Interested in ereaders

[Molly Tournquist]

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Evan Leibovitch <evan-ieNeDk6JonTYtjvyW6yDsg-XMD5yJDbdMReXY1tMh2IBg at public.gmane.org>
> Sent: 09/28/13 01:38 PM
> Not sure what your point is.
> 
> Resolution of small tablets has been increasing faster than that on
> ereaders, where there is much more competition.
> The nexus 7 -- available now -- has exactly the same resolution as the
> yet-to-ship Kindle HDX and well more than the Fire available now.

The kindle fire is a tablet, merely one with ereader branding, so a meaningful technical juxtaposition of it would be with something like the afforementioned Kobo Aura HD, which still has a higher resolution.

The extreme resolution of tablets is looking a bit over the top, much like the miniaturization of mp3 players mentioned earlier. First and foremost, a certain amount is adequate for a certain use, chasing past that further and further doesn't imply a very clear result.

> The moment you add "heavily tweaked", it's nearly impossible to do
> comparisons. The stock experience -- and especially the one provided by a
> vendor relying on bookstore-lock-in -- is what needs to be compared. The
> Kindle has deliberately eliminated much of the flexibility of the standard
> Android experience, extending to the ability to render rich-media ebooks.

Heavily tweaked would be relative to the current notion of ereaders. A replacement firmware could tend to be heavily tweaked, yet it also tend to be very easy to set up.

I think you could compare it to lots of things, you could compare it to the HP touchpad, to tablets with Allwiner A10 chips, and so on, if the point is to consider the potential of the type of platform.

> > > Audio playing, especially with the screen off, uses next to no juice. And
> > > even for a sighted person there is at least an occasional appeal from
> > > talking books.
> >
> 
> > Now this is looking a little confusing.
> >
> 
> Why?

Of course it becomes nonsensical with the quote beside it removed:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Lennart Sorensen > Sent: 09/19/13 12:19 PM
> The audio part is really really pointless. In fact sony dropped audio
> support from their newer models because an ereader makes a lousy mp3
> player and it is a waste of the ereaders battery.


> Audio and video capability matters, especially if you don't want to be
> carrying multiple devices. I want a single device that is equally capable
> of video, audio and high-resolution book rendering, and that allows a
> choice of media providers as well as side-loading that which I bring
> myself. Dropbox, Google Drive and similar cloud storage needs to be
> supported.
>From that angle, games matter, facebook really matters, along with every other dubious gimmick that can be crammed in.

How would an open ereader would be incompatible with sideloaded content?

> > Hopefully they're not talking about hooking the ereader up to a CD rom
> > drive.
> 
> 
> Honestly I have zero idea how you interpreted that from my answer.

It was tongue in cheek. But it does sound eerily reminiscent of how it was with multimedia kits, when they were so eager to integrate or just intersperse prerendered video and the like with products to justify the medium at a time when it was not dramatically useful.
 
> > Sounds very weird that they would still pitch it with a word like
> > multimedia.
> 
> That was *my* choice of words, using a term that has meaning to non-geeks
> and is well understood. It simply refers to the fact that what we now know
> as books will gradually be released from the constraints of paper, and that
> means that dedicated ereaders will need to keep up (and eventually fail)

So basically you're talking about the gradual extinction of books?

If you need to stick with words friendly to to the average consumer, you could also say that this will be making books a lot more like powerpoint presentations.

But they've still released multiplatform products, and the version with the whole load of bells and whistles certainly isn't automatically the successful one.

> That you find this observation weird changes neither its suitability, nor
> its inevitability. The ereader is the MP3 player of this generation, with a
> heyday (now passed) and then a fall. Just like MP3 players, they will
> inevitably give way to multifunction devices except in niche situations.
> The only difference here is that MP3 players were never subsidized by music
> sellers; that may buy some time for ereaders but won't prevent their demise.

I think one much more closely relevant difference is that mp3 players didn't have any manufacturer support for open source or standards, except for the bit with sandisk proclaiming a desire for it. And that they were only trying to add video, since it was already an audio device. That and it's by nature a much more serious and purposeful device than a mini hard drive gadget made especially for listening to music(and potentially video too) ... of course, unless the mp3 player user happened to be an aspiring music industry participant.
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