform on which you do it may impose further limits.
For most of what I read on my PDA, it doesn't matter. I'm not going to see the fonts the designer specified, because they won't exist on the device. My concern is that what I
do see will be readable.
Mobi is limited because it's essentially an encapsulated
subset of HTML. ePub is rather more capable because it's a container, and while it has HTML under the hood, it can hold more than text and images. But neither will reproduce the printed page as precisely as a PDF.
Again, it normally doesn't matter. Text is displayed in a readable form, and the viewer software gives me some degree of control over formatting. It won't look like the printed book, but it doesn't have to.
For stuff where it
does matter, I can use a PDF. I simply don't try to read it on my handheld.
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Dennis