Quote:
Originally Posted by MR. Pockets
I'm not saying that they should be limited to only displaying text. The Kindle can do several things (music player, web browsing), but, it makes sure that it is a good ereader before it considers the other things.
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So we still seem to be having a problem zeroing in on precisely what it is that defines a product as an ereader. It's not the screen. It's not that it limits itself to doing only text display. It is, then, in the quality of the particular app on the device that displays the text, is what you seem to be saying. For you recognize, I assume, that every ereader on the market is simply a computer running an app that displays that text to you (this is partially what makes the unswerving focus on "it cannot be an ereader if it's a tablet" so amusing: every reader on the market, whether the Kindle or the Sony or what-have-you is exactly what irritates you the most: they are all tablet computers running apps, they merely hide that from you by limiting what apps you are allowed to see and use at any given time).
So anyhoo, given that all ereaders are
not at all functionally different from your nemesis, the iPad, it seems in the end that two things define your sense of what is an ereader and what is not: (a) the reading app is of high quality, and, apparently just as importantly, (b) it has the word "ereader" stamped somewhere on the casing or the box.
Now, considering (a) first, it would seem that in all reality, the quality of the reading app is actually of very little importance for the device to be termed an ereader. For example, take the Sony 505. This is, you may or may not realize, a tablet PC running Linux as its OS. I'm sure by this point you are thoroughly horrified. But to press on: if you peruse MR on this particular ereader (although I'm not exactly clear on whether we can still call it that, but its box does have that word printed on it somewhere, so I believe we're still on safe ground here), you will find that a goodly number of folks consider the ePub rendering capabilities of the 505 to be fairly sub-par. Not really the highest quality out there. If you then compare that to the iPad's native ePub and PDF app, iBooks, you are left with the distinct impression that there are good things and bad things about both. The two apps, the 505's unnamed app and iBooks, are both fairly simple ePub renderers with limitations that may or may not be important to the particular end user. Consequently, since we can roughly conclude that the iBooks app is generally on par with the quality of the 505's reading app, but the 505 is an "ereader" whereas the iPad is not, we seem to have determined that the actual quality of the reading app is not what defines a device as an ereader.
As nearly as I can determine, then, the only thing that truly defines a product as an "ereader" is, um, well, whether it has the word "ereader" stamped somewhere on the box. That is, without doubt, an
interesting methodology you have there for determining a product's market potential. I would assume, then, that if Apple had printed the word "ereader" on the box, you would happily extol its virtues to the ereader community?