The Cult of Kindle

DaMan writes "ZDNet's Hardware 2.0 blog is pondering the Kindle this week. There have been many attempts at an ebook reader in the past; why does Amazon think it can do any better? Given the high cost and DRM issues, will cachet be enough to win them financial success? Will the 'Cult of Kindle' help guarantee Amazon's success in the ebook reader market? 'A group of people willing to give it a five star rating just because someone else didn't, willing to back up every design, engineering and marketing decision that Amazon made, willing to defend the Kindle with their last dying breath. The Kindle doesn't cost money, it saves money. That 0.75 second flash as the pages turn isn't a downside because it gives you an opportunity to take in the previous page. It doesn't harm your eyes, in fact, it fixes them. Ergonomic issues that other reviewers have bought up are dismissed by the Cult of Kindle as flaws with the reviewer, not the device. The Kindle is perfect, and the Kindle 2.0 will be a little more perfect.'"

Re:They're called fanboys

[PriceIke]

Fanboys is one thing .. but it sure didn't take long for someone to label them a "cult". I personally was very excited about the device until I learned about its DRM and behavior-watching aspects. That is enough to make me warn people away from the device.

I think the best thing for the ebook industry would be for Apple to release a tablet-style device for this purpose. DRM would be tolerable (and fully circumventable), the device's design would be much more elegant and practical, and it would operate much more intuitively and enjoyably. Besides, they already own the trademark "iBook" don't they.

Re:Will they ever listen?

[poot_rootbeer]

And as the reviewer points out, $400 is a load of money for what is essentially a blank, fragile, battery-powered book.

To be fair, it's also a cell phone that you can't make or receive calls with.

I wonder how much more affordable the Kindle could have been if they had cut the EV-DO radio and network stack from the hardware design, and didn't have to incorporate the cost of a lifetime service agreement with Sprint into the price of the unit?

People don't seem to have any problem plugging their MP3 players into a USB port every once in a while to synchronize new content; so who decided that it customers would not tolerate doing the same thing with an e-Book reader?

Re:What it doesn't do:

[MBCook]

1. Not perfect, but they can be converted
2. Do you try to do this much? I don't, so it wouldn't be a problem for me
3. Browsing is complex and not designed for a device like this. They are giving you a reference, not a crippled browser
4. OK, but it has CDMA access, which works fine when you aren't near a WiFi access point, or even if you are near one.
5. But it looks better than an equivelent LCD

Wrong. [everymac.com]. That newton was 480x320. The screen was physically smaller. It didn't have nearly as much contrast. The battery life isn't the same (the Kindle is measured in page turns, it will hold a page image practically forever). Newtons were great (I had one), but don't kid yourself. They aren't equivalent.

The Kindle is interesting. The keyboard is ugly. The screen refresh time still seems like a problem for me (although I know it is a problem with all E-Ink stuff now). I think the Sony device looks much better. Still, these are quire an advance. My brother has one of those RocketReaders (or whatever) from ~2000 that is thicker than my MacBook Pro, heavy, ugly, and has a LCD screen about as nice as the Newton.

Prediction

[Mr_Silver]

All eBook readers will come with heavy and draconian DRM (as mandated by the book agency) until one vendor (also with heavy and draconian DRM) significantly corners the market through a beautifully easy to use device, tied in store and large volume of works.

This one company won't licence their DRM to anyone else and uses their huge market presence to force book publishers to accept the price points and the restrictions they want.

Given that the only way to get books out to everyone with that reader and avoid partnering with the one big company, publishers will find themselves having to accept that they're going to have to start looking at DRM free books.

Sound familiar?

(All I can say is thank god for Apple not licensing their DRM. If they'd done a Microsoft and licensed it to everyone who asked, music publishers would never ever have been contemplating DRM free media)

Re:Paper Rules

[spyrochaete]

One of these days mankind is going to have to forgo the luxury of killing trees because they smell nice. Why not today?

I applaud manufacturers of eReaders. A perfect one hasn't come out yet but each new model seems to learn from the mistakes of the last. Nevertheless, a mini tablet PC fits in my pocket better than one book, never mind ten million of them.

Re:What about PDAs?

[bahwi]

Heavy backlights like PDAs and cell phones hurt a lot of people's eyes. The e-readers don't have that problem, (if it's the e-paper stuff) and has to be illuminated by a traditional light, like a book. I had a sony e-reader once and it was great, except the USB did not work. Sony suggested I unplug all my USB peripherals and only plug in the e-reader to make it work, which doesn't work when the mouse and keyboard are both USB. But it had problems, and hopefully everything will be fixed at some point and support will be improved.

Re:Will they ever listen?

[sorak]

Although, if an affordable reader came out that could read normal PDFs, text files (ie, Project Gutenberg stuff), and web pages, with a reasonably-sized screen, then I would be interested. I don't know if the Kindle does this, but it does not fit my definition of "affordable". Maybe in a few years when google comes out with a similar g-something.

Then, an ebook reader [eink device]is not for you.

[xtracto]

The price I've seen is 700USD and for that price I can buy a cheap laptop that is way more expandable.

If you think this, then it is clear that this technology is not for you. I read a lot of this in slashdot but what people fail to see is that there is a specific market for this kind of devices. Specially for the ones that allow making some kind of notes.

As an example, both of my parents are biologists (they go to field trips to that strange place called "the nature" quite often). They sometimes stay camping when doing field trips which are usually done to catalogue species and the like. One of the main problems in those trips is that students may have to take their field guides (which are supposed to be special editions for field work but, are akin to our "SQL pocket edition " manuals, with lots and lots of pages). The problem is that sometimes they have to take two or three guides with them making it really painful to pack 5 Kgs of books...

Now, they usually can not take a laptop because trips last for a lot of time, and they need access to the books quite often. Hence, a laptop which battery lasts for 4 hours at *most* wont be useful. However a device which lasts 15 hours or more will be very very useful.

That is why, when I showed my parents and my flatmate (who is a zoologist) the OLPC, they got fascinated as it really solves quite a lot of problems for them. Specially, my flatmate goes into the Selva Lacandona and stays there camping and examining animals for weeks. A computer which can be powered by turning a crank and which power lasts longer (they do not need fancy graphics, even black and white is great) will be the perfect sollution.

The problem is that from our closed computer cube world, this kind of devices only make sense as gizmos. But there *are* several uses for this technology.

Re:Will they ever listen?

[mabhatter654]

it fixes the end-to-end DRM problem. The device is completely locked.. but you don't have to put soul-stealing DRM on your PC desktop and beg permission every time you update either. You can buy a new book from anywhere, so they turned lock-down into a feature. I could see this being a method for delivering content like magazines and newspapers because of the push ability, that could save some publishers.

What people REALLY want is something e-paper about 13x19 tabloid size at 300dpi & reflective that can roll up. Better yet, have 2-3 that network to share a books on different pages. The current e-books are too small to be useful for anything other than reading sitting down.. like a book, and don't have things like tabs to mark sections of multiple open books. For most "geeks" to use this instead of books (like say O'Reilly material) you'd need to have 6-10 books open and 5 places bookmarked in each with both pages visible and stacked so you can quickly switch between them... just like a stack of real book when working on a project. It also needs to be the 13x19 because without that it eliminates using it for any kind of blueprint/charting work (another thing people would pay big $$ for)

Re:Will they ever listen?

[Sunburnt]

Darn right, its like I've been telling the upstart RCA: People who don't like radio aren't going to come around if you put it on a screen.

That attempt at sarcasm would be funny, except that people never did come around to radio on the TV. TV developed its own content while radio maintained its dominance of music until the CD era. You lose more funny points by failing to note that radio is still a major form of portable music for most people, and for the same reasons that books are still the dominant form of reading: bargain-basement pricing and portability.

Re:What about PDAs?

[ColdWetDog]

Why would I want to spend twice that money on a dedicated reader?

Because the TX has a weeny little screen and some of us are old enough not to want to stare at weeny little screens for hours on end. Sure, I've read books on my Palm (a TX in fact), but it's not my Reader of Choice (which is, in fact, a paper book).

I'm not particularly interested in doing anything with a Kindle other than disassembling it, but a decent E-reader just has to appear Real Soon Now (TM).

Re:Prediction

[Dragee]

...until one vendor (also with heavy and draconian DRM) significantly corners the market through a beautifully easy to use device, tied in store and large volume of works.

Hmmm....who does this sound like? Apple, pay attention here. You're in a postition to totally take over this market, the way the ipod destroyed competition in the mobile mp3 player market. You already have the device (iPod/iPhone) that has a proven interface, reliability, and the hip/cool/somehow-still-elitist-even-though-everybody-has-one factor. You already built the store and delivery mechanism (iTunes) that everyone can use.

Apple, do you want to own a developing new market in a month, when others are still fussing with devices and delivery mechanisms that are practically beta?
1. Partner with Google, Project Gutenberg, that University whose-name-escapes-me (and I'm too lazy to look it up), and any others who are already digitizing books, most of which need no DRM, that you can toss in to iTunes (for free if you want, just to get the populace on board).

2. Crank out an e-book reader for your i-Devices that will support your DRM scheme for copyrighted materials. Also make sure your devices can read PDFs natively. If you're going to do this, do it right.

3. There are no question marks here, this is straightforward and simple.

4. Profit!!!

P.S.
For those of you going on about the sensuality of book bindings, the smell of paper, etc., I don't give a crap. For me, a book is either recreation, through which I escape to another time/place/universe, or a learning tool/reference guide. In either case, the delivery mechanism should be so unobtrusive as to be nearly invisible.

Re:Will they ever listen?

[zenmervolt]

The Device Software will provide Amazon with data about your Device and its interaction with the Service (such as available memory, up-time, log files and signal strength) and information related to the content on your Device and your use of it (such as automatic bookmarking of the last page read and content deletions from the Device). Annotations, bookmarks, notes, highlights, or similar markings you make in your Device are backed up through the Service.

That's what really disturbs me about the always-on EV-DO. I really don't like the idea of Amazon knowing everything that I have on my reader. It's one thing for them to keep track of everything that I buy through their service, it's quite another for them to track any content I have on the reader. If I download a copy of the Koran through Project Gutenberg and put that on my Kindle, am I going to be paid a visit by Homeland Security if I view the wrong passages too many times? Or what if I spend too much time reading a copy of "The Communist Manifesto"? Can you imagine if information could have been tracked like that during the McCarthy era?

Re:Article is Flamebait!

[bastion_xx]

Disclaimer - I bought a Kindle. Actually, it's sitting right next to me while I download or convert some books from http://manybooks.net./ [manybooks.net.]

I do a lot of traveling and invariably end up taking a paperback and hardback with me and have been looking at readers for some time. I was getting close to buying the Sony 505, and then read up on the Kindle. *For me*, it fits my needs.

Is there great stuff about the Kindle? Yeah! is there mediocre to bad stuff ($400 price)? Sure thing. But in the creature comfort/benefit analysis, it was a buy.

But I know where the article is coming from. The review page for the Kindle demonstrates some serious flaws in the Amazon rating system when it comes to controversial items. For the most part, the 1 star ratings (bad! bad! bad!) and the 5 star rating (good! good! good!) are about equal. It took some time to wade through the "reviews" before deciding to buy the unit.

Personally, I would like to see all the bad reviews written by people who have never even seen the unit but must side on the anti-DRM front removed. I'd also like to see the tit-for-tat 5 star ratings also removed.

And I thought us techno-geeks were rabid. Those bookish people have us beat!