Wired demands that the forthcoming Kindle 2 be sexier than the original. They’re right, too: it looked like a squashed origami hat. From Gadget Lab:
The current Kindle is ugly. Almost nobody will argue with that. In fact, the only way to make it uglier would be to make it in false-limb-pink. This one is easy: just copy somebody else. A sleek, black slab made from aluminum and glass would do the trick just nicely. Add a couple of buttons to turn the pages and you’re done. And the keyboard? That’s next:
The likelihood of Amazon making the Kindle beautiful is about equal to the likelihood of Sony innovating its way back into touch after losing the reader mindshare to Amazon.
Five Things Amazon Should Put in the Kindle 2.0 [Wired: Gadget Lab]
I don’t think the kindle is all THAT ugly… It has a nice, clean, angular space-odyssey feel to it.
You can also cut cake with it.
My number one feature request is to reduce price by dropping all wireless connectivity. I’m not so fickle that I’ll need to be able to make impulse reading purchases no matter where I am.
Believe it or not, the wireless is a huge plus. Particularly if reading series novels, for instance–just grab the next one, no need to go fiddle with cables and a computer.
I think sticking with nice lightweight plastic is probably a good idea. I would like it if they did something else with the back than that weird rubberized detachable cover. I keep popping it off by accident.
I have to hand it to Charlie Sorrel… “false-limb pink” conjures an image of ugly plastic like nothing else.
Anyway.
Even resolving the product design issues, the deeper problem remains with the design of the ecosystem:
Buying + DRM != buying
If publishers continue to refuse to do business without DRM (of course they will), there remain a few options:
- Rent books instead. I have no intention to pay $10 for a book I can’t lend to a friend, can’t sell to Half Price Books, and can’t even donate to a collection. A $2 rental for a month… That could work.
- Use a subscription model. Imagine something like Netflix, only with books. Which would be awesome. I mean, I would even buy a false-limb pink Kindle if this were an option.
“You can also cut cake with it”.
I thought that was the MacBook Air.
Oh, wait, that was bread.
Lawl @ the whiskey. Grandads study no longer has walls lined with 1st editions, just lots and lost of NAS.
OK, who else is waiting for the steampunk or other retro version — nice leather binder, maybe embed it within a block of padded paper (cut-away-book style) so its screen appears as if it was just a photographic plate laid onto a page… Any unavoidable parts/bezels might be dressed in black “bakelite” or translucent “glass” or metal or wood (preferably real)… though if you’re willing to go with a membrane-switch or touch-panel keyboard, it could actually be given a paper-like face (tyvek or some similar fiber material, for duribility) to maintain the illusion of a book with a magically changing page.
Yeah, you’d lose some compactness by dressing it up with a hardcover-book surround. But the gain in elegance might be worth it.
Content payments… Hm. I think the compromise of DRM used to protect _rentals_ (which probably do have a real need for that enforcement) might be viable. Private-library membership fees would be another way to think of that model. It does answer the question of being stranded if/when someone shuts down their rights server — they owe you a prorated refund for remaining membership/rental time, but that’s it.
(I’m torn on that issue. I don’t see enough respect for intellectual property that I’d be willing to count on folks to do the right thing without enforcement, but DRM — like any security — is always going to have costs in loss of convenience and be subject to an ongoing arms war. Finding the right marketing model is indeed going to be half the battle.)
I’m not so sure that Sony have lost the reader mindshare to Amazon as you say. That may be the case in the US but there ain’t any Kindle’s anywhere else and there’s a an awful lot of everywhere else. Sony are currently doing a deal with Waterstones, one of the biggest book shop chains in the UK to sell ebooks in their format.
In response to #5 POSTED BY CLAY
“- Use a subscription model. Imagine something like Netflix, only with books. Which would be awesome. I mean, I would even buy a false-limb pink Kindle if this were an option.”
Check out safaribooksonline.com. It may not be netflix in the physical sense but having access to a HUGE searchable library of books and videos for a small monthly fee is amazing. Can read em on my iPhone on the go even! Love the service but would definitely like to see a wider selection of book genres.
@#8
In the US at least, the selection in the Sony eBook store is mediocre, and the organization is simply awful. The hardware is nice, but Sony doesn’t understand the book market the way Amazon does.
Additionally, making the Reader dependent upon a Java application that only runs on Windows (why use Java and not make it platform independent) was a bad move.
I’m just waiting for something like a Palm TX (yes, full-on PDA) with ePaper screen. (No, iPod Touch is not-enough PDA.)
I have a Sony Reader. It works very well, cost less than the Kindle, and was designed. It also directly reads PDF (unlike, AFAIK, the Kindle).
The Kindle looks like it was slapped together by the people behind the ColecoVision.
I really don’t get all the “ugly” comments about the Kindle. Yeah, maybe it’s not very sexy, but I didn’t buy it to display in my home, I bought it to read on. I also have a Sony eReader, and here’s my three-word review of the device: piece. of. shit. The software is awful, the DRM is really badly done, it’s really difficult to do good format conversion for the device, it absolutely SUCKS at formatting plain text, the buttons are teeny tiny and hard to use, the menuing is gross and clunky, etc. If you like to read, and you don’t want to be forced to hack file formats to do so, the Kindle wins hands-down. I have only one feature request for Kindle 2.0 – make it cheaper. Much cheaper. Like $300 cheaper. Oh, okay, and I’d like to be able to transfer books to and from my old Kindle, but really I’d settle for just cheaper.
Am I the only one that rather likes the (rather utilitarian) look of the Kindle?
It’s simple. Screen’s big. It’s white, so it somewhat resembles a page from a book. Really, it’s uglier in photos than it is in person.
I’m sure we all have friends like that.