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News & ArtsFriday, February 6, 2009
Books Kindle On Your Phone?
Posted by Paul Constant on Fri, Feb 6, 2009 at 11:15 AM
Amazon, perhaps realizing that for many people the iPhone is the new ebook reader, is trying to develop ways to put Kindle books on your cell phone. What exactly makes a Kindle book a Kindle book, though? I thought the reader was the important thing. If you put a Kindle book on an iPhone, it's just an Amazon-made ebook, and that's not enough of a draw for the average consumer.
1
Dream on, Amazon.
Is anyone reading LITERATURE on iPhone? I scan Slog, MSNBC and CNN during lunch, but 10 minutes is about the limit of my eye's tolerance for the little screen. Who's gonna read Oprah's latest selection on their phone? The Kindle is the electronic equivalent of a DeLorean with a Mr Fusion strapped to it.
Is anyone reading LITERATURE on iPhone? I scan Slog, MSNBC and CNN during lunch, but 10 minutes is about the limit of my eye's tolerance for the little screen. Who's gonna read Oprah's latest selection on their phone? The Kindle is the electronic equivalent of a DeLorean with a Mr Fusion strapped to it.
3
E-book readers are a dead end. The screen development is nice, but basically any portable computer/phone/AV device IS an ebook reader. The Kindle is a very expensive toy which not enough people will ever buy. The killer Ebook device is going to be any easy on the eyes screen attached to a phone with a full keypad.
5
Agreed, no one wants to read a book on an iPhone. I do like the idea of the Kindle, however right now it is cost prohibitive for most people. That said I plan on getting the version 2.0 if it ever comes out!
6
I totally use Stanza on my ipod touch to read books. It doesn't mean I won't also buy paper books ,but its nice that you can get ebook versions of all the out of copyright classics for free, and have them with you all the time.
7
I can't blame Amazon here. Reading on the iPhone is no miracle breakthrough, but developing iPhone applications is cheap, and if they can leverage their book expertise into a small group of folks who are willing to read on the iPhone, it will be well worth the token sum it cost to put themselves there.
9
I dunno, the iPhone screen is pretty small and yeah, reading for hours on that screen would suck hard. But I can see it if I was in the middle of a book and just wanted to read a couple pages here and there when I didn't have the book in front of me. Problem is, buying an ebook just for those moments of downtime doesn't make much sense. Now, if Amazon threw in the digital format for free every time you bought a book, that'd be awesome. Or, if you had the kindle AND an iphone, they'd need to find some way to keep the two in sync (finding a page on the Kindle sucks, I'd assume it'd be the same or worse on the iPhone)
@8 the kindle is nice because it comes with a jacket that most people just assume is for a book. I was on a flight last week and nobody gave me shit about it during takeoff and landing.
@8 the kindle is nice because it comes with a jacket that most people just assume is for a book. I was on a flight last week and nobody gave me shit about it during takeoff and landing.
10
The real growth of E-Readers(on a kindle or laptop) is going to be when everyone's sight is ruined by reading and watching their tiny phone screens and they need extra large type.
11
I read a lot of books on my cell phone (the seattle public library actually has them available to download from their website, in addition to the many public domain works available around the internet). The reading experience is actually kind of nice. I can read in the dark, I don't have to lug a giant book around, and I'm not tempted to read ahead a few pages the way I do with paper books. I like always having a few books on my phone, in case I have to wait in line, etc.
oh, and @8, departing/landing is when you read the in-flight magazine, or skymall, or the safety brochure.
oh, and @8, departing/landing is when you read the in-flight magazine, or skymall, or the safety brochure.
13
to the haters: wake up. People already read more text via screens than they do via pages. You're doing it right now. http://arstechnica.com/features/2009/02/…
This is great news for e-books. The potential of the Kindle lies not in the hardware device, but in Amazon's ability to rally publishers behind a common standard and distribution system. And leverage to force them into reasonable pricing. Bravo.
This is great news for e-books. The potential of the Kindle lies not in the hardware device, but in Amazon's ability to rally publishers behind a common standard and distribution system. And leverage to force them into reasonable pricing. Bravo.
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