[PLEASUREMAN]

Like many people this Christmas, I received a brand new Kindle 2, Amazon's famous e-book reader. My initial enthusiasm dimmed when I realized that the Kindle 2, unlike the original Kindle, uses AT&T's lackluster data network, which prevented me from using the Kindle at all while visiting my parents. (Sprint of course had coverage in their area.)

Once I got to a location where I could do more than look at the user's guide, my frustrations increased. Actually navigating a book on the Kindle is not very fun, mostly because it has no concept of "pages" or "chapters"--to navigate to a location you have to enter its special index number on the Kindle, which involves tedious guesswork, as numbers are assigned to things like chapter titles and line spaces, not to pages per se (imagine trying to navigate a novel in Notepad). On the other hand you can search on words, which I guess is useful if you have memorized the text of the book, although I don't know how many people do that. You can only hope that the book has a table of contents, which renders the "go to location" function superfluous.

The user's guide itself is very lacking, and I found it didn't adequately explain many basic features of the Kindle. I discovered by accident that left arrowing on a title on the home page allows you to delete it--which is not intuitive in the slightest. Sorry, but this is generation two? Seems more like an early beta.

Then there's the Kindle store. Here again the letdown was huge. Searching for books is a pain because it is not possible to manually sort results (for example by price, author, etc.), and the price isn't even shown in results (in fact if you add a Kindle book to your Amazon wish list, even that won't show the price--it's as if Amazon is deliberately obscuring this information). Accessing a book from the list of search results should be done with care, as an accidental click on the toggle button will immediately purchase the book in question. Amazon lets you cancel, which means they are aware of this UI bungle but can't be bothered to fix it.

Beyond this problem, the Kindle library is quite poor at present. Many titles from even the past few years are absent, and don't expect to find anything older except public domain books trolled from Project Gutenberg. You can futilely submit requests to the publisher for a Kindle edition, but there's no indication that these requests go anywhere or that publishers ever respond to them.

It's odd that so many books that publishers have bothered to keep in print remain unavailable, when you consider the expense of maintaining stock, transporting them to stores or to buyers, tracking inventory, and the relative ease of digitizing backstock. Perhaps Amazon's cut on book sales makes it an uninviting proposition for niche books. But plainly the Kindle is useless without a massive library, since each Kindle user will have his own subject preferences. Amazon supposedly benefits from the long tail, but the Kindle's tail is quite abbreviated.

When a book is available in Kindle format, odds are it will be only a couple of dollars cheaper than the physical edition. I wanted to buy Vincent Bulgiosi's Reclaiming History, a massive 1500 page book that would be much easier to handle on a Kindle, but Amazon wants me to fork over $30 for it (I already own the hardcover--purchased from Amazon, in fact). Sorry, that's a bit much for a book I already own, and it shows that the Kindle's pricing model is about making as much money as possible by offering only a nominal discount for most books. Surely it costs more than $3 to produce a 1500 page hardcover. It is the same story with some programming books I was interested in--barely any difference in price for books that cost nothing to produce in digital form. It smacks of DVD edition double-dipping, whereby movie studios expect that you will buy brand new copies of movies to get slightly tweaked digital transfers and case artwork.

Then there's the fact that you don't really own a Kindle book. You're renting a digital copy, which Amazon or the publisher can destroy at will. I don't feel at all secure about having my library on Amazon's servers or its gadget that has no replaceable battery, yet I have to pay twice if I want both a physical and digital copy of a book. No thanks. Doesn't work that way with my CD collection.

While the Kindle's promise is to allow you to take a library with you everywhere you go, the reality is:

• the library consists of only the very latest mass market books plus some indifferently presented classics
• flipping through a book is still easier than flipping through a Kindle; the software interface is confusing and awkward and slow
• you will have to buy hundreds if not thousands of new books to make up for the cost of the Kindle itself

Hence I could only recommend the Kindle to someone who routinely purchases mass market books that sit on big displays at franchise booksellers like B&N--Harry Potter, Scott Turow, Dan Brown, Stephen King, and other lowbrow junk. Otherwise you will still end up buying half your books (or more) in physical editions, with a few on your Kindle.

And did someone mention resale value? A Kindle book has none. For all but the handful of volumes you must keep in your personal library, most books don't have much value once read, but can at least be sold, given to friends, used to keep the washing machine from wobbling, etc. A Kindle book is worth nothing the second you download it. It can't be resold, redistributed, or even thrown at someone who annoys you. Yet there is no accounting for this in its pricing model. You pay virtually the same price, and sometimes more, as for a physical copy, to say nothing of used books or the cost of requesting the same book from your local library. If it is a book you will want to keep, you won't want to keep it on a fragile electronic device that may no longer be supported in a couple of years.

A huge missed opportunity. Just no one tell my wife, the dear thing got it for me as a gift.

[thras]

Come on, people don't have full iPods because they bought all that music.

The pirate channels are what make readers like the Kindle useful right now. The selection is much better than Amazon's, and actually comprehensive for "nerd fiction" -- science fiction and fantasy. Semi-recent popular authors like Patrick O'Brian are only available electronically through pirated scans.

[PLEASUREMAN]

thras, 04 January 2010 - 02:23 PM:

Come on, people don't have full iPods because they bought all that music.

The pirate channels are what make readers like the Kindle useful right now. The selection is much better than Amazon's, and actually comprehensive for "nerd fiction" -- science fiction and fantasy. Semi-recent popular authors like Patrick O'Brian are only available electronically through pirated scans.

Unfortunately I don't read nerd fiction. I suspect the books I'm interested in--Jaques Ellul's work, for one--won't be available (and I'd gladly buy hard copies to get around the ethical consideration of stealing someone's work). But I guess it's worth a look.

Someone also told me the Kindle 1 had better contrast (not as dim) as the Kindle 2. Can anyone confirm this, and does it make a lick of sense to make the latest version less readable than the first?

[rho]

I bought Derbyshire's We Are Doomed and read it on the Kindle app for the iPod Touch. It was actually kind of handy and pretty usable for the kind of reading I like to do with that type of book--intermittent, and half the time while sitting on the can.

If I'm looking to read a more serious book, I much prefer the physical object to a virtual one.

We Are Doomed was $10, which is somewhat in line with a lot of paperbacks, especially the trade paperbacks, which is likely where Derb's book will end up. Granted, had I waited a few months I could probably find hardbacks in the remaindered bin for $3. But then I have to dispose of the hardback, as I'm not likely to read it twice.

(Quick review of We Are Doomed--nothing in it is surprising if you've been paying attention; it's an easy, quick read; if you like Derb's prose style, it's full of it.)

[PLEASUREMAN]

Second Thoughts: The best way to buy new books is through Amazon's website. There with a single click they can be instantly sent to the Kindle, and of course searching and sorting is much easier through a computer than on the Kindle (Internet access is sluggish at best).

The pricing issues with ebooks seem to be the work of the publishing industry. Right now publishers are trying to keep the hardcover format viable; it is imperiled by changing reading habits. Pretty much anyone who owns an ebook reader is going to consider it a replacement for hardcovers, as readers themselves more than meet the desire for a prestige format, but publishers want to delay ebook availability to somewhere between hardcover and paperback. It's really dumb.

The bigger issue is the very small back catalogue of books available on the Kindle. If you read mostly fiction, especially genre fiction, you may not even notice this problem; in fiction most of the back catalogue is provided by a relatively small pool of popular writers (lesser writers simply went out of print years ago). But once you get into non-fiction it's a very different story; books that came out in the last ten years are usually missing, and anything before that is random--The Bell Curve is missing, but The Bell Curve Wars (a pathetic anthology of pissy anti-science responses) is available. Amazon must find a way to incentivize publishers to get their back stock, at least the stuff that remains in print today, into ebook form (one suspects Google's great digitization project might end up as a related service offering).

I haven't really gotten over the dismay of so little good non-fiction being available, but I am adjusting my expectations, which makes owning a Kindle a bit like owning an early Blu-ray player, when the catalogue of movies consisted of a few worthy titles plus the heap of new release trash. What I have discovered is that having a few excellent books on the Kindle makes it an irresistable gadget to have at hand. Waiting in line at the post office, it was nice to read a few more pages of Nassim Taleb's Fooled By Randomness.

This made me realize something else: I find ebook readers to be refreshingly different from other categories of handheld gadgets out there. The bloom came off my iPhone some time ago--typical of my experience with Apple products, the novelty has worn off, and Apple's lack of interest in improving the basic usability of the device, plus the limitations of the form factor, means I rarely use it for anything other than basic calls and email alerts. Most websites are practically unreadable on such a small display, and reading anything lengthy from a backlit LCD is tiring. Moreover, I really want a phone that's smaller, lighter, and less consumed with trying to be a mini-computer. The vaunted app library can blow me--it's mostly a huge catalogue of 99 cent time wasters. I have something better to do.

Even my very well designed Fujitsu T2010 tablet, which seems like a massive, fat, heavy super-computer next to the featherweight Kindle, has become less useful. That is to say, the Kindle has refreshed my interest in reading as opposed to dithering with email or solitaire-type games while sitting in a waiting room, lying in bed, or passing the time in transit. I sound like an advertisement, but the Kindle is as easy to take with you as a cell phone, and it's both more relaxing and more stimulating reading a book on e-ink than fiddling with other electronic gadgets.

Here is what Amazon needs to do to make the Kindle essential:

• Dramatically improve the catalogue
• Provide additional fonts, preferably customizable per book
• Make chapter navigation easier (oddly, the user's guide can flip through chapters using the toggle, but none of the e-books I've purchased can)
• Make the Kindle recognize and display page numbers (we're used to them)
• For future models, continue to improve e-ink's contrast ratio--it's easy to read, but it would be nice to have something indistinguishable from trade paperback printing

I'm even throwing in the towel on price (take note, publishers), and would happily fork over full price for older books. It's really the sum of human knowledge and wisdom we're talking about.

The Kindle is growing on me, and has the potential to be my favorite electronic device. We'll see.

(As a side note, I looked into other ebook readers, and based on my research I'd readily choose the Kindle over its competition; a Kindle DX wouldn't be out of the question once the price comes down.)

[PRCalDude]

I think the major turd in the punch bowl at this point with kindle is the actual publishers. They can't seem to understand that price points need to be adjusted downward substantially. That would greatly diminish our consternation about the resale value of owning an actual book. Really, I would rather not own more books that have to be packed later. Sooner or later, someone will figure out how to make a decoder that allows you to pipe non-Amazon ebooks into the Kindle. Someone with the know-how just needs to be willing to hack open their Kindle and do it.

I agree with you on most Apple products. I own an iPod, but I think the form factor could be improved there. I don't own an iPhone and don't really see the point. There is no benefit to having connectivity to the internet all the time. I watch aspies in line at BestBuy distracting themselves with such devices because they can't stand to be alone with their own thoughts for more than a second or two. Really, society would benefit heavily by much less in the way of image-based mass-produced information like the web and tv. These things are just making us more illiterate, dumb and mute: postmodern troglodytes with gadgets.

[PLEASUREMAN]

PRCalDude, 09 January 2010 - 12:36 PM:

I think the major turd in the punch bowl at this point with kindle is the actual publishers. They can't seem to understand that price points need to be adjusted downward substantially. That would greatly diminish our consternation about the resale value of owning an actual book. Really, I would rather not own more books that have to be packed later. Sooner or later, someone will figure out how to make a decoder that allows you to pipe non-Amazon ebooks into the Kindle. Someone with the know-how just needs to be willing to hack open their Kindle and do it.

Maybe they will screw themselves like music companies have. There is a considerable amount of ebook stuff being torrented these days, stuff you can't even buy for any amount of money. This could never turn around and bite them.

PRCalDude, 09 January 2010 - 12:36 PM:

I agree with you on most Apple products. I own an iPod, but I think the form factor could be improved there. I don't own an iPhone and don't really see the point. There is no benefit to having connectivity to the internet all the time. I watch aspies in line at BestBuy distracting themselves with such devices because they can't stand to be alone with their own thoughts for more than a second or two. Really, society would benefit heavily by much less in the way of image-based mass-produced information like the web and tv. These things are just making us more illiterate, dumb and mute: postmodern troglodytes with gadgets.

I don't understand why these devices (iPod, iPhone, Zune) need to have their own personal sync software instead of just letting you drag and drop files to them. I always end up struggling with the "simple" interface. Anyway you're right, these gadgets have a use but they are more and more pitched as a way to fill every single gap or lull with constant pointless activity and stimulation. It's like eating another bowl of sugary breakfast cereal every time you're NOT full. After living with my iPhone for a few months, I am sick of it and the Kindle is reawakening a desire to read substantive books by making it more convenient.

[rho]

The benefit of the sync software only comes into play when you wholly throw yourself into the Apple gestalt. I've got a Macbook, an iPod touch and an Apple TV, and I use iTunes to manage all of my consumable media, and even buy shit from the iTunes store. This all works well for me.

I've tried wandering off the reservation and doing nerdy, hacky things with them--for example, I installed Boxee on the Apple TV--but I always went back to doing everything the Apple Way. Not because I don't want to have all the neat Boxee stuff, but because the dorks putting this stuff together are attention-deficit morons. Boxee fucked up the Apple TV to the point that I had to restore to factory settings and re-sync the tens of gigs of files back to the ATV's hard drive.

When my (not cheap) Netgear router decided to go insane and randomly forget everything I've ever taught it, I gave the fuck up and bought an Airport Extreme. At an Apple retail store. And I liked the experience. I'm so goddamn Apple I shit Steve Jobs. Not because I think Apple is the best thing ever, but as a rule they're better than most.

[PLEASUREMAN]

we can never be brothers in this world my friend

[rho]

I've been elbows-deep in enough idiots' Windows machines to last a lifetime.

I go Apple because I'm fundamentally lazy and prefer to pay faggots in faux-turtlenecks their usury so I don't have to fuck with trivial bullshit.

Hell, I don't even pirate music very much. $10 is way worth it, rather than slogging through dumb-ass torrent sites for sub-par download speeds.

[PLEASUREMAN]

honestly when Steve Jobs finally dies of AIDS my opinion of Apple will improve 1000%

I think he's actually held the company back more than he's helped it THIS IS A CONTROVERSIAL THEORY MIND YOU

[rho]

Having lived through the aimless Apple of the '90s, where bloodless CEOs thought market segmentation meant turning the computer on its side and charging an extra $1000, and whose greatest aspirations was to see the company sold off to Nabisco, I can only disagree.

The only reason Apple wasn't sold off to Nabisco was because it was the original toxic asset.

[PLEASUREMAN]

rho, 12 January 2010 - 07:55 AM:

Having lived through the aimless Apple of the '90s, where bloodless CEOs thought market segmentation meant turning the computer on its side and charging an extra $1000, and whose greatest aspirations was to see the company sold off to Nabisco, I can only disagree.

The only reason Apple wasn't sold off to Nabisco was because it was the original toxic asset.

That was a bad period no doubt, but remember it was Jobs who originally pushed the idea of keeping Macs overpriced (which they finally aren't today, having finally accepted x86's superiority), and refused to license the OS because GODDAMMIT ONE BUTTON MICE ARE RIGHT I'M GOING TO FIGHT THIS WAR FOR 20 YEARS...his mistakes have done more to hold the Mac back than anyone's, and finally turning it into a profitable niche product by marketing it to smug yuppies is not enough to redeem his history of error.

But the Mac OS remains labored with lots of Jobs-think, and sorry if this offends but the UI is simply full of shitty ideas. Ease of use? It's the most undeserving rep I've ever heard of, every time I tangle with a Mac I curse through my teeth. Basic things like windowing controls just don't work properly. When you look at whom the Mac appeals to--graphic designers and musicians, plus a few wannabes--it's clear that it has simply been tailored to a very distinct niche audience that loves it passionately, but that no one else really likes the end product. Hence its natural marketshare is around 5% even today with cost parity (the high point in the early days of Windows was 10%). You get a sense for who that audience is by watching the Mac vs. PC ads, which are deceptive, pandering, and insufferably smug.

But I also take issue with the way Apple is handled in the media, where Jobs' influence is most effective. The uncritical, marketing-manipulated reviews of Apple products in venues like the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have had as much to do with its "comeback" as anything Jobs has done. The reality distortion field has been going strong for years, so no one notices when the last PowerPC was launched with "twice as fast as any Intel chip", and then the next year the switch to Intel was launched with "twice as fast as last year's Mac", all done with more exclamation points than a Telemundo screenplay. I will go so far as to say that Steve Jobs has never made an accurate performance claim about his products in his life, and never will. Why he gets a huge pass on this from useless old farts like Walt Mossberg (can't wait for him to die either) is a mystery to me.

[rho]

The ease of use is definitely a personal perception thing. I jumped into Macs with a Mac II, which was contemporary with Windows 3. I don't have to exaggerate much to say the difference between the two is huge.

FWIW, I've installed Windows 95 on a half-dozen CAD workstations via floppy disks (and DOS before that), so I've been around both ecosystems for a while. Just a couple of examples of why I think the Mac way is better:

1. Windowing system. The Mac way of a single menubar at the top is, to me, utterly superior. It confuses the hell out of people, I know. But in a very mouse-centric OS like the Mac's it makes a lot of sense. Fitt's Law and all that. The multiple menubars on a per window basis makes sense on some level, but there are things that are not ideal. I'm not a Counter-Strike expert, and aiming for the "File" annoys me.

2. Networking. This was a lot more distinct back in the '90s, but making Windows machines talk together meant either spending a lot of money for Netware (so much better than native Windows networking that it angers me that Microsoft didn't spend their doubloons to buy it), or rubbing your dick against sandpaper for hours. AppleTalk was slow as shit, but by God it was easy.

One of the side effects of the Mac philosophy is a developer culture that cared more about design than Windows developers. If you wanted to have lots of options, Windows was it; the Mac was more limited, but it annoyed you less. Careful study of the MPW and developer docs showed that this gestalt was practically enforced at the OS level. I used BBEdit for all my programming for several years, switched to emacs for a few years (until LISP drove me insane), then went back to BBEdit for the last half-dozen years or so. I've not used any of the Windows' IDEs (all my servers are some flavor of Unix), but BBEdit is a brilliant app. Interestingly it's probably the most Windows-like app for the Mac, in that it's festooned with dozens of fidgety options, but it is Mac-like to the core. It takes advantage of all the dinguses and widgets available, and does so only when it makes sense.

I agree with the insufferable Apple advertisements. It's funny because I don't know anybody who doesn't like the "PC" character and doesn't find the "Mac" character to be a cocksocket. But that's advertising--WTFOMG, basically.

I'm less :-( about the performance claims made of Macs. I've done a shitload of video and 3D animation on the Mac, and have done 3D work (no video) on a PC with Autodesk back in the bad-old-days when processors mattered. It really was more or less of a wash. It's hard to say why, since most rendering was done while you slept anyway, except apps like Strata 3D were far superior to the Windows equivalents from a user-interface perspective. This opinion is tempered by the fact that I'm not a CS student, I was trained as an art-fag.

Finally, I have to give a shout-out to the two greatest laptops ever, the Powerbook 180c and the Powerbook Duos. The 180c was a fine piece of kit, for the early '90s. I finally recycled the one I had a few years ago when the SCSI-to-Ethernet (!!!!) adapter shit itself. And the Duo, with the Duo Dock was a brilliant idea that has utterly failed to be repeated to my satisfaction. I've fucked around with a lot of IBM docks and whatnot, and it just makes me cry. The Duo Dock with a Duo was amazing. Especially for the time.

Longpost shorter: I've done a lot on both, and still prefer Macs, but it's just me.

[PLEASUREMAN]

ugh had a longpost but lost it

sum up: appletalk was like Windows netbeui, both suck for >30 computer networks

fitt's law is overrated, basic file manager behavior matters more, what is with the no sizing borders on windows and no maximize button? macs aren't just different from windows, they're different from EVERYONE ELSE, not sure why other than NIH syndrome

simplicity is sometimes pursued over greatly more desirable functionality--simplicity is not a goal

macs are right for many people who truly love that simplicity, have no problem with that...I find that windows is the happy medium between over-simplified and over-complicated

[rho]

I totally agree that the historic Mac-path ultimately led to disappointment. This stopped when a simple click would give you a Unix shell.

I worked at a big Fortune 500 shop; they told Netbui to go fuck a goat and used Netware. Which more or less worked with my Mac.

I won't deny that it's not a matter of taste, but... seriously, are you thrilled to deal with Explorer? I never seem to understand WTF it thinks I want.

[PLEASUREMAN]

rho, 12 January 2010 - 11:05 PM:

seriously, are you thrilled to deal with Explorer? I never seem to understand WTF it thinks I want.

seriously, are you thrilled to deal with Finder? I never seem to understand WTF it thinks I want, but it spends alot of time thinking about it very intently

[rho]

This post has been edited by rho: 13 January 2010 - 07:37 AM

[rho]

Interesting thing about the Finder v. Explorer--I spend a lot more time arguing with the latter than the former. I'm like, "copy this file", and one says "sure, can do that"; the other goes "fuck you, which program are you in bitch?".

[PLEASUREMAN]

rho, 12 February 2010 - 01:29 AM:

Interesting thing about the Finder v. Explorer--I spend a lot more time arguing with the latter than the former. I'm like, "copy this file", and one says "sure, can do that"; the other goes "fuck you, which program are you in bitch?".

that doesn't make any sense, but anyone who will defend the Finder will defend anything

but who cares, I will never use a Mac, what I really want to know is why is the iPhone such a disorganized mess and when will its Exchange integration not suck shit (no shitpig)