MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - iPad What will iPad do for e-books?

ficbot · 01-27-2010, 06:25 PM

I wonder about the 'casual' reader though. Most 'casual' readers I know are people who have made comments to me like 'I can just get a paper book when I want to read' or 'I could never imagine reading off a screen.' Even my skeptic parents did not believe they could ever read off a screen until they saw the e-ink on my Kindle. I set up eReader app on my stepmom's iPhone for her and her comment was 'it's ok but I spend all day at work reading off computers so the last thing I want to do when I come home is turn on another screen.'

So who will this 'get' then? Maybe the people who currently read on their phones or iPod Touch type devices and don't already have a Kindle or something. As for me, I consider myself a 'serious' reader in that I read very often, and reasonably prolifically (close to 100 books last year). And there are features I have in my Kindle that I bought the Kindle specifically for and will not give up (for example the French-English dictionary and text to speech). If the Kindle 'app' included these features, I would absolutely sell the Kindle and get something like this, but it doesn't and I need these features and read often enough that I feel okay about my Kindle investment. What this device *might* do for me is serve as a laptop and iPod Touch replacement. My iPod Touch has been in need of replacing anyway and I have been holding off because I am not a huge music person and couldn't be bothered. So this will allow me to upgrade my iPod Touch and also get the functionality of my netbook for mobile uses (for example, to take with me when I babysit so I have some games and video to watch when the kids are in bed, or to use for the music I teach with in lieu of my netbook which is pretty much a glorified jukebox). But for reading at home, taking to the gym etc. I will still use my Kindle for sure.

01-27-2010, 06:25 PM	#26
ficbot Wizard Posts: 2,409 Karma: 4132096 Join Date: Sep 2008 Device: Kindle Paperwhite/iOS Kindle App	I wonder about the 'casual' reader though. Most 'casual' readers I know are people who have made comments to me like 'I can just get a paper book when I want to read' or 'I could never imagine reading off a screen.' Even my skeptic parents did not believe they could ever read off a screen until they saw the e-ink on my Kindle. I set up eReader app on my stepmom's iPhone for her and her comment was 'it's ok but I spend all day at work reading off computers so the last thing I want to do when I come home is turn on another screen.' So who will this 'get' then? Maybe the people who currently read on their phones or iPod Touch type devices and don't already have a Kindle or something. As for me, I consider myself a 'serious' reader in that I read very often, and reasonably prolifically (close to 100 books last year). And there are features I have in my Kindle that I bought the Kindle specifically for and will not give up (for example the French-English dictionary and text to speech). If the Kindle 'app' included these features, I would absolutely sell the Kindle and get something like this, but it doesn't and I need these features and read often enough that I feel okay about my Kindle investment. What this device might do for me is serve as a laptop and iPod Touch replacement. My iPod Touch has been in need of replacing anyway and I have been holding off because I am not a huge music person and couldn't be bothered. So this will allow me to upgrade my iPod Touch and also get the functionality of my netbook for mobile uses (for example, to take with me when I babysit so I have some games and video to watch when the kids are in bed, or to use for the music I teach with in lieu of my netbook which is pretty much a glorified jukebox). But for reading at home, taking to the gym etc. I will still use my Kindle for sure.