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Originally Posted by HarryT
Please don't forget that many of us bought eInk devices after reading for many years on LCD screens; eg, I've personally been reading eBooks for over 25 years, more than 20 of those on LCD screens. For me personally, the benefits of eInk screens are overwhelming; long battery life, clarity, etc. I certainly wouldn't say that eInk is "over-hyped" at all...
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What sort of LCD screens were available in 1984? I remember dim monochrome displays for calculators but nothing for people who wanted to read text. I don't believe there were LCD's with close to current capability for most of those 25 years. In any case the low contrast monochrome display of the Kindle 2 would be a tepid competitor to an Apple tablet.
Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
..."Apple" and "open" are contradictory terms. Nobody buys an Apple device if they want something that's open.
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That is just fashionable nonsense. When Apple introduced the iPod there was no DRM other than a message not to steal music. DRM for the iTunes Music Store was forced by the music industry and Apple was happy to get rid of it when it became possible. In the open source sense there are few commercial companies with more open source participation, e.g. Webkit. There is an SDK for the iPhone, will there be one for the new Zune HD?
On the other hand new devices like the Kindle and iPhone have been more locked down than previous generations of devices (except for game consoles). There is an enthusiast community that mitigates most of the damage done by allowing owners of such devices to unlock them. I'm not aware if this has been done for the Kindle but I know it has been done for the iPhone (and DVD's, Bluray, XBox, PlayStation, etc). It is part of the ecology of modern devices and can hardly be characterized as specific to Apple.