

Apple and the Kindle - samrat
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/kindledetails

======
breck
> Or (and this is incredibly aggravating) when you select a word in the
> Kindle, depending on how common a word it is, the option that comes up
> highlighted by default is either “full definition” or “start highlight”.
> Since e-ink’s refresh rate is so slow, you typically don’t see what’s
> actually come up until you’ve pressed the button for the second time. So I
> often “double click” on words to highlight them, but some percentage of the
> time this kicks me over into the dictionary and I have to hit back twice to
> get out.

I'm on my third Kindle. The latest one, sans keyboard, is the first to have
this problem. It's so annoying. Literally sometimes I'll be in the middle of a
great passage and try to highlight it and then I'm brought to the dictionary
page for a word like "the".

Is there anyone on here who is on the Kindle team and knows when a fix for
this will come out?

*Also, as a general commentary, I think the Kindle is a revolutionary device. Moreso than the iPad. I think Bezos knows full well what he is doing and would prefer to keep it under the radar how absolutely amazing and big this thing is going to be. It shocks me that Apple hasn't come out with an eInk reader yet. It's an order of magnitude better for reading than an iPad.

~~~
euroclydon
After reading ebooks on my iPhone and now iPad, I couldn't go back to the
kindle. The UI was just so terrible and slow. I use white on black for night
time reading, and can still fall asleep.

Incidentally, this is the same reason I could only use Duck Duck Go for one
day before going back to Google search. The Google search UI has just spoiled
me with its responsiveness.

~~~
breck
> The UI was just so terrible and slow.

Have you tried the latest one? It's noticeably faster. Worth the $79. (And
I'll get the touch screen as soon as it's available).

> I use white on black for night time reading, and can still fall asleep.

I've heard this from multiple people. I should try it.

I read my Kindle on occasion for hours and hours. Not only does it not hurt my
eyes, but it's so light. The iPad is quite heavy.

I really wonder if Apple will ever come out with an eInk screen. After reading
how upset Jobs got over Android ripping off the iPhone, I kind of think that
maybe they never will and that they'll just let Amazon have that market.

~~~
manojlds
> I really wonder if Apple will ever come out with an eInk screen. After
> reading how upset Jobs got over Android ripping off the iPhone, I kind of
> think that maybe they never will and that they'll just let Amazon have that
> market.

Are you saying that Apple came with iPod because no one had made an Mp3 player
before?

Apple made iPhone because no one made a phone before?

~~~
breck
I guess I don't see how they could improve the Kindle drastically this late in
the game.

The Kindle should be faster, lighter, and the UI should be a bit easier (but
the touchscreen version due out at the end of the month could solve that
already).

Amazon's already reduced it almost as much as can be. I feel like if Apple
came out with an eInk reader it would be tough to be anything but a "me too"
product. Perhaps they could do color eInk? I think it would take an advance
like that to make it worthwhile.

~~~
sliverstorm
Color eInk isn't being done because it's a technical problem, not a design
problem. Everybody knows color eInk would be cool, we don't need Apple to step
forward and say "You know what, color eInk would be cool!"

We just need somebody to invent a feasible one, make it and sell it. You'll
then see it in Kindles quickly enough.

~~~
sjwright
Color eInk isn't being done because nobody is willing to bet the farm on it.
Everybody knows color eInk would be cool, and we DO need someone like Apple to
step forward and say "You know what, color eInk would be cool! And here's a
billion dollars, make it happen!"

------
jgrahamc
To me the Kindle has two killer features: the screen (because I can read it
like paper for hours) and its weight (can hold it for hours like a paperback
book). Those two things made it a 'wow' device. The 3G access made it
effortless.

None of those things seem very clever and have been pretty easily duplicated
in the Nook. The software itself (and this applies to Kindle and Nook) is
rather ugly and it feels slow to react. Both need Apple to come in and make
them work.

~~~
rapind
Please leave my Kindle alone. I don't want it to be fancy. I want to read
books on it. Cheap, long battery life, and a screen that reads like a book is
as clever as I ever want from it. I have no intention of replacing my kindle
anytime soon. I don't care if a new version comes out that's 10 times
faster... I'm completely content with the one I have.

When I want to use an iPad (for something other than reading books), then I'll
just use my iPad.

~~~
nodata
The first question I always get from people who haven't seen a Kindle before
is "can you go on the internet with it?" _sigh_

"No- it's just for reading books. Nothing else."

The problem is, I realise that it can go on the internet. It's just so damn
slow that it makes everything else look way better. _Not_ offering web
browsing would stop feature creep.

~~~
rmc
Although I agree that removing non-primary features would help have a more
honest comparison, there is a great advantage to the Kindle having a web
browser.

You can download books straight from the internet to your device. You can go
to the Project Gutenberg website (<http://www.gutenberg.org/>) browse for a
public domain book, and download it straight to your device. You don't need to
use an intermediate computer.

------
ZeroGravitas
I'm beginning to develop a theory that this kind of Apple-fandom is somewhere
between being an audiophile and a mentally contagious form of OCD.

I've had complete strangers, totally normal people (picture the exact opposite
of a stereotypical techie), raving to me in a shop about how great their
Kindle is because they saw me play with the demo device. That's a home run in
anyone's language.

But Aaron, who seems to have trained himself to appreciate the finer details,
has this joyous experience ruined for him in much the same way a wine snob can
no longer enjoy an even passable glass of wine.

I guess the missing factor is how much effort is expended on these nicities
versus the return on that investment.

If the text below a main icon is cut off, is that a sign of how shoddily the
entire thing is put together, or is it simply _not important_ , compared with
the many benefits the device gives you?

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its just annoying, even insulting, that something that could have been fixed,
permanently, for everybody, was let out the door with that stain on it. Unlike
wine, software CAN be (nearly) perfect for everybody, every time.

------
tomkarlo
There's a theory of interpersonal relationships that says you need 4-5
positive interactions to balance every 1 negative interaction, if a friendship
/ relationship is to be sustainable. I'd argue that with devices and software,
that ratio goes way up - maybe at least 10:1 or 20:1. That's why even a small
annoyance can balance a largely positive experience.

------
cschep
Aaron! Font size! Bigger!

~~~
jc4p
Seriously. I have good eyes but if I have to zoom in at 300% on your page to
be able to read it, something is definitely wrong.

~~~
docgnome
I've since given up hoping people will stop thinking that tiny, tiny fonts are
awesome. Cause I guess nothing makes the article you wrote more awesome than
making it impossible for humans to read. Readability, ftw.
<http://www.readability.com/>

------
davidw
I love my Kindle. One of the best tech buys in recent memory. The thing I want
to be able to do is share books with my wife as if they were 'real books'. In
other words, one of us at a time gets a lock on it, but there's no time limit.

~~~
sliverstorm
She's your wife. Trade Kindles for the day.

~~~
davidw
It'd get kind of awkward quickly, as I read books at a much faster rate than
she does, so I'd always be loaning myself books from my Kindle, while she
meanders her way through my books.

All in all, not an ideal solution given what the technology should enable us
to do.

------
microkernel
I really wonder why no ones mentions typography. In terms of great typesetting
the Kindle is somewhere in the 60's. Since at least LaTEX (not talking about
Adobe and Apple products) ligatures and other niceties found their way into
computers. Any by all means - this is a dedicated reading-machine! I still
love my Kindle, mainly for jgrahamc's reasons.

------
venuj
I used to be quite skeptical of Kindle and a dedicated book reading device
until I was gifted a Kindle. My wife got tired of my buying hundreds of books
and having it fill up the house and the Kindle TV ad did the trick.

Now that I've used it for a few months, I'm a Kindle convert. I carry it with
me all the time - conveniently fits into my coat pocket and weighs so little -
and I whip it out whenever I'm a line or at an airport and all those otherwise
wasted time.

It has remarkable battery life - I normally get 2-3 weeks between charges -
and more if I turn off WiFi. The more I use it, the more I like all the small
details which while quirky and not quite upto iPad levels of overall usability
adds up to a very convenient book reading experience. I used to lament the
space wasted on the physical keyboard but I'm not such a fan of the new touch
Kindles.

Now I wish I had all my books on my Kindle.

------
slyall
I wish they had the same "attention to detail" on their website. One reason I
stopped buying from them was every time I went to the website I was bombarded
for offers for Amazon Prime, Credits Cards, Free Shipping and other products.

The problem was that if I clicked on any of those offers the website would
eventually work out I was a non-US user and tell me I wasn't eligible. But
Amazon already knew that when they showed me the offers in the first place.

Any site that has 30% of their frontpage taunting me with cool stuff I can't
buy obvious doesn't want me as a customer.

------
subwindow
So far I've had a pretty frustrating experience with the Kindle (Kindle 4 no
keyboard, no touchscreen) from the get-go. Sure, the box was nice, but as soon
as I powered it on it was frustrating.

Since the Kindle was a gift, I had to enter in my Amazon account information
before I could do _anything_ else. Total buzzkill. I wanted to flip through a
book and see what the screen was like and how it worked, but instead I have to
laboriously type in my 35-character password like I'm using an NES controller.

After that, there's no sample books on there- you'd think they could put a
public domain book on there for free. Every MP3 player I've ever bought comes
with a few sample songs. Ok, fine. Now I have to hook it up to my computer via
USB. Put an epub file on there. It doesn't support epub? Ok, fine. Put an RTF
file on there. That doesn't work. Ok, fine.

Finally put a .txt file on there of a book I'm halfway through the paper
version of. Apparently the Kindle has a weird concept of pages for txt
documents, so I have to hit the "Next Page" button 97 times, or guess what
"location" I'm at (1456 out of 4452 I guess?) and enter that in.

All of that frustration, in the first 30 minutes, just to get an idea of what
it is like to read on it and page through a book. Never had that kind of
experience with an Apple product. "Unboxing" experiences with Apple products
have become a religious experience for a reason. Amazon is still _far_ short
of that.

~~~
WalterBright
On the other hand, when you get a Kindle in the mail you don't have to connect
it to a computer with iTunes on it to get it to work.

I can also load books from my computer onto the Kindle using drag-and-drop
without needing iTunes (or any Amazon software) installed.

~~~
rryyan
Connecting with iTunes is actually no longer required for iOS devices starting
with iOS 5.

You can also add PDFs to iBooks on the device without iTunes -- not sure about
epub files though.

~~~
WalterBright
But iTunes is required to update my ipod to iOS 5 :-)

I've never been able to get large pdf's onto my ipod without itunes. Can't
email them because they're too big, and the ipod cannot browse local shared
directories.

~~~
hexley
Dropbox?

------
mih
> small details that delight get buried under small details that annoy

Must point that even Apple software/hardware have their own trivial features
that prove to be annoying for some users (remember no right-click anyone?).

Amazon has achieved a very usable device with the Kindle in such a short foray
into consumer electronics, for which Apple has had around 3 decades of
experience to build on. Here's to hoping attention to detail and UX takes
giant strides at Amazon improving upon what is already a very good product.

~~~
dfc
Remember no right-click anyone?" I have yet to forget the right click and more
importantly middle click...

------
joezydeco
I have to wonder: does Apple spend more time playing with each new piece of
technology internally before releasing it?

I can see in the rush to launch that you can certainly hit 100% of your
feature list and still not hit the things that count.

When you see something like a ".com" key on the keyboard whenever an internet
address is requested, you have to wonder if it wasn't in the original design
but eventually someone played with it enough and thought it up.

------
MatthewPhillips
I was a big fan of the original Kindle's wheel navigation. It just felt right,
like a Model M keyboard.

------
6ren
> _lifetime unlimited worldwide_ data plan

Unfortunately the web-browser that makes this useful (beyond buying books) is
still labeled "experimental", years later. Meaning it can be dropped at any
time.

------
vegashacker
I didn't know about Kindles being already logged in. That's clever--"out-
Apple-ing Apple". I'd worry a bit about package thieves but that's probably
mostly irrational.

------
mikecane
Whatever UI ugliness exists in the Kindle and its apps don't matter much to
most Kindle owners. They just want to read. [typo edit]

------
tlrobinson
I loved my Kindle(s), but the screens are very fragile. I've already cracked
two of them.

If you have a Kindle, you _need_ a case, and should never take it out. iPads
seem much more durable (and indeed heavier)

------
danso
"And this is all before I’ve even got to the disastrous incompatibilities
between the Kindle device, the Kindle for Mac app, the Kindle for iOS app, the
Kindle Online Reader (read.amazon.com), and the kindle.amazon.com social
network — all of which are full of gruesome interface annoyances of their
own."

I just bought a Kindle, and besides my first attempt at buying one resulted in
returning it to Best Buy because of a damaged screen, I love it. I had been
reading Kindle books in my iPad and also loved the app experience. Mostly, the
ability to highlight and annotate at will, and have an online repository of
that to refer to, were the little details that sold me.

But what are the incompatibilities that he refers to?

However, on the $79 kindle, the details are definitely flubbed. The page
turning/return/home screen keys make no logical sense. I apparently ordered
one of those "Special Offers" by total accident...I must have pressed a
confirm button when I meant to press whatever the hell stands for the "Cancel"
button.

At $40 (for an interior design class), that's almost half the Kindle retail
price. Not a bad monetization plan, I guess.

~~~
ianferrel
I'm 100% sure you can cancel whatever you accidentally ordered on Amazon.com.

Just like One-click ordering, the point is to make a purchase easy and let
only the people who don't want to go through with it cancel, not to bilk
people out of money via misclicks.

~~~
danso
So this "Special Offer" was a LivingSocial deal. I would agree with you but I
looked over the email many times, and my own account page. There is not only
no easily visible option to cancel, there is no email contact. I have to call
to complain.

Even more befuddling is that every Amazon purchase I have ever made has
resulted in a confirmation email minutes after the purchase. This "Special
Offer"'s confirmation came to me at 2AM, well after I went to bed. I'm willing
to chalk this up to me mistakenly hitting the buttons and ordering the offer
while awake and that there's a delay to process it on the LivingSocial end.
Either way, it was not reassuring.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
Amazon seems to delay the confirmations on some of their digital purchases;
definitely MP3s and maybe video (IIRC). Believe at least in those cases, it's
to make the CC processors happy (batching lots of small single purchases).
Apple does the same thing for the iTunes/App store, though it seems to be on
the scale of days instead of hours there.

edit: to be clear, by "delay the confirmations" I meant to say "delay the
actual purchase"; the purchase(s) doesn't actually get charged until their
time threshold hits.

~~~
irons
Nothing makes CC processors happier than many tiny transactions. Apple and
Amazon defer and batch transactions in order to save a fortune on transaction
fees, which traditionally involve a fixed cost on the order of tens of cents,
plus a much smaller percentage of the total. It's a huge bite of a ~$1
purchase.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
What I meant to say. Way too long of a debugging session earlier...

------
dfc
I cannot highlight/annotate samples. I have a second generation kindle. Is
this a new feature of the newer models?

~~~
timdorr
Serious question: Why would you want to highlight or annotate a small sample
of a book?

~~~
RandallBrown
Maybe you found that section particularly interesting and would like to look
back at it later? Maybe you're reading the book for a class and instead of
taking notes in the margin, you're taking notes on the Kindle.

I actually find myself highlighting stuff all the time. You can also see areas
of the book that other people highlighted, which adds a kinda neat social
aspect that isn't usually present in reading.

~~~
timdorr
I didn't mean highlighting in general. That I get. I meant highlighting a
_sample_ of a book.

