|
I've been reading these comments and it just seems to me that there's a profound mismatch.
E-Ink readers are a fairly niche market and that's why there's no real innovation anywhere. New colours or designs won't really attract any more new customers to the table - those who need a new device will simply pick from those available based on convenience/preferred book market/price, etc. They will clearly and consistently do so against their design sense - as evidenced by many people on this thread - and the added costs of achieving variety don't really make sense when people will still buy whatever they decide is adequate to sell. To me that's a bit like asking why did a T-Model Ford come in black only. On the other hand, increased usability is what I believe might ultimately attract more buyers, but I don't see that happening any time soon, either.
Think about it - never mind the design, the hardware in these devices is woefully underpowered, to the point that even PDF handling is a challenge for the majority of them. The only genuine excitement for the tech that I've ever registered is when a new E-Ink screen generation would come along - but that's not exclusively related to e-readers. That's clearly the manufacturing company trying to expand, to involve various other fields or applications, attract other businesses. And that's where innovation is required. The e-readers themselves don't drive any innovation, they are purposefully curbing the industry from going forward in all aspects. When they tout their screens, they are praising technology they neither invented nor marketed.
Because at the moment the hardware is so limited that you can only comfortably use it for reading certain formats, you end up with a small and crowded market of very similar things, and a close-knit community of similarly-minded folk. The fact that people are used to some defects doesn't mean that they're impossible to fix, and that goes for both design and tech. If you took an Aura One and stuck in more RAM and a decent processor, optimised it better, it would have passable if not adequate PDF capabilities and, for example, usable pinch, zoom, and page turn features. Things that might sway more people to test these devices and try and use them. But that won't happen until it hurts corporate profit margins. because noone wants to raise the bar in any regard.
|