

Will the iPad Kill Reading? - mikek
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/11/who-needs-catch-22-when-you-have-flight-control/

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ajg1977
My experience is quite the opposite.

Unless it's in a darkened room, where the glow really does cause eyestrain,
I've found reading on the ipad to be surprisingly pleasant. In landscape mode
it feels "odd", but in portrait I find the device becomes as invisible as the
kindle after a few pages despite, having an LCD screen. Not at all what I
expected.

With the instapaper app installed I find the ipad is actually the superior
reading device. Before leaving work I'll fire up instapaper and download all
the articles I've marked during the day to read on the commute home. After
they're finished i flip over to the kindle app and continue with whatever book
I'm on.

I've loved my V1 kindle since it was released, but aside from heading to the
beach or on some really really long trip I can't imagine a reason to use it
over the iPad. Like I said, not at all what i expected.

~~~
silencio
I've actually found the opposite to be true - reading on the iPad is atrocious
in bright light because of the glare (probably would be alleviated with an
antiglare screen protector), while pleasant on the kindle. I like the slight
glow and lack of a need of external light convenient in near darkness.

Overall I end up reading a lot more than I normally would regardless of the
device, mostly because I have some combination of {kindle|iPhone|iPad} with me
while I don't often like to carry around books for weight and inconvenience
stuffing into my purse. I daresay the convenience of my iPhone was what
prompted me to really start reading a lot daily, whereas before I wasn't such
an avid casual reader because I always found something else to do. My kindle
then made it a little more convenient to read newer mainstream books, and then
the iPad made reading all sorts of books possible.

While eink is convenient and vastly superior for outdoor reading, the benefit
of a full color display means there is so much more to read now that needed a
higher resolution and/or color display (see: many textbooks, graphic novels),
not that it's only for games or whatever else I want to do. If I decide to go
check my email and play We Rule instead of reading, blame my ADD, not the
device.

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blahedo
Depressing but insightful article. But perhaps a bit premature; the e-ink
folks are presumably still researching better techniques, and someday we'll
almost certainly have e-ink that works in colour (in a CMY space, no less!)
and with update times well south of a tenth of a second, and then you can have
your cake and eat it too---at least on the readability part.

The distraction part of the argument I don't really have a response to, alas.

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nir
The experience he describes of reading the NYT on the iPad is just like
reading it online, they way most NYT readers consume it now.

For that matter, it's like reading the paper NYT in a room that has a TV on.

Yet, reading is still alive.

So we live in an ADD culture. We've been living in it at least since the
invention of the Remote. The iPad is completely meaningless in that sense,
even if it will manage to become more than a true-believer product.

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stuartjmoore
I think the iPad (at least iBooks) is best for people who have no interest in
investing the time in perusing book stores or buying a device just to read
books. But now that something you wanted has a nice book reader inside of it,
you might as well check out a copy (maybe just a the sample) of Abraham
Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

