New Kindle Leaves Rivals Farther Behind

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/technology/personaltech/26pogue.html?_r=1&ref=technology

by Setsuna • 16 years ago

57 61 16 years ago

nytimes.com

DougBTX• 16 years ago

The Kindle 3 is ingeniously designed to be everything the iPad will never be: small, light and inexpensive.

I'd hold my breath on that one, at least until Thursday. Having said that, my Kindle is ordered and on it's way.

sliverstorm3• 16 years ago

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. Based off pictures, it's a good deal smaller and by conjecture lighter than the Kindle 2, which is really quite small and light already. So much so I'm having a hard time saying "no" to one.

georgecmu• 16 years ago

The article doesn't mention that every book available for Kindle is also available on the iPad with the Amazon's Kindle App.

tptacek11• 16 years ago

Yes it does.

cullenking7• 16 years ago

I really want to like ebooks, I really do, however I can't stand the thought of purchasing a device that assumes I am a thief. It's the digital equivalent of employees standing at the door of a store, checking bags and receipts. Except worse. The fact that I can't share books is terrible, I wouldn't be able to read books in open formats even more so.

The kindle is definitely the nicest reader, however it seems to Sony reader is the most open.

tptacek11• 16 years ago

I can at least understand the convenience objections to DRM. "You bought it, so you should be able to put it on any device you want." I don't agree, but I understand it.

But this moral objection to DRM I don't get. News flash: actuarially speaking, "you" are almost certainly a thief. It's not like Amazon's suppliers are crazy for thinking their property might get stolen.

cullenking7• 16 years ago

There isn't any actual property to steal. That's the thing, steal is the wrong word to use, so is thief. I don't think there are words that exist in the english language to encompass the moral implications of downloading media without paying the creator and the producer of that media.

I do firmly believe the negative moral implications of content producers taking so much off the top of content creators take of the transaction to be much worse than the implications of someone downloading a file without paying.

This argument is all about perspective (lots of different right answers). Mine is just one that tends to support the creator not the producer, by attending live shows and book signings. Live appearances are where creators make the money.

Maybe all the content creators need a payment system/network for their web sites that allows guilty parties to pay money directly to them so they don't have to feel bad about downloading their content from sources other than the producers.

Supermighty3• 16 years ago

This is one of the reasons I got a nook. It supports the epub format, which I feel offers more freedom than the kindle format.

Hardware wise I like the kindle over the nook, lighter faster, better experience, but I can't justify getting one when the moral cost is too high.

sliverstorm3• 16 years ago

The assumption is not that you are a thief, but that some of the people who buy it are thieves.

When you visit the mall, there are security cameras. There are security guards, there are those beeper scanner things at exits. There are ink tags, there are locked cabinets. There are display models while the real item hides "in the back". Why are you not up in arms about how the shopping mall "assumes you are a thief"?

cullenking7• 16 years ago

I've only been in a mall twice in the last 5 years.

However, point taken. The issue I have with DRM however, is fundamentally different. When someone steals a piece of tangible merchandise, the store is out because they actually borrowed money to purchase that merchandise up front, and has to eat the cost. There is no rational argument that can setup an equivalent with digital media. Additionally, There is absolutely no reason any ebook should cost more than $10 when the hardcover is available for $16-$20. Yes there is overhead in providing these items for download, but much of that overhead is directly tied to keep people from stealing it. Neat, so take $3 off the price of your ebook and more people will be willing to buy it.

callahad2• 16 years ago

This is only an issue if you're buying e-books from Amazon. There are plenty of wonderful texts available in the public domain, already formatted for the Kindle [0,1], and plenty of other options for public domain texts in other supported formats [2,3].

But regardless, the Kindle natively supports PDF, HTML, and plain text, and should you want to, Amazon provides a tool to convert those and other formats (including ePub) to the Kindle's proprietary mobipocket-derived format. They even provide Linux binaries [4].

Don't want to deal with conversions and manually managing your library? Just use Calibre [5]; it's open source.

And that's exactly why I placed my order: I'm not willing to accept Amazon's DRM, which will force me to read older works to get value out of the device. A goal I've had since reading a quote dubiously attributed to Einstein: "Somebody who only reads newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else."

[0] http://manybooks.net/

[1] http://www.feedbooks.com/

[2] http://classics.mit.edu/

[3] http://www.gutenberg.org/

[4] http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000...

[5] http://calibre-ebook.com/

cullenking7• 16 years ago

Fantastic response - bookmarked each of those links for future consideration.

mcantor• 16 years ago

We need a Hacker News Hall of Fame for comments like this. Succinct, polite, thorough, organized, and immensely helpful.

acqq• 16 years ago

The quote is not so dubiously attributed, here's how it appears in his "Ideas and Opinions" 1954, Crown Publishers:

"ON CLASSIC LITERATURE Written for the Jungkaufmann, a monthly publication of the Schweizerischer Kaufmaennischer Verein, Jugendbund, February 29, 1952.

Somebody who reads only newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else. And what a person thinks on his own without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of other people is even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous.

There are only a few enlightened people with a lucid mind and style and with good taste within a century. What has been preserved of their work belongs among the most precious possessions of mankind. We owe it to a few writers of antiquity that the people in the Middle Ages could slowly extricate themselves from the superstitions and ignorance that had darkened life for more than half a millennium. Nothing is more needed to overcome the modernist's snobbishness."

timwiseman• 16 years ago

I have to agree. The receipt checkers at stores annoy me to no end.

But DRM is much worse. It prevents me from doing things that it seems like I ought to be able to do. If the kindle did not use DRM, I would buy one right now. As it is, I am staying primarily with physical books for the moment.

ugh• 16 years ago

Unimportant tangent: Is checking receipts and looking into bags really legal in the (I would assume) US? It isn't in Germany and if employees hold you against your will they better be damn sure that you actually stole something or they are in serious trouble (as in: possibly going to jail trouble).

That’s just a risk a store owner has to bear.

Qz• 16 years ago

Where are there receipt checkers? I've never had that happen to me.

warfangle• 16 years ago

The kindle is the nicest reader, definitely.

But until there is a way to digitally loan a book to a friend, I'm never buying a kindle book again.

tptacek11• 16 years ago

Sadly, lots of them are now $13, up from the flat $10 that Amazon used to charge for all best sellers. Those prices seem high. The fact that e-books involve no printing, binding, shipping, distributing or taking back and shredding unsold copies ought to save you something. And it’s outrageous that you can’t sell or even give away an e-book when you’re finished with it. You paid for it; why shouldn’t you be allowed to pass it on? (End of rant.)

Argh. This isn't how pricing works. If it was, Photoshop would cost 40 cents.

$13... for a book! Egads!

Supermighty3• 16 years ago

It will be this way until some upstart disrupts the industry taking a smaller cut for routing authors directly to customers side stepping the old publishing houses.

tptacek11• 16 years ago

I'll be happy to hear that authors are getting (say) 80% of the $15 that books end up costing, but that doesn't change the fact that book pricing has nothing whatsoever to do with materials and binding and whatnot.

dpapathanasiou• 16 years ago

We're working on it: http://fifobooks.com/authors.html

sliverstorm3• 16 years ago

> Argh. This isn't how pricing works. If it was, Photoshop would cost 40 cents.

They aren't saying it should only cost what it costs to manufacture it. They are simply trotting out the discussion of why, when production costs are lower, an ebook has to cost $9.99, when the physical book is also $9.99.

Fortunately, I've been finding quite often that the eBook on Amazon is a sizable discount off a hard copy.

tptacek11• 16 years ago

That's right, they're not saying that it should cost exactly what it costs to manufacturing it. But they are saying there's a cost basis to the price of a book. Nonsense. Book prices have almost nothing to do with physical costs. _Trading and Exchanges_ costs $75. _The Nature of Technology_ costs $10. Both are hardcovers currently in print.

The difference in those costs reflects supply and demand. Books are priced by the market, not by cost plus fixed markup.

turnersauce• 16 years ago

I don't find the Nook's touch screen to be "balky" at all, at least in comparison to any touchscreen phone. In fact, I think that the use of a touchscreen instead of a hardware keyboard opens the door for a lot more design flexibility.

moultano3• 16 years ago

The music industry lost 10 years believing that DRM works and it may never recover. Now the publishing industry is looking to do the same . . .

Software is the only medium in which DRM has any hope of succeeding long-term, and that's only because it typically needs to be managed as a service. Video can tolerate it for now because the file sizes are too large to conveniently separate from the physical media, but that won't be true for long.

tailrecursion• 16 years ago

Game consoles have been successful so far with closed systems, and they've learned over the years how to improve their security, a key one being forced firmware updates.

moultano3• 16 years ago

That's a very particular case because no one has the expectation of being able to play a game for one system on another, and there are legitimate technical reasons for that being hard to do.

MC27• 16 years ago

Sadly, I think book DRM could be successful. Amazon is trying to create a de facto platform - rather than just a device - and so long as they port it to as many devices as they can, it will do well. Many are avoiding Apple's book service for this reason.

ja27• 16 years ago

For most people, DRM doesn't bother them at all until stuff stops working.

So far, DVDs pretty much play in every DVD player. (If less PC makers would ship Windows without third party DVD software, more people would care.)

Music was closest to having real DRM problems, but almost every non-hacker I know is perfectly fine with Apple's DRM because they only listen to music in iTunes or on an iPod. If other devices ever really became popular, non-DRM music might finally become essential to the average person.

So as long as the average person only uses the Kindle (or Nook or Sony) and never tries to port their DRMed ebooks to a new, incompatible device, they won't feel the pain of DRM. But first we need average people to start using ereaders for a while, which I think is close to happening.

jcurbo• 16 years ago

Music on iTunes no longer has DRM.

swombat• 16 years ago

The music industry lost 10 years believing that DRM works and it may never recover.

I think it's fair to say that they still believe it - or rather, they haven't moved on to the only valid business model in this day and age: music as a service.

To wit, pg's advice to wannabe music startups: "Don't do it, and if you do, be prepared for a long and bloody fight".

minouye• 16 years ago

Also of note, Kindle's will be available at all Staples locations this fall. There goes the Nook advantage of being able to try before you buy.

http://www.crunchgear.com/2010/08/31/staples-kindle/

listic• 16 years ago

What is the physical keyboard good for?

I understand the need for keyboard on smartphones where you might want to browse, type text, ssh or whatever... But what's its purpose on a reader?

UPDATE: Thanks for quick response. I really haven't thought of this, these uses make the device better than I thought. I really wish Amazon will start selling these devices here in Russia (and in 100+ other countries as well) so I can wholeheartedly recommend it. Meanwhile, the local market is owned by Chinese knock-offs sold for $300, while Amazon, Barnes&Noble and Sony don't seem to be interested.

kalid• 16 years ago

I use it to write quick notes/thoughts inside the book as I'm reading -- new ideas, questions I have, follow-ups, etc (amazon stores the location of the note). It's much slower than pencil, but the benefit is that it's synced to the cloud, and you can actually find your notes afterwards (how often do you go through the margins of old books?).

InclinedPlane2• 16 years ago

You can buy books directly on the kindle, at the very least it makes it easier to search for books by author or title.

weaksauce• 16 years ago

searching & annotating are the two main usecases I can think of.

motters• 16 years ago

I am a fan of books, but I'll only get an ebook reader if:

a) I can be confident that books purchased will still be readable in ten years.

b) That I can still do all of the usual things I do with books, like lending and moving them from one platform (shelf) to another.

c) That at no time there is even the possibility of books being remotely deleted from my device without my permission.

d) That ebooks I purchased are owned by me, not rented or temporarily borrowed.

richchan• 16 years ago

Has any one heard anything about the Kindle Development Kit? Looks like they are still in private beta.

I wonder if there will be Kindle apps (and app store??) coming any time soon.

New Kindle Leaves Rivals Farther Behind

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