Three reasons why I personally think the Kindle is superior to the iPad as a reading device:
1) It's lighter and smaller and thus easier on your hands to hold it. My hands begin to hurt after holding the iPad for more than two hours. Reading is something I can do for hours without interruption.
2) I thought that an advantage of the ipad would be that I can read with the lights already out. I was wrong - staring at the illuminated screen quickly hurts my eyes in an otherwise dark room. Interesting: Watching videos is no problem, but reading apparently is something I use my eyes differently than watching a movie.
3) The distraction factor is huge if reading your mail, hacker news or google reader is just a small home button press away. I can't. get. any. serious. reading. done.
For me, reading a book is an activity I'm doing for hours at a time if I finally find time. Then, being distracted, having to carry a heavy device or hurting my eyes all are not optimal solutions.
If you keep the 3G off except while downloading books, you can easily get TWO OR THREE WEEKS of battery life out of the Kindle - even if you use it every night.
The iPad does a lot more, no doubt, but as a straight up reading device the Kindle still wins.
Ironically, and I recognize this is more a behavior than product issue - the battery on my kindle is dead almost 100% of the time when I want to use it, but on my iPad, the battery typically has 8-10 hours of reading life on it.
As a result, I do most of my reading on my iPad, even though I prefer, all things equal, to do so on my kindle in the sun. The battery is just never charged _when I want it_.
The difference - I use my kindle for solid, long stretch reading, and may set the kindle down for a few weeks or more, and that stupid wireless always gets turned on sometimes in that interval. (It's better on the K2, but the K1 was horrible) - And I've used the wireless function a grand total of 15 minutes in the two plus years of ownership and 200+ hours of reading. Worst design flaw I've ever seen in a product, where a feature that should be off almost 100% of the time is frequently turned on, wiping out one of the key differentiators of the product - long battery life.
Now that I think of it, I didn't have really that great an experience on battery life on my K1, even without the wireless, and would typically go on a trip with multiple battery packs, and a solar charger. Better than the iPad (obviously), but a week of reading would typically require 3 or so recharges.
K2 has been better - most of a week of casual reading, and I am looking forward to seeing what the graphite will do for me.
Many of the Kindle Ones had bad batteries which would self-discharge; Amazon would replace them for free. I had this problem (charge would only last a day or so), but I broke my K1 before getting it back to Amazon for repair (while durable, putting it in a bag with an inmarsat bgan terminal, then having 1000 pounds of other bags on top of the bag, leads to screen cracking...)
I actually preferred the shape of the K1, and the buttons being on the left as well.
Google recently updated the Android maps application so everything is white during the day, which really annoys me. black-on-white is kind of obnoxious and wastes battery unless you're in full sunlight. But of course it's shinier, and shiny always beats functional...
It's not just shinier: in general people find it somewhat easier to read, as these blog posts with references to research suggest[1][2]. I know the halation effect mentioned in the second post completely ruines white-on-black for me, in most incarnations. My Gnome terminal is white-on-black, but that only works with a sufficiently large monospace font and the fact that terminal data is, well, different from a novel or blogpost.
I'm looking at those posts, and only two of the linked studies actually analyze font in conjunction with color. And the link is dead, but one of the comments to Atwood's blog suggests that he didn't read the second study as closely has he should have, and it actually says that there are specific font/color scheme combinations that are readable, not that some color schemes are simply unreadable.
Furthermore, Both of those posts are from before the iPhone, so I'd bet they were done on a full-sized computer screen. If I turn my Motorola Droid up to full brightness at night and read Reddit, I might as well be staring at a flashlight. Even low brightness is too much, especially at that range.
With the reddit-is-fun app I vastly prefer white-on-black. Right now I'm typing this on a 25" monitor, with my face 4 feet from the screen, and it's black-on-white in a browser box. But that's desktop.
What we need is a broad-based study with various smartphones and smartphone fonts at multiple brightness levels. (both backlight and ambient) I doubt that black-on-white is a good idea on a 4" screen with low ambient light. (At least not when you're reliant on a backlight.) At best, I would bet different fonts work well with different color schemes, and black-on-white should be avoided on portable devices to save battery power.
You are probably right that desktop vs. smartphone matters. And perhaps the amount of people and the amount they benefit doesn't weigh against the additional battery usage. The best solution would be if you could simply switch between color schemes at will (and set a personal default).
This page [1] suggests that most studies are even from before 'the web' (but from when is the page?). It has the quote by Jakob Nielsen that formed my opinion back when, from his well known 'Designing web usability':
Use colors with high contrast between the text and the background.
Optimal legibility requires black text on white background (so-called
positive text). White text on a black background (negative text) is almost as
good. Although the contrast ratio is the same as for positive text, the
inverted color scheme throws people off a little and slows their reading
slightly. Legibility suffers much more for color schemes that make the text
any lighter than pure black, especially if the background is made any
darker than pure white (Nielsen 2000, p 125)
I don't own the book and can't check on his sources, but Nielsen generally bases such advise on research. Anyway, all I'm saying is that they may have simply thought to be improving their app, not necessarily to increase the shinyness.
If you're getting eye-strain when reading high-contrast text in an otherwise dark room you might be at the border of needing glasses. Plenty of eye trouble manifests itself as head-aches or eye-strain.
My only issue with reading on kindle like devices is the way it changes the page. I don't think I can stand that. I feel like that would bother my eyes.
EDIT: That is the only thing stopping me from buying one.
As one who has read about 30 novels on my K1/K2 - I can attest that your brain / eyes actually seem to go into a wait state when you change the page, such that you don't ever seem to recall changing pages while reading long fiction.
On the other hand, flipping through technical references is painful to the point of despair, and was one of the key reasons I fell in love with my iPad.
You quickly learn not to stare at the screen, much like you learned long long ago not to stare at the page as you're turning it. Physical books have an even slower response time, but nobody complains about that.
Seconded. It's especially pronounced when you need to flip back a few pages or skip ahead to the next chapter. The command-keys/controller setup is also really user-unfriendly.
I bought a Kindle recently even though I have an iPad. I enjoy the Kindle far more. I also don't mind taking it with me on the train because if something happens to it then I didn't just lose something super expensive-just fairly expensive.
It's also nice that I don't get distracted playing "Plants vs. Zombies" or "We Rule" on it when I intend to be reading.
I find it fascinating that people these days are willing to pay (a premium) for less features or less choice. It's counterintuitive, but if you look at e.g. Leica's exploding sales, or Macs, or indeed bare-featured Kindles, there's a pattern. In a perfect world (or, at least, one with perfectly consistent people) less features could never be worth more. People would do what they want and whether the device offers more choices or not wouldn't matter. Distractable as we are, however, every feature introduces a new decision calculus we need to make, and one more temptation against which we need to fight.
Well, it's more the difference between a swiss army knife / leatherman and a Wusthof chef's knife. Yes, the former have a ton of more features but if I'm mainly going to cook, and I cook a lot, the leatherman's or the swiss army knife's blade is going to be an annoyance (even though it's great for occasional use). Obviously, I'll choose the specialized device.
That's basically the advice I give to my friends who ask me about the Kindle. If you read a lot, it's a great investment but if you don't read much, you'll be wasting your money.
But in all your example it's not simply less features, ie they are not a pure subset feature-wise of some other product. The Leica M9 for example may have many less features than a Nikon D3, but it also has a couple of things that no other camera on the market has. Macs have the killer feature that they can easily run OS X. The Kindle is the only device which both lets you both use an e-ink screen and buy and read kindle books.
I find it fascinating that people these days are willing to pay (a premium) for less features or less choice.
Well in this case people are paying a lot less for less choice. A kindle/nook/kobo is priced nothing like an iPad.
Having access to both, I too agree eInk is far better for reading. I don't feel like I am paying to have less choice. My nook is a far better reading experience than the iPad. The iPad is a great web surfing gadget, and has some nice games. The fact that they have some overlapping functionality is not that significant, IMHO.
And, I predict these things will be $99 by Christmas, in which case I will be definitely gifting them to my family. I am not paid well enough to be giving away iPads, alas :-)
Hm, let me clarify, I meant to say "either pay or even pay a premium". So yes, they are paying less but they are still paying for a functionality that could, in this particular case, for the most part also be fulfilled by the more versatile iPad. I wonder where the thin line is at which people will say "thank god, now I can pack all my gadgets into one device" instead of "X is best for x, Y for y, Z for z". Clumsy English, I realize, but I'm too tired now to try again... In any case, I still have a Sony PRS 700, expensively imported to Germany about a year ago, and can't decide whether I'll keep it around now that I have the iPad or sell it at a big loss (given my import costs and the iPad craze) on ebay.
in this particular case, for the most part also be fulfilled by the more versatile iPad
I understand your point, but all I am saying is that in this case "for the most part" is not good enough for many people (eg. me).
I do, actually, have the urge for an all-in-one device, but I also have certain things that I don't want to compromise on. My reading experience is very important to me. On the other hand, my wish to take a quick photo/video is not a big deal. So, I carried a sub-compact camera with the iPhone 3G, but if I get an iPhone4 I won't bother - it's good enough. On similar lines, I have more or less ditched my portable game devices in favour of the iPhone/iPad. Other people have different priorities.
So I think people do want to converge on one device, but not at the expense of their convenience.
same for me, It affords little distraction,ideal for reading a book. The weight of a paperback (as opposed to my ipad, which is more like a hardcover) and in natural light the reading is a pleasure.
I have the Kindle App on the ipad as well, it doesn't afford the same pleasure or ease.
PvZ helps everything with the exception of my marriage.
I play "We Rule" with my wife so it's fun because of that. You need to have friends in the game to make it fun. If you get into it again email me (from my contact info) and I'll add you.
The Kindle is best at reading straight-forward linear text with minimal formatting, like novels. You can't go wrong with a Kindle if you read plenty of novels, especially if you read outside.
OTOH, the iPad is far superior for heavily formatted text and graphical content. Even the Kindle DX has terrible support for PDFs and the eInk screen is inherently bad for graphics, so for the person who wants to carry textbooks, technical papers, other structured PDFs, or comic books, the iPad is the only viable option.
>Students at Reed College complained of the slow refresh rate of e-Ink displays, problematic input, inability to load PDFs over the network, and inability to view more than one text at a time as major sticking points. Reed faculty found converting documents to work well on the Kindle to be particularly difficult in most cases.
>Students participating in the test at Darden School of Business, while loving the Kindle for personal reading, overwhelmingly felt the Kindle didn't pass muster in its current state for academic use -- about 4 out of 5 would not recommend a Kindle DX to incoming MBA students.
True in theory, not so much in practice. After having read a couple of books in iBooks, the books mostly seem like hasty OCR jobs (Ender's Game, while a fantastic book, definitely showed this). The iPad has the capability to do great formatting, but publishers don't seem to be doing a whole lot with it. For example, in Ender's Game, there's a little snippet of conversation before each chapter. In print it's very clearly differentiated with italics, the iBooks version lacks even that. Curiously, I seem to notice far fewer formatting problems with the Kindle app.
One of the coolest things I do with my kindle is send my instapaper articles to it. It costs $0.15 per send (not per article), but it is great to have a bunch of really good, long form articles available.
One way to avoid kindle fees is to use USB to sync. If you're on Mac, use Ephemera (http://goephemera.com/), or if you're on Windows, use Wordcycler (http://www.wordcycler.com/). (I'm the developer of Wordcycler.)
Another great benefit of these programs is that you can sync individual articles, not just the pre-made bundles that Instapaper provides. You can plug in your device, have the program download the articles, and automatically eject it. Later, when you finish reading an article on your device, delete it, and it will be archived on Instapaper the next time you sync.
I second Calibre. I supposedly works for Mac too. I use it for Windows and on my Sony PRS-600. Calibre offers lots of ready-to-use web subscriptions which gathers articles from other websites like an RSS Reader.
I'm aware but consider the $.15 well worth it. I maybe sync with instapaper 6 times a month.
It is really nice to treat the kindle as a stand-alone device. The last thing I want to do is stress about hooking up to my computer just to save some change.
That sounds REALLY lazy, but I have to say, deciding to be lazy in this instance feels great. As long as I remember to click 'Read Later' once and a while I know I'll always have something great to read wherever I am.
I tried to get Ephemera, but it crashes on launch any time I try to open it. Unfortunate because it looked pretty useful to me. I realize you (probably) aren't the author, but thought maybe others on here were having problems with it. Gonna send in a crash report, no idea what's causing it.
Rough anecdotal polling from my experience on the Boston-area commuter rail in from the suburbs: I see more iPhones than Kindles, but way more Kindles than iPads. People on iPhones are often playing games, not reading.
Kindles are surprisingly popular with older women. I suspect it's because it does its one task really well and is much less technically intimidating for non-savvy users. I own one and use it periodically, but prefer traveling with the iPhone so I avoid having 3 devices at all times.
I think the Kindle will continue to be popular with older commuters - it's easy on the eyes, simple to use, and doesn't have a lot of technological baggage.
People love to keep saying that, but it's horseshit. The iPhone screen is perfectly usable in the brightest sunlight if you crank up the brightness to the max.
I've never had any issue using my iPhone in sunlight. Granted, I live in London, where bright sunlight is like a rare delicacy, even in the summer (glances out the window... yeah..), but still, the point remains - I have never had any trouble reading my iPhone even with direct sunlight on it.
The iPad is supply-constrained. Apple has sold every unit they've made. So, even if it were twice as popular you wouldn't see any more on your commute.
I guess I am in the minority. I found that the eInk displays of these readers made for a poorer reading experience than reading straight off my iPhone with the help of Stanza.
(1) I can read with the lights off.
(2) The default font is not as grating.
(3) I can adjust the brightness.
Without giving my preference, I had an older gentleman compare the experience of trying to read with both devices. He usually needs to wear glasses to read things close up, and even then, he has trouble making out words at times. To my surprise, he was able to read the iPhone text much more easily than the reader's text, and keep in mind that the iPhone text by default is fairly tiny -- smaller than the reader. I am guessing that the high resolution and the contrast helped him make out the letters.
I have not tried this on an iPad; I imagine it will be the same good experience as on the iPhone except with more of a book feel. On the other hand, I have no interest in an iPad any more than any other touch tablet. The iPhone was novel since it was a computer that fit in my pocket.
But the Kindle was a thumbs down for me with all its DRM limitations and the lack of reading improvement that was promised with eInk.
Yes, but did the older gentleman get to adjust the Kindle's text size. That's a killer feature that has sold Kindles to 6 of my older relatives who have used mine for more than a minute or so. I read at the 2nd to smallest font (probably about 10pt) but you can adjust it up to what seems like 32 pts or more. Older readers really love that.
To be fair, the iPhone readers can also change the font size, the background and foreground colors, and so forth. We experimented. The real killer feature should have been the ease on the eyes of the eInk for long-term reading.
This is a bugbear for me. Most Kindle books have poor typography slapped on them by the Kindle software (even on other platforms).
While there are many who find e-ink vs LCD or battery life issues to be sticking points, the typography and layout are, perhaps, my biggest beefs. It takes all sorts I guess ;-)
So if I want to read it on my old Palm TX I can? No of course not because the DRM won't let me convert it into a format any of the eBook readers for the old Palm OS support.
If you read the comments Dave is busy shouting at people who make that point. Apparently there's some sort of additional reason why the Kindle hardware is staying around.
A sidenote, but when is Dave not shouting at the people who comment on his blog? He should really disable comments entirely, since they only bring out the worst in him.
And those additional reasons are the 4 paragraphs surrounding the paragraph I quoted (and I don't disagree with the points made there). But that paragraph is wrong.
I don't think it's a zero sum game. It's not either/or. For most it's both. You will have a smart (brilliant) phone and if you read a lot, a dedicated reader. The 2 form factors just don't overlap enough to do both well.
Don't rule out the nook. Since the nook supports ePub(with DRM) you can probably check out eBooks from your local library. Since the Kindle is a closed ecosystem that does not support ePub that channel is cut off from you.
Agreed. It's definitely not a zero-sum game. Most of the time I read my kindle books on the kindle, but at night in bed it's great to be able to read on my iPod touch without any light.
Two questions for Kindle users:
1) How is it for reading programming books? I have a bunch of PDF programming books that I'd love to load on it, but fear that the screenshots (mostly B&W) and code snippets will look horrible.
2) On occassion I'd want to read a lengthy blog entry in the backyard -- how easy is it to read blog pages on it? So clearly not Flash pages, but web based text.
I had looked at a Nook, and it didn't seem to do a satisfactory job with technical books.
I can't say about the Kindle, but I have a Sony PRS and it's pretty good. PDF are usually better seen in landscape.
However you may want to convert them to ePub for better readability.
BTW, I won't EVER buy any DRM-laden book, music or anything else. It seems that the Kindle pretty much propose only that...
I only read public domain books from gutenberg.org (more than enough great material to read 20 hours a day until you die), and PDFs I download here and there.
I simply copied them the the PRS using it as USB storage, usually, though now I'm using Calibre to keep a list of what's on my reader and organize it.
I often wonder how many people are actually spending much time reading outdoors in bright/direct sunlight, versus just regurgitating that well-known point in favor of eInk.
I find my iPad quite a bit more readable than the Kindle or Sony reader indoors, which is where I do nearly all of my reading. It's nice not needing to find a light source too.
I don't spend all that much time at the beach, but I'm still sure as hell not going to buy a gadget for reading at the beach that can't be read in sunlight.
It doesn't have to be bright, directly sunlight to impact performance. I love the iPad, but I'm still considering the Kindle... if I weren't so addicted to audiobooks.
When I read on tech blogs that Kindle is a goner, I think these people must not read very much.
Yeah, pretty much. It is snobby and rude to say it that way, but being snobby and rude myself I'm fine with that.
In fairness, while e-ink devices offer what I believe is the best reading experience in the present for texts read linearly, they're less pleasant when used to read texts where you're likely to bounce around: technical texts, books with lots of footnotes, and even omnibus editions of linearly read texts. Then again, this looks to be true of the iPad as well. The faster and more colorful screen was used to make a chintzier experience, classy the way casinos are classy, which they aren't, not a better reader.
I was just pointing out that the specific article Dave points to is even more proof that we're dealing with the illiterate (I also have no problem with rudeness and snobbiness).
My girlfriend has a kindle 2, and I have an iphone. I've found that the iphone has one killer feature that the kindle doesn't: It's in my pocket all the time.
For whatever reason, my reading happens in 15 minute spurts while waiting for someone or something. The kindle app for the iphone allows me to do that, along with all the book options that amazon provides (and synced up to my girlfriend's kindle too, so we share books).
This is what I love about Amazon: They know that they can't make "one device to rule them all", so they've simply focused on making Kindle available everywhere. Very often when people talk about Kindle vs. iPad, they actually talk about Kindle (device) vs. Kindle (on iPad).
Personally, when I read, I read for hours. The vast majority of the time I read, it is in my house, where my Kindle always is, so it is always 'with me'.
I agree with Dave on pretty much all of this, except for one sort of off-topic point: though speech is protected by the First Amendment, Apple's behavior towards other parties is irrelevant as far as 1A protections go. The 1A doesn't apply unless there is a government actor involved... just sayin'.
Very seriously considering a Kindle, but all my eBooks are non-DRM ePUBs. I know Amazon has a feature to get your existing files on the Kindle, but has anyone tried to import ePUBs? Do they transfer 1:1 to Amazon's format?
Most books are pretty easy to convert. As mentioned elsewhere, calibre does a good job at it, although the GUI looks like it crept out of someones mid-90s Tcl/Tk nightmares.
A problem I've seen with epub books is missing hyphenation, which really messes up the display. And this was on "native" devices (Sony PRS, nook). Haven't seen really good typography on any of the ereader devices. This includes the iPad…
This is one of those things that surprises me about technology people that push openness. I won't buy a Kindle until it supports ePub as a default format. Amazon went out of their way to create a proprietary format for a reason: lock-in. There are plenty of official ways to convert to AZW, but the format is owned by Amazon and can change breaking any of the unofficial ways to convert back.
Thanks, I've been trying to decide between Kindle and Nook on the assumption that I'll mostly read Project Gutenberg books anyway. So you're saying that Nook would be better for me?
The nook works perfectely well with the Project Gutenberg books. I recently found this fact out and downloaded over 50 books and they are all nicely sitting on my nook now. The only drawback is that they are seperated from your purchased books and are found only in the My Documents section of the nook. (I do not know if this is a rule, but I haven't found a way around it.) I would have liked to see them right along side my purchased books.
I think in a couple years time, these large, 9 inch readers and tablets are going to look the way those old, chalk board eraser-sized cell phones, or the original ipod looks today. They just seem unwieldy and awkward. I think we'll see a market open up for devices that are larger than a cell phone, smaller than a tablet, like the Dell Streak.
Personally, I have a Sony Pocket Edition and it's the perfect size-about 6'1/4 by 4 1/4', with a 5 inch screen- about as big as paper back. True to it's name, I can put it in my jacket or back pocket and carry it anywhere with ease.
the kindle offers a fairly straightforward utility. if you don't grasp the utility of the kindle (or see only marginal utility in a dedicated reading device) it isn't for you.
The Kindle is great. But I'll wait. I like the product, but, it doesn't quite fully solve the problem I have. Here's what will really tip the things over for me:
1. I love to read, but I don't want any dead trees around me anymore. What I need is a way to convert all my past Amazon book purchases into e-books without cost. Or better yet, all book purchases I have.
2. Have a better way to input text, notes etc. That awkward keyboard coupled with the holding position doesn't help.
3. Have a way to share things. May be share a quote, a passage or a page with others.
Not a real complaint, but I got my DX too soon, had to pay custom charges, and the model I got is US-only. I figured they'd never have all-Web access in the UK, as my previous Kindle 2 only did Wikipedia. Then they fixed it in the 2.5 upgrade, and I can't go webbing on this.
My silly fault for rushing in, but I figure 5 years' reading will pay off that £300 investment, and it's great for Japanese comic books!
