Quote:
Originally Posted by J. Strnad
With the new Nook and Kobo touchscreen readers, I'm concerned that we're going to look back and decide that ereaders peaked in their development with the previous generation.
Are we now in a race to the bottom, where features like physical page turn buttons disappear (as in the Kobo, not yet in the Nook) in favor of a bunch of hoo-hah like finger swiping to turn a page that doesn't even exist?
Will quality of construction suffer in that race to be the cheapest?
I saw this happen with VHS recorders back in the day, where prices went down and so did picture quality until I found myself longing for my old, heavy machine that actually delivered a decent picture.
Maybe I should be stocking up on K3's.
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I'm not really sure I'm understand how touch screen is a race to the bottom. It sounds more like you are substituting your personal preferance for fact or industry advancements.
One could argue, quite easily in fact, that the Kindle's hardware out of all the major ereaders seem to be a generation behind.
We live in an age of touchscreen. From ATM's, to retail and grocery store checkouts, to our phones, our GPS etc. If anything the Sony's, Kobo's and the new nook are actually keeping ereader's afloat in today's world of rapidly advancing tech's.
Can't imagine a 15 year who has an iPad and then giving a choice of a kindle or one of the three ereader's they would choose the kindle. And remember the kids are our future.
Swiping a finger or tapping the screen to "turn a page that doesn't exist" is not the best example. Having a nook classic I do have the opprotunity to do both. And I can assure you clicking a button is no where near as natural as flicking a finger to turn a page when reading. And to be honest you are still clicking a button to turn a page that isn't there as well, let alone this is how we navigate all our devices we use on a daily basis.
We swipe a finger to change homescreens, we tap a screen to open an application.
clicking buttons I'm afraid is the genereation that will be left behind. I would be shocked if Amazon kept it's same navigation hardware in place with the upcoming Kindle. And that's not to joing the race to the bottom, that is the race to keep ereaders from becoming a niche market, in this world of tablets.
But I do agree the technology in eink itself needs to improve in a faster rate. Looking back the best advancement it has had has been the Pearl Screen which is nothing more than a better contrast ratio. It's been company's hardware that has been making eink more relative to today's world.
Eink needs to incorporate more animation in it's refresh rate of different screens. It has to lose the flashing. It needs to have color, it has to stop looking like technology from the 1980's.
I love eink but if advancements aren't made soon, and these tablets continue to shrink in price, I'm afraid eink ereaders will be nothing more than a niche market.