E-book hardware rant at The Reg

[Brainphart]

Thought provoking article found here:
http://www.reghardware.com/2012/04/2...o_read_ebooks/

[fjtorres]

He thinks Germany is an ebook hotbed. Heh.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=175598

[Talldog]

I'm not sure how he gets from wishing there was greater hardware choice to this:

Beyond the idle fantasy of forlorn Adobe developers still working on the lamentable Digital Editions in a shed somewhere on a Californian allotment, this concept of e-book readership is a load of bollocks – and it always was

He's got a great writing style, though.

[ssdb]

Originally Posted by Brainphart

Thought provoking article found

He also says

For some reason, the rep on the Kobo stand didn't like it when I asked where my encrypted books will go if his company goes tits up in a few years from now. I can understand why people never like it when I ask what will happen if they go out of business, but it annoys me that they haven't considered the possibility.

Their response is always: "Everything will be fine, don't worry your pretty little head about it", which is total bunkum because what they're really thinking is: "I won't care because I'll be unemployed/dead/in the Cayman Islands with your money."

which is a question a lot of people ask but we'll never get a proper answer.

[BookCat]

ssdb: re your last quote from the article, he's obviously not a friend of Alf and hasn't heard of Calibre.

[plib]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

He thinks Germany is an ebook hotbed. Heh.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...d.php?t=175598

But he's talking about hardware development and availability rather than actual ebook penetration (which on reflection sounds vaguely obscene).

[plib]

Originally Posted by Talldog

He's got a great writing style, though.

El Reg has a lot of great articles. Not always accurate, but great reads. There's a certain type of humour which just doesn't seem to flourish outside the UK.

[plib]

Originally Posted by BookCat

ssdb: re your last quote from the article, he's obviously not a friend of Alf and hasn't heard of Calibre.

He might well but Legal probably sat on him.

Although the concept of El Reg having a legal department is a bit strange I must admit.

[ssdb]

Originally Posted by BookCat

ssdb: re your last quote from the article, he's obviously not a friend of Alf and hasn't heard of Calibre.

trouble is, it is more than likely that stripping DRM will soon become a *criminal* offence, rather than civil offence (it is a part of the ACTA legislation, IIRC, and it is also part of PIPA).

[Andrew H.]

The article was thought provoking in the sense that I wondered what the writer was on.

The odd focus on new hardware seems to have completely missed why Kindle has come to dominate the market. And why B&N jumped up to second in the US. *Hardware* has little to do with it.

And this quote:

While Amazon's enormous success in retail has given it the financial clout to develop a near-perfect e-book ownership experience - if you ignore the dopey .MOBI file format - it is surely not beyond the capacity of smaller organisations to do something similar. It might have been rocket science when Amazon first devised the Kindle devices and Kindle store, but today it's more like basic maths: eReader + Wi-Fi + cloud.

is just profoundly stupid.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by plib

But he's talking about hardware development and availability rather than actual ebook penetration (which on reflection sounds vaguely obscene).

By the names he was floating, I saw it as a screed on the variety of devices available. Trouble is, while people can choose from a broad range of low-volume, hobbyist-oriented readers in Germany, few do. Especially compared to the numbers the more "mundane" devices rack up in the US & UK.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

The odd focus on new hardware seems to have completely missed why Kindle has come to dominate the market. And why B&N jumped up to second in the US. *Hardware* has little to do with it.

Well, he thinks that a market with 20 niche products that together sell less in a year than Kindles, Nooks, and Kobos each sell in a month is more interesting than a mature market that give consumers what they want.

For him, maybe.
He needs fodder for his reviews and articles.
But mainstream consumers just need cheap reliable devices to read on.

It's all about access to the *books*.

[CommonReader]

I have no idea what that guy was smoking. I currently know of no German company that is even developing e-ink readers. txtr simply didn't have the funds to bring their reader into the market and it is simply an ebook-shop now.
Thalia's OYO has been an effort that looks ok when you look at photos but in reality it was always an awful piece of rebadged Chinese kit with seething troubles. I am sure that there were medieval monks that could copy a book faster by hand than the OYO can turn a page. The second generation is slightly better but it's still at two generations behind Sony and Kindle. To Thalia's credit they are still selling Sony and they never pursued some walled garden strategy. Germany's largest b&m book chain has stopped selling e-ink readers completely and they are selling some awful Trekstor kind of TFT readers now. They are selling them dirt cheap and you can get them in different colours but that's about all the positive things you can say about them. At least you have a decent selection of readers in the electronics stores (Saturn, Media markt) now. Apart from Sonys they are also selling the Kobos and Pocketbooks. Unfortunately Bokeen is a no show even though I was able to buy a Cybook Opus (cute little reader) for my daughter last Christmas at Weltbild.
All said and done the Sonys are still the dominant brand apart from the Kindle which has made inroads into the market.
Anyway, the level of choice we have as regards e-ink readers is quite disappointing wherever you go. Just compare this with the bewildering number of different smartphones available today.

[RainingLemur]

Scratch smartphones too. I love them for a lot of things, but they make shitty e-book readers. Trying to read a book half a sentence at a time drives me mental.

Was he trying to read a book on a Motorola StarTac, or something?