The Death of E-Readers Is All Your Fault

[mike_bike_kite]

My brother bought a Kindle HD for each of his two sons (14 & 12). He hoped it might encourage them to read a bit more but obviously all they do is watch films and play games. Sadly I can't take the moral high ground as I bought a Nexus 7 to replace my Kindle 2i (which my wife has taken over) and I now spend more time reading news articles and forum posts than I do reading books

Perhaps there's a clinic that will be able to slowly disconnect me from the superficial world wide web and plug me back into the imaginary world of books.

Mike

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HansTWN

Why do you assume that newer versions of color e-ink will not have better resolution or other improvements?

But within the context of the "presumed" *ongoing* death of ereaders, it is implied that the failings of current tech keeps people from upgrading to new readers or to color eink. And that the tech gap is being filled with LCD tablets. Not unreasonable by itself as an observation of the world *today*.

Now, the linear thinkers behind the "eReaders are dying!" meme obviously think reflective display tech will never get better and it will never spur a wave of new dedicated reading devices. Because to linear thinkers tomorrow is *always* today with a new calendar.

Those of us that know that linear extrapolation rarely reflects reality tend to be skeptical of linear thinking memes but they do make tolerable discussion fodder on slow news days, no?

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

But within the context of the "presumed" *ongoing* death of ereaders, it is implied that the failings of current tech keeps people from upgrading to new readers or to color eink. And that the tech gap is being filled with LCD tablets. Not unreasonable by itself as an observation of the world *today*.

Now, the linear thinkers behind the "eReaders are dying!" meme obviously think reflective display tech will never get better and it will never spur a wave of new dedicated reading devices.

I think the more general point is that the market for 'dedicated reading devices', no matter how good they are, is much smaller than the market for general tablet devices. There are only so many frequent readers in the world, and at least in the US/UK, that market may be approaching saturation.

[jbcohen]

I am not doubting what you are saying murray but could you give an example from the past of the IT industry?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

I think the more general point is that the market for 'dedicated reading devices', no matter how good they are, is much smaller than the market for general tablet devices. There are only so many frequent readers in the world, and at least in the US/UK, that market may be approaching saturation.

And the linear thinkers don't bother to factor that in.
Like, yeah, the market for TVs is bigger than the market for books. So? TV never killed book reading the way the pundits of the day predicted the TV would "revolutionize education".

There is room for both.
But that is hardly useful "news" for the gossipmongers.
Still, it'll keep us busy until something newsworthy pops up.

[Crowl]

Originally Posted by Apache

I have been reading constantly from a Nook Color and now a Nook HD+. I do not get eye strain from this. Granted most people get eye strain, but not all.
Apache

For me the eyestrain issue is not really an issue, the crucial benefits of my kindle over a tablet are vastly superior battery life and a much lighter device and those do not seem to be areas considered to be overly important to tablets as the race is always about making them thinner and faster while getting away with not reducing the battery life between generations, so I'll stick to doing most of my reading on eink rather than one of my tablets.

[Jasmine GreenTea]

Originally Posted by Pablo

The question is not "dedicated vs. general purpose devices", it's "eye strain vs. no eye strain", as anybody who reads regularly knows. Currently, the only technology that causes no eye strain is eink.
Tablets are Ok for a lot of things, but not for reading IMO. Should eink readers disappear, I wouldn't buy a tablet, I would go back to paper books.

I could not have said better! You hit the nail in the head!

Indeed, eInk = no eye strain,
LCD = eye strain

I was vainly trying to plain this to people who are enraptured by their tablets and see them as the best solution for reading digital material. They just wouldn't get it.

So, now I just ask them simply: "How many pages are you reading a month? Oh, 100 to 150! Then it's OK, I see why you're perfectly happy with a teblet! But just try reading 100-150 pages a day and then we talk..!"

[charmian]

On the other hand, advances in reflective tech do not necessarily spell the survival of the dedicated e-reader. Think about what if Pixel Qi improved its tech.

[Crowl]

Originally Posted by mbovenka

Perhaps the market is there, but I don't think a lower price is possible. If it were possible to deliver a 9.7" reader for less than the price of an M92 or DXG and make a killing, I assume someone would have done it; certainly an Amazon has the clout to get the screens at the cheapest possible price point and can sell the devices at cost or even at a loss. And yet they were $349,= to the last. And at that price, people are getting tablets.

Wouldn't one issue with the larger eink screens be that they don't actually offer many advantages to somebody who is just reading novels and other types of books that would tend to benefit would also tend to benefit even more from a colour lcd display?

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by mike_bike_kite

My brother bought a Kindle HD for each of his two sons (14 & 12). He hoped it might encourage them to read a bit more but obviously all they do is watch films and play games. Sadly I can't take the moral high ground as I bought a Nexus 7 to replace my Kindle 2i (which my wife has taken over) and I now spend more time reading news articles and forum posts than I do reading books

Perhaps there's a clinic that will be able to slowly disconnect me from the superficial world wide web and plug me back into the imaginary world of books.

Mike

And this is exactly the issue. The desire has to be there, you can't put a bandage on it and expect to fix it. Those with a love of literature will read, those without but forced to will not. Is it good or bad for society? This is the question the future will answer by looking to history.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Jasmine GreenTea

I could not have said better! You hit the nail in the head!

Indeed, eInk = no eye strain,
LCD = eye strain

I was vainly trying to plain this to people who are enraptured by their tablets and see them as the best solution for reading digital material. They just wouldn't get it.

So, now I just ask them simply: "How many pages are you reading a month? Oh, 100 to 150! Then it's OK, I see why you're perfectly happy with a teblet! But just try reading 100-150 pages a day and then we talk..!"

No, this is not true for me or for others as was explained above. It may be true for you, but that is far from universal.

[mbovenka]

Originally Posted by Crowl

Wouldn't one issue with the larger eink screens be that they don't actually offer many advantages to somebody who is just reading novels and other types of books that would tend to benefit would also tend to benefit even more from a colour lcd display?

That probably is a factor as well. Although I wouldn't want to go back to a 6" screen now, even for my fiction reading. And to think that I thought the iRex iLiad was too big when I first saw it

[fjtorres]

The exact same thing is happening over in handheld gaming. Cellphone and tablet gaming is decimating the dedicate handheld gaming consoles. Nintendo recalibrated and dropped the price of the 3DS to better focus on its core kids' toy market. Sony loaded up its Vita to near-PS3 levels and went for hardcore gamers. And that seems to be *all* the're attracting.
Nintendo's approach seems to be a more sustaininable approach but the days of gangbuster sales and profits are likely over for their handhelds. But simple and cheap is keeping them in buiness whereas Sony's mobile gaming future seems to be destined to move to the phone gaming platform.

With ebook readers, the larger more expensive models are likewise the first casualties of multi-function commpetition but the smaller and lighter (and way cheaper) eink models should survive to serve avid readers. The future of eink readers has always been small and cheap. And I still expect to see them on blisterpacks along checkout lines.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

...The future of eink readers has always been small and cheap. And I still expect to see them on blisterpacks along checkout lines.

But that's good I guess...

[fjtorres]

I'm reminded of the days of desktop CRT monitors.
The very first color monitors ran at 30Hz and people who were serious about text preferred the 50Hz monochrome monitors for the higher-res and the rock-solid flicker-free display they got from the long-persistence phosphors. Everybody *knew* that color monitors were only good for games and graphics or the flicker would drive you blind.

Then came EGA with 50Hz color and killed monochrome. Some people still saw flicker and went for newer generation, higher-res monochrome monitors. Then, since 50Hz was good, IBM moved VGA up to 60Hz and even less people saw flicker because of the monitor refresh, but a whole new set of people started to get headaches because their office fluorescent lights *also* ran at 60Hz and they were sensitive to the strobe effect. Most weren't, but some were.

Then came NEC's Multisync monitors that worked at different resolutions and frequencies and SuperVGA graphics cards that ran at different resolutions and frequencies and people discovered that flicker and strobe effects went away at 70Hz. But 72Hz was even better. Then 75Hz. We probably would be running 100Hz CRTs by now (and some people still suffereing from refresh flicker) if LCD hadn't taken over to bring ghosting and eye-strain as the new complaints.

I expect that when we move to holograms there will be new issues that pop up to replace the "solved" ones.

Because we humans are a very variable lot. Everything we are learning about genetics makes it clear that we are each built to a unique non-repeatable blueprint, even "identical" twins and clones. No two genomes are identical, ever. Likewise, no two visual systems, from eyeball to cortex will ever be the same.
And no display tech will ever be free of "defects".
Not even the Sony Playstation 23 with graaphics pumped straight to the virtual cortex.

All we can do is look for something we can comfortably watch; whether it be eink, low-res LCD, or super-duper 4K resolution. If you can't read on an LCD without eyestrain it doesn't mean LCD causes eyestrain; just that you haven't found an LCD panel that works ror you. Just don't expect your exact experience to replicate elsewhere.

Because your "milleage *will* vary".