Archive: Opinions

With the introduction of the Barnes and Noble 'Nook' there has been a lot of buzz about the future of book reader devices.  The Nook has been heralded as the first serious threat to Amazon's Kindle.  Sony must be irritated by that!  And now the Apple iPad has been announced with all the hype that it will blow the Kindle and the Nook out of the water.  With Library Lovers Month coming up next week, I thought it would be worth thinking about how people will read in the near future.

So what exactly is the future of the book? Will everyone use electronic readers, or is there still hope for the analog book reading device, ie. the one made up of lots of pieces of paper, printed with ink and bound into a brick-shaped object?  I wouldn't have said electronic books had a chance against tried and true actual books until I downloaded some book reading aps on my iPod Touch.

I have a first generation 8G iPod Touch that I initially liked just for music.  Then I liked it for podcasts of just a few radio shows I really like (like Car Talk) and am never available at the right time to hear.  I also used the iPod to track expenses on a recent auto trip.  I even use it as a flashlight (there are actually apps for that).  Recently I started reading books on it.  I like using it for books a LOT better than actual books for a lot of reasons. 

I tried the Barnes and Noble ap, the Kindle ap, and one that is not associated with a megabookstore that is called Stanza.  The Stanza and Kindle aps are the best in my opinion, very easy to use, flexible, and convenient.  I can easily adjust the font size with my fingers, dim the backlight, turn pages with a tap or a slight wipe of a finger.  I can keep a library on my iPod -- with those weight restrictions on air flights these days that's a big plus.  I also like that you can get a newly published ebook for the cost of a paperback.  And on the iPod the back-lit touch screen means you can read in bed without a night light or a book light.

Not to mention the fact that I don't have to do something with the book after I've read it.  Our house is slowly sinking into the ground from the weight of the books we have.  That has allegedly kept my marriage together -- the deal is that the spouse who leaves the other must take all the books.  We've been married for 20 years, and with my bad back I could never consider leaving!

I never thought that paying $250 or more for a book reader was a good idea.  Let's face it.  I can buy real books for less than that in the time it takes new gadgets to become obsolete.  But I am so loving reading on the iPod that I decided to check out book readers.  You can't go to Amazon to check out the Kindle, but I have friends who love them.  The Nook is like a Kindle with a non-backlit but very clear screen above.  The Kindle has a little button keyboard on the bottom, while the Nook uses a touch screen on the bottom to control the reading screen above.  I read that both devices buy their reading screens from the same source, so the quality of the text is the same on both.

So I looked at the Barnes & Noble reader in the store the other day because it has been getting so much media buzz.  And I have to say I was not impressed.  I have been so spoiled by my Touch that I just want to touch where things happen and see them happen.  I don't want separate buttons to turn the pages, and I don't want to touch a screen below to make things happen above.  The absolute joy of moving two fingers apart to enlarge the type or together to make it smaller just doesn't exist on the Kindle or the Nook.

Compared to my iPod it is lame, lame, lame.  The iPad, being a iPod Touch on steroids, would be much nicer for reading.  Much, much nicer.  But more expensive.  And if you want a keyboard there is one available, but it costs extra.

The only downside I can see to the iPad is battery life.  Amazon claims you can read for two weeks with wifi turned off, and Barnes and Noble claims ten days.  The iPad claims ten hours, not unlike the iPod, more or less.  But the capabilities and usability of the iPad have got to be exponentially more than the other readers, and seriously worth it.

iPads are more like netbooks (those miniature -- about 10" -- computers that fit in a purse) in that they are small computers with all the flexibility in uses that suggests.  While the other book readers are adding functionality they are book readers with additional capabilities.  The iPad is a computer, with one of its capabilities being very convenient ways to read books.

My techno-friends are arguing both sides -- why get an iPad when you can get a net book for half the price with the convenience of a keyboard and hugely more storage capacity?


The pro-iPad geeks say that there is the cool factor.  Some have gone so far as to claim that with an iPad and a puppy you could go to the park and have great success in picking up girls.  Some think you could do it with just the iPad.  Others say that the puppy is tried and true, but the IPad would be a very cool toy.

What I say is that if the iPad is a 10 inch iPod Touch it is going to be mighty attractive as a book reader.  Even though it starts at $499, twice the cost of the Nook and the Kindle, it will be so joyfully usable that it will be worth it.  Apple says that it is already compatible with 140,000 aps written for the Touch and the iPhone.  Speaking of which, look how much money all those people shelled out for iPhones.  They are pretty much iPod Touches with phones in them, and some reports say that using all those phone features hasn't worked out so well because demand exceeds capacity on the 3G network.  But there is that cool factor.  Or as Einstein might have put it: Cool=$$$.

Finally, two points about how different people have vastly different computing styles and needs: 

My Dad does almost all of his computing entirely with a mouse.  He covers up his keyboard at the back of his desk with all kinds of papers and junk.  You have to move all that if you want to use it.  I think an iPad would do him fine if he chose to go that way.  The small amount of typing he does wouldn't be a hassle on the touch screen keyboard.  Not everyone needs to do everything we all do on computers, and certainly not all the time.  Some people want a one button or one-touch experience, which is surprisingly rich when you do it.

Secondly, my wife has a netbook, which she loves.  The points made by my techno-friends about the keyboard, price, and capacity are excellent points.  It fits in her purse and she takes it everywhere.  But it should be noted that she doesn't really need all that storage capacity for the kind of computing she does.  She hates e-mail and would hate it more without a keyboard.

I do a LOT of typing in producing a weekly newspaper, and need some features I don't think it will have like FTP and graphics manipulation programs, so I wouldn't be able to use an iPad effectively for my work.  But I would love one for play and travel.

But probably only after I win the lottery.  Until then I have my little Touch, which I still like very much.  But that's just me.  I think Apple is going to make a fortune on the iPad.  Look out B&N and Amazon and Sony!

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