|
Watching that presenter using that stylus to flip pages was giving me writer's cramp just thinking about trying to read for a couple hours flipping pages with my fingers wrapped tightly around that stylus.
One thing both Kindle's got right for me is big fat buttons that you forget about after awhile and just click without thinking about it. And since they put them on both sides I can unconsciously relieve the stress in my hands and arms by passing the device from one hand to the other.
The Sony PRS-700 has the touch screen swipe but the thing that keeps it from disappearing in my hands is the need to be precise with the swipe. If you get too sloppy it doesn't recognize the swipe. Plus when you transition from one hand to the other the device insists on using the same motion. If Sony had put in a Command Button and used any kind of non-Command Pressed swipe I made to mean Page Forward I would have found the device much easier to forget about.
The Boox looks like it would boil down to hopefully using that big ring navigator to flip pages.
But in the final analysis it appears to me to be yet another book reader designed by one of Steve Job's non-readers. Seeing devices like this makes me think Steve might be right. Whomever designed this device doesn't enjoy reading, has never disappeared into a engrossing story. To them it's a tool to be used for sketching and designing things, a portable Wacom tablet with storage. An electronic napkin to whip out and record a design on the spur of the moment. Not a portal designed to disappear as it transports you to another place and time.
Come on guys. Lay down with it on a couch and read some engrossing escapist piece of fiction and flip the pages with that stylus and tell me you don't rip up the design and start over. Pull up a novel that makes you laugh like Use of Weapons does me and tell me you can flip the pages whilst laughing from your belly.
Remember: 99.9% of the time the user wants the book reader to flip the page forward. Go back, ponder that, bring us some magic in the next YouTube video. Seriously, some good advice here.
|