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Sunday
Sep122010
Five things I love about the Kindle app
Sunday, September 12, 2010 at 11:58AM 1. I can swap between reading on my iPhone, iPad or Macbook and it remembers where I had got to.
2. I can download books wherever I have a signal.
3. I can annotate my reading for future reference.
4. The books are a bit cheaper than real books (should be a lot more).
5. I won't fill my house up with books quite so quickly!
Reader Comments (10)
I agree on all counts (though I have been desperately holding off on buying an iPad..) Kindle books in general have increased my buy-to-read ratio... meaning - I buy more books without ever reading them...
The interesting thing about this app vs. hardware approach is how Amazon has "pivoted" in terms of strategy - at first it was all about the device: they wanted to own the format (they wouldn't even allow PDFs to be read on their device) and tie it inextricably to the physical Kindle device. This was/is a doomed strategy. Now they are opening to the reality that their format can live across multiple devices and add more value than competitors... The hardware once again is just a commodity. This commoditization has taken place in a remarkably short period of time (4 years?)
And yet, having been sceptical of the Kindle device, then being introduced to the app by the iPad, I now find myself eyeing the new, price reduced, Kindle hardware. Reading on the iPhone is such a joy though so no need to.
I've really gotten into Kindle reading on the iPad. I wish they would release the promised Ap for the Mac which allows search, as I do a lot of that, doing away with the need to use the index in a book. I also enjoy being able to read white on black text late at nght and on aircraft (less distracting to others).
And, of course, the vast choice of titles from Amazon makes iBooks on the iPad look like a joke!
Alan - One thing I wish they would add, but understand why they don't, is the ability to copy bits of text for quotes.
John - yep.
"The books are a bit cheaper than real books (should be a lot more)." Do you mean that the virtual books should be a *lot* more cheaper or the real books or that virtual books should be a lot more expensive? And explain :-)
They should be a lot cheaper due to near zero "printing" and distribution cost.
Price is a funny thing. According to some economists whether you buy somethign or not is around the satisfaction you obtain from the good divided by the unit. In which case it could be argued that the price should be higher. I mean you can get more use out of a digital version as you can search for things easier along with it being more portable. But aye I agree with you, bloody rip off :-)
Euan -- some interesting blogs here. Many thanks -- I shall get into them seriously! For the moment, re Ebooks and your experience of them, what do you think of the "Enhanced Ebooks"? Do you personally use the enhanced features of novels? Or do you just want a novel to be a novel with no frills? As you know, Craig wants to pull in videos, photos, extra text, background info etc into the enhanced iPad version of his book -- which is admittedly a different sort of book. Apart from the practicalities and the cost of all of this, I wonder what the market really is....?
Not sure about novels but enhanced eBooks seem a really good idea with non-fiction.