Thoughts on “E-Readers” (2009)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1003052

by ctoth • 5 years ago

56 56 5 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

ctoth• 5 years ago

I stumbled across this while searching for something unrelated and was extremely impressed with the analysis and conclusion. Pretty much all of this turned out to be accurate with hindsight.

It's interesting to conceive of the iPad when working up from an e-reader model rather than down from a Tablet PC like the classic HP Pavilion tx1000.

bccdee• 5 years ago

I dunno, I think iPads are much more a laptop-lite/smartphone-plus than they are an improved e-reader. The promise of e-readers was a comfortable ebook reading experience, and tablets deliver more of a web-browsing and social media experience, like a laptop sans keyboard. E-readers are still the best e-readers, and Kindle is still dominant there.

politelemon2• 5 years ago

I don't think it turned out to be accurate. Ereaders haven't changed that much since then in terms of players and dominance. Apple's only move since then was to collude with publishers (for which they were given a light tap on the wrist) but which ended up damaging the pricing model and making ebook purchase worse for everyone in general. So they did attempt to solve it by first creating a different problem.

Nition2• 5 years ago

But MOST importantly the way the user interacts with the interface would re-create the ease of use rendered by our interaction with print media. This last part, about the user interface, is why I believe Apple is best positioned to tackle this problem.
In one year's time we'll see. 2010 should be the year paper learns of it's destiny, the year we reach a tipping point on our way towards bits from the momentum of atoms.

This is of course a prescient prediction of the iPad. But what it also reminded me of is a device that had already been shown publicly at the time: The Microsoft Courier.

Microsoft was working on a dual-screen tablet that was essentially a notebook in computer form, complete with custom OS.[1] In the end it never happened.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmIgNfp-MdI

donio• 5 years ago

The post is predicting something with a "hybrid e-ink capable of color multimedia" and "melding multi-touch+Pixel Qi Screen". We didn't get that in 2010. We got a large iPhone.

Nition2• 5 years ago

We're still waiting for a good colour e-ink device.

simonh2• 5 years ago

That was based on the assumption that a capable multi-purpose tablet could only have a few hours of battery life. The iPad’s ～10 hour endurance was a huge game changer.

jhbadger• 5 years ago

But I think why this hasn't happened (although there are a few color e-ink devices available from Chinese companies) is that the B&W e-ink devices like the Kindle handle reading normal books just fine. The only cases where color would really be needed would be for comic books, art books, and to some extent scientific papers with color figures.

bluescrn• 5 years ago

Small monochrome e-readers are great for reading pure text, e.g fiction.

But they’re quite hopeless for textbooks with lots of images/diagrams/tables and more complex layout. Zooming and scrolling is hopeless on an e-ink screen.

scarygliders• 5 years ago

I still have and still use to this day my trusty Nook Color.

Except technically I turned it into an Android tablet. I rooted it and overwrote the firmware with CyanogenMod v 11-20140403-NIGHTLY-encore

Of course that's very heavily out of date now. But it does what I want it to do - that is, read books. I just get lots of epubs and feed them to Moon Reader and read away.

Boy it's slow though with an Armv7 CPU with 500MB of memory. But who needs fast when all I use it for is reading one static page of text at a time?

Frankly, I'm astounded it has lasted this long - I'm especially surprised at the battery not having given up the ghost yet. I can get enough reading time to last say 4 or 5 hours in one go, but usually get drowsy enough to get to sleep well before that.

I'm waiting for the battery to finally give in - then begins the search for a replacement battery. In fact, the battery has outlasted the Nook Color charging cable, which frayed at the interface between the cable and one end. So I use a normal USB cable to charge it - which means slow charging.

A while back I looked into perhaps trying to update the version of Android on it - but by now most if not all of the Nook Color hacking sites have gone the way of the Dodo :)

chaldron• 5 years ago

I think the coolest part about the Nook Color that made it an excellent tinkering device was the fact that if a bootable image was present on the micro SD card, it would always load the image over whatever was on the system's eMMC. The Nook Color was therefore essentially un-brickable as recovery was always possible via SD.

rjzzleep2• 5 years ago

It's not really what people usually called e-readers though? It's usually another way to refer to e-ink(or the likes devices)

pqb• 5 years ago

Navigating to find content on the Kindle or Nook is poor, which would be ok if we would be happy with just having ebooks in our hands versus also having emagazines and enewspapers. Once you add the rest of the paper world of content navigation would become lackluster at best.

As a Kindle Paperwhite 3rd generation owner I am sad it is true. e-newspaper/e-magazine leave very bad experience, pushing me away to resign from using it (thank God I have been on trial). I also don't understand why magazines are displayed in such horrible way on Kindle. When I have given my Kindle to a person, who on daily basis purchase a paper version of a newspaper, she said me using it is completely no-go for her, while she has no problem to read typical ebooks on my device.

I wish e-readers will evolve - to be a device that would help me learning, making notes, be a calendar and todolist instead of just only having me entertained of reading an ebook. I am basically looking forward to Kindle being an handy org-mode-like replacement. I would like to have a planner, which could synchronize with some ical/caldav calendar. I would like to have a bit better specs of device, so responsiveness of e-ink keyboard will be instant - I usually have typos thanks to low latency of the display. I would love to make notes separately from ebooks/documents - think like diary, draft notes or just stupid shopping list. I would like to find some method/methodology, which will help me go back to my quotes and in-book notes to extract from them more meaningful way. I would like to have better web-browser or some converter for HN, which will reading (and annotating) articles and comments section on HN pleasant enough. Maybe I am silly, but I believe it is all possible to achieve that in a form of e-ink reader.

iPad can have all of those things right at the moment, but I don't see myself (yet) as a owner of tablet with a LCD screen. Perhaps, I will afford it, because I am already sold on how good VoiceOver on macOS is and I suppose Kindles will never deliver anything close to what Apple can bring in terms of accessibility features. However, I still keep fingers crossed for competitors like ReMarkable [0] or Supernote.

[0] https://remarkable.com/

[1] https://supernote.com/

geoduck14• 5 years ago

Supernote has a really done website. Bravo to their designer.

WalterBright2• 5 years ago

I'm fine with an ereader that is just an ereader, and optimized to be an ereader.

emodendroket4• 5 years ago

The experience with the newspaper is not so good, I agree. But I think the magazine experience is fine, at least if you're reading a mostly-words magazine.

3np• 5 years ago

For developers there’s also the upcoming PineNote.

The RK3566 should be powerful enough for all the above.

https://www.pine64.org/pinenote/

bern4444• 5 years ago

I also would love for a paper like digital experience. Remarkable and Supernote both look great. I've known about Remarkable for a while, and supernote from your comment just now.

I want the experience of paper, most importantly of which is the e-ink screen and feel of writing. I do not want another LCD/LED screen device.

The biggest points for me are

    * E-Ink (or similar screen)
    * Very low lag when writing (Remarkable 2 is at ~21ms which is incredible)
    * Long Battery (Cause it's E-Ink...)
    * Fast Refresh Rate - The kindle refresh rate when flipping through pages is so slow. It's very frustrating to navigate on for non indexed pages.
    * Enhance any supported capability with digital notes (books, emails, pdfs etc). Anything the device supports should become an extended surface for hand written notes and markup from any other device or access method (web, phone etc).

I think Apple has the biggest chance here since they are so focused on integration across services, products, and devices. They have their own email client, their own messaging platform, their own browser, their own book store. They can work to enhance any of these.

They already have with iPad. But an e-ink device is very much not meant as an iPad. It really is digital paper (a common term, not trying to say I came up with it) but in a preserving way.

karstenc• 5 years ago

I love the convenience of eReaders but still find them overpriced. I'm eying Amazon's new Kindle with wireless charging. Hopefully Black Friday will bring some decent price drops.

austhrow743• 5 years ago

Multiple stores here in Australia are already doing or will be doing shortly the new paper white for $169 instead of $239. Including Amazon directly. I’d check deal sites that cover your location, you might not have to wait.

dredmorbius6• 5 years ago

Compared to equivalent book storage (and costs), the device price becomes far more reasonable.

Smaller devices (6--8") are at or below $200, particularly if you're willing to go back a model rev or two. Large devices are more expensive (~$800 for a 13.3" screen), but permit 2-up reading of much content and full-size (e.g., unzoomed) viewing of even large-format or small-print materials.

eslaught• 5 years ago

Speaking of which, my 3rd gen Kindle just died. Any suggestions on a replacement? As best I can tell, the trade-offs (staying in the Kindle ecosystem) are to have no physical buttons, or to have an oddly asymmetric bezel (and no USB-C). Seems like an unnecessary and unfortunate trade-off.

WalterBright2• 5 years ago

Any suggestions on a replacement?

Buy a used one. I have two (an extra because I like the K3, and its successors have all been inferior).

approxim8ion• 5 years ago

If you're in the EU or a region serviced by a site like Goodereader, try the Pocketbook line. They have touchscreens as well as physical buttons and run a Linux-based OS.

sundvor• 5 years ago

The size, backlight (uniformity, temperature) and resolution of the new Gen 11 is truly something to behold.

I had the first Paperwhite (as well as the big old DXG), and was half a year into the Gen 10's Paperwhite; the jump between those two was dwarfed by the improvements of the Gen 11. This does especially hold true if you read at night.

I got the Signature Edition which does a great job of adjusting that marvelous backlight in a set it and forget it kind of way. They both have Type C charging, but the SE also gets wireless charging (works great with my Samsung one).

Responsiveness is also greatly improved; I don't really miss my buttons of old anymore.

radicalriddler• 5 years ago

I agree with the annoyance of no physical buttons, but the latest kindle PW generation has USB-C (finally!)

emodendroket4• 5 years ago

Yeah but you can't really beat the Kindle ecosystem. I have the Oasis and it's pretty good. The slightly larger screen is a nice benefit.

xenonite• 5 years ago

Well, an asymmetric bezel is great for holding a device in landscape mode either left or right. I am satisfied with my Tolino Shine 3 in that regard. And yes, it has no USB-C, but I don't mind.

hackmiester• 5 years ago

I got a Paperwhite without realizing it had no buttons, but it hasn't really bothered me. Swiping is natural to me, since it's how I turn the pages on a real book. And you can also tap if you're into that.

alexkwan• 5 years ago

I recently discovered Hisense A5, an android phone with an eink screen + attractive price. Just ordered one and waiting for the delivery.

emodendroket4• 5 years ago

E-readers have dropped off in popularity a lot, so I guess the novelty was a big factor, and the iPad was good enough for many. But personally I still frequently use mine. If you're a frequent reader, and you're reading stuff fit for the format (i.e., it's not a PDF and you are mostly just reading sequentially, not flipping back and forth), it's just the best way to read. That was especially true when I had a train commute and didn't want to lug something heavy around, but even at home, I just don't want more books sitting around when I can read them without dealing with the physical objects.

rjzzleep2• 5 years ago

To me it seems like E-readers are more popular than ever. Onyx has been pushing out so many devices in the last couple of years(the newest ones run Android 11 with pretty decent mid or low range snapdragon SoCs, the last lumi2 has 6GB Ram).

Kobo finally got their act together and moved their manufacturing back to Taiwan and started releasing neat devices including a new a 10 inch note taking devices.

Some of the old manufacturers like Supernote have now become OEMs. There are eink phones, eink mobile readers, remarkable and even the new upcoming pine reader, which looks like a bigme device with custom board.

emodendroket4• 5 years ago

At least the sales of the books have been on a gradual decline, although it seems like 2020 gave them a sudden boost.

2021: https://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/demand-for-ebooks-o...

2018: https://observer.com/2018/11/ebook-sales-decline-independent...

And I'd say that all the devices coming out now do not have the name recognition of Nooks or the PRST1, let alone the Kindle. At least in the US market; things might be different in Asia.

dredmorbius6• 5 years ago

Thinking through the capabilities and limitations of tablets recently, I reached a few conclusions:

- There's no one thing that an emissive-display tablet does which some other device does not do better.

- For virtually all productivity roles, a laptop with a keyboard, even a low-end one, is superior.

- For specific capture and communications roles, I'd prefer disconnected / wired-only or specifically dedicated device: camera, audio recorder, dumbphone. These are small enough and capabilities sufficiently high that in most cases the additional-device concern isn't significant. The improved security and privacy situation is also a major concern.

There's one exception: in portrait mode, a tablet is far better for reading texts than the landscape display of all laptops and most desktops. (A sufficiently large, high-resolution desktop display becomes useful for either 1-up or 2-up reading.) But, even here, the emissive display typically has a lower resolution and higher battery consumption than an e-ink display would.

Since February of this year I've been using an Onyx BOOX Max Lumi, a 13.3" Android-based ebook-reader / tablet. For reading it is in fact delicious. As a tablet ... it's actually somewhat better than I'd prefer (the distractiosn are too close at hand). It's also quiet good for podcasts (large flat surface gives good speaker response).

In particular, Onxy don't run their own bookstore, there's no "ecosystem" (a/k/a captive market) the company is trying to corral users into. Virtually all content is sideloaded or downloaded. The bookreader is quite good (with some limitations), as is the notetaking app (handwritten notes), not something I'd through I'd make much use of, but that I have.

I'd considered a number of other devices, and emphasized:

- Not being captured by a specific market (eliminates Amazon, Nook, Kobo).

- Not being tracked (eliminates Amazon, Nook, Kobo, most Android and iOS devices).

- Sufficient storage (eliminates reMarkable).

- Multiple format support.

- Large display size.

- High-quality display.

My main issues are:

- Organising content is tedious. That's pretty much par for the course with such devices and apps. If you're planning on managing a large library (100s to 1,000s or more items), the onboard tools and all available apps I've found to date are sorely wanting. I'd really like a bibliographic + worfklow management suite. I don't have one.

- Some interactions are cumbersome. As with any touch-based device, distinguishing actions (clicks, drags, actually writing on or selecting content, etc.) are ambiguous, and the software often confuses these. Again, par for the course in my experience.

- Android itself imposes severe limitations. I'm not a fan of the OS, but it's the best of a bunch of bad choices. I'm looking at the upcoming Linux tablets, though those will face a long uphill UI/UX slog to produce useable and intuitive tools.

- Ebook formats themselves still have much shaking out to do. I actually strongly prefer PDFs (or DJVU), that is, explicitly-laid-out formats, to reflowable ones (ePub, .mobi, HTML), and in most cases PDFs are reasonably readable. Response reading scanned documents (rather than rendered ones) can be slow. And in cases, publishers and typesetters make bone-headed decisions about layout and formatting. (Less is more, stick to standards.)

- Colour might occasionally be nice. There are colour e-ink devices available (as with virtually all aspects of displays, this is entirely at the control and whim of the patent holder), though the effect is muted. Price premium is fairly modest, but only 8" displays seem supported (good for comics and narrative text, less so for textbooks and journal articles).

- My one post-purchase regret is that the subsequent rev of the device has doubled onboard storage to 128 GB. In all seriousness, I could use the extra storage, and the Max Lumi's 64 GB was a massive advantage over the extremely pinched 16 GB offered by the reMarkable, an utterly inexcusable limitation. That said, 64 GB has been sufficient so far.

wintermutestwin• 5 years ago

Honest question: Doesn't Android = tracked?

dredmorbius6• 5 years ago

I don't have a good answer for that.

I certainly don't trust the OS or its application ecosystem. I try to acknowledge that to the maximum extent with my usage --- in this case, I've kept virtually all external account access disconnected from the device, with the exception of those associated with document curation itself, for the most part.

I've some modest monitoring to detect any unwanted phoning home, and have seen nothing. That said, proving a negative is difficult.

If there were a sufficiently capable non-Android alternative affording e-book and note-taking capabilities (I'd even be willing to sacrifice a web browser), I'd be leaning strongly toward it. Purism's PureOS announcement today is of interest, though I'm pretty sure the Onyx devices aren't covered.

I'm hoping that more e-ink devices, including Linux-native capable ones, will emerge. I suspect they will.

For now ... at least it's a devil I know. I've used Android devices, largely unhappily, for over a decade. It's the least worst option.

ChrisArchitect2• 5 years ago

(2009)

Any newer articles on these since then?

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29299593

ChrisArchitect2• 5 years ago

Lots of related discussion 2 months ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28585129

Thoughts on “E-Readers” (2009)

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