Last year, Amazon introduced the Kindle Fire, which unlike previous Kindles, was a color 7″ tablet that could run Android apps. They sold a lot of them mainly because they were priced at $199, but as a competitor for other tablets, they were still pretty “meh” – a little underpowered, with some not-quite-ready software.
This week, Amazon announced some hardware and software that make them a really impressive player in the personal hardware device market. I’ll give the details below, but as far as I can tell, these tablets are category beaters at the moment (though we’re still waiting for Apple’s play). I know this tech stuff isn’t interesting to everyone, so the rest is after the break.
Let’s start with the new Kindle software, which has some impressive integration with Amazon. For example, you can buy a new kind of audiobook. You can choose to read and listen, so the book is read to you and the text is highlighted at the same time. You can also choose to read or listen, and Amazon keeps track of your place in the book either way. So, for example, you can listen to a book on your smartphone on the way home from work, and seamlessly switch to reading it on a Kindle when you get home.
Amazon also introduced a new feature called X-Ray, which works in books and movies. In movies, if you tap on the screen on your Fire, each actor in the current scene is identified, and you can pull up their IMDB profile from within the movie viewer. In a book, if you tap on a character’s name, you can read the introductory paragraph that introduces the character, as well as look at a character index that shows all the characters. This also works with textbooks, which is a huge advance on traditional indexing.
Both the audio/book sync (which Amazon calls Whispersync) and X-Ray are probably limited to a few titles right now, but they looked useful and they’re something nobody else has.
This software runs on impressive hardware. There’s a new Kindle Fire at $159 that has a similar 7″ screen as last year’s $199 Fire, but is 40% faster than the old Fire. Wait for the reviews, but this sounds like it might be a hell of a bargain. At $199, they have the Fire HD, which has a high-definition 7″ screen, and an even faster processor. At $299, they have an 8.9″ Fire HD, which is just a bit smaller than an iPad, with a HD screen, at a price $200 less than Apple’s. Finally they have a Fire 8.9″ HD that has 4G LTE (fast) cellular networking and a $50/year data plan. The cost of ownership of that device is around $400 less for a year compared to an iPad with the same level of cell service. Again, wait for the reviews, but that’s also a bargain if the device lives up to its PR.
Finally, they also introduced an upgrade to the traditional ePaper Kindle, which has some kind of pure fucking magic screen they call Paperwhite. The text is the crispest and sharpest ever, on a device that already had fairly crisp text. And the screen has some kind of very even frontlighting that makes it just glow. This means they’ve solved the main issue with the traditional Kindle, which was that you needed a lamp to read in the dark. And, like the traditional Kindle, it works fine in daylight, and the battery lasts for an even longer than usual 8 weeks. The WiFi version costs $119.
Overall, I’m surprised at how far Amazon has come in a year. For the last couple of years, Kindle has been a great value. Amazon basically sells them at cost because they want you plugged into purchasing books, movies, TV and music from Amazon. Now Kindles are also competitive versus other tablet devices. Even if you don’t want to buy a Kindle, they’re injecting a huge amount of competition in the market that will keep Apple, Google and Microsoft’s margins thin.
Schlemizel
I really want to replace the 10 year old laptop that is failing slowly. I only use this one for surfing. But I really want a 10″ screen, 7 is too small to make me happy. The problem is even at $250 its about the same money to buy a netbook & have the potential for a lot more stuff if the need ever came up.
If the pad craze continues I wouldn’t be surprised to find netbooks/laptops selling for less than a tablet.
The Ancient Randonneur
I’m very disappointed Obama didn’t mention this in his acceptance speech. Very disappointed, indeed.
Emrventures
Amazon has a big advantage over Apple in that they’re so retail focused that they can sell their Kindles at a loss and know they’ll still make money on them in the long run. We bought my Mom a Kindle last Christmas and I’m sure Amazon has already realized a profit from her just in eBook purchases. Just getting into your living room and having their name sitting on the coffee table is huge for Amazon.
Gin & Tonic
Of course, this 2-3 months after I bought an ePaper or eInk or whatever it is Kindle. I was skeptical for a long time (read “Luddite”) but was looking at a pretty solid travel schedule at a time when I was starting to read Robert Caro’s latest volume of his LBJ biography. Traveling on trains and airplanes with that doorstop or some other large books I’ve been reading would have been incredibly annoying, so I got the cheap Kindle and am very happy. Now I envy that new b/w one.
I only wish the pricing was structured so that you get the ebook for reduced or free price if you buy the physical book — like you get with some magazines or newspapers. For example, my dead-tree Economist subscription also gets me the on-line version. Since I like physical books, I paid essentially twice for the Caro.
mattH
I’m still not a huge fan of being tied to Amazon for apps and other products, and I bet that it still requires “jailbreaking”, with the requisite loss of smooth operation, if you want to purchase content elsewhere.
And there’s the adds regardless of Kindle. Not huge, but still annoying you can’t pay to get them off.
Applejinx
The new feature is ads you can’t make it stop showing? buh.
I hope to hell they always include one that works like MY kindle, which is an old e-ink one on which I can read books. And if there’s a lighted screen it better give pretty much exactly the battery life of the just plain e-ink one: don’t need to use it as a flashlight, am wary of the possible annoying/fatiguing aspect.
My take on Kindle Fire is definitely ‘the hell?’. I specifically don’t want all that. My kindle is really laid back. It’s a very serene device. Never destroy that, please.
BGinCHI
The main reason I haven’t bought an iPad (and I’ve been very close for a while) is that I do so much writing (typing) on my laptop, for things like this, but also for writing emails and actual writing projects (MS Word).
Switching to a pad, or even having one for, say, 25-50% of my work time, still doesn’t seem to make sense.
The pad experience is still mostly a passive one: reading and surfing (which is really reading as well). If I traveled a lot I’d get one for sure just for the multimedia pop in such a small package, but with an 8-month-old now that ain’t happening.
Anyone want to talk me into getting a pad anyway? I have a 2nd Gen Kindle and I almost never use it. Screen is too small compared to an actual book page.
I love my Macbook Pros (I have 2).
Comrade Jake
They look cool, but this would seem to suck:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-3126_7-57508526/amazon-confirms-all-new-kindle-fires-stuck-with-ads/
They’re all stuck with ads, and there are no opt-outs.
BGinCHI
@mattH: There is a version with ads and one without, from what I read. The one w/o is like $20 more, which sounds like a no brainer.
ETA: That’s only for the readers, not the Fire. WTF? That would make me think twice before buying a Fire. It’s what Apple is so smart about: non-invasive experience. Anti-Microsoft.
PoliticalHack
Tempted to upgrade my Kindle Fire to the new 7″ HD version, but also tempted to go with the Google Nexus 7″ tablet. Could use my existing Fire as a kickass xmas present… hmmmm…
Selling point for Fire HD might be X-Ray just so I can try to keep track of the 1,000+ named characters in The Song of Ice and Fire. But then, it would probably take Martin 12 years to update the introductory paragraphs on them….
;-)
amk
Kindle paperwhite ebook reader with in-built light ? Added to the wish list.
Fire sucked after the novelty of 24 hours wore off.
Villago Delenda Est
@BGinCHI:
Apparently not on these new ones:
This is, frankly, bullshit. I am tired of having advertising rammed down my throat at all times as a condition for content.
I’ll stick with real books, exclusively, as long as capitalist vermin like Bezos try to ram ads down my throat. Fuck him.
WereBear
@mattH: What is the incentive for them to do it any differently? Kindles are less than cost because they want to sell you their stuff, as pointed out in the post.
Generic readers haven’t taken off because the process of getting things on them is so clunky.
I’m in flux right now; my iPod touch is too old to make the next round of upgrades, so I’m stuck with what I have, which is good but limited. When that battery goes it won’t be worth replacing, so I’ll be gifting it to a friend for whom it is worth it.
Which means I’ll get an iPhone, because juggling the touch and the dumb phone has really gotten old. Tablet-wise, I’m still loving my Chromebook, especially now that they have offline Google Docs that allow editing.
My friend who just got her Kindle Fire absolutely loves it. She wants something for her lunch hour, for curling up in bed, to read and play games and check her email and browse the web; for such purposes, it is great, she says.
I browse the web and write a lot; I need a real keyboard, though I’ve done well with the iPad virtual keyboard, I haven’t tried long term use with it. Don’t know if it would drive me crazy, or not. But with the Chromebook half the price, that’s what I went with.
rikyrah
hold up….did you say 50/YEAR data plan?
You didn’t mean 50/MONTH?
SP
Fucking fuck, I just bought an old model kindle, arrived yesterday, with a reading light case for a total of $138. I hope they let me return it for a paperwhite. You’d think they could warn me that it will be obsolete in 24 hours. I knew the new Fires were coming out but I didn’t know they were upgrading the e-ink ones too.
BGinCHI
@Villago Delenda Est: See my edit. You can get ad-free on the readers still. Just not the Fire.
And I agree: every time I’m forced to use a PC with Windows it just makes me want to puke. So much invasion from the system itself, plus pop-ups and ads and all kinds of shit.
It’s a foreign experience for a Mac user.
Amanda in the South Bay
I still think I’d rather have a Nexus 7 as far as 7 inch tablets are concerned, or even a Surface or mini iPad-the KF seems like its just a gateway to Amazon’s services, rather than as a general tablet device.
luc
The Nexus tablet seems to be a better deal than the 7 inch kindle fires, at least you get a more open OS, less advertisements. It is also $200 and muchless of awalled garden andthehardware looks better. An HDMI port is the only advantage of the fires.
Amanda in the South Bay
@BGinCHI:
you know, its pretty easy to get rid of that stuff on Windows? Its not a Windows vs Mac thing.
BGinCHI
@Amanda in the South Bay: I’ve probably been using PCs that aren’t set up very well, but I think any Mac user will say the same thing. I’m not interested in the silly Mac/PC argument, I’m just pointing out that the Mac experience seems more controllable, at least for a lap top and at least for those of us who use the computer for work. But this is probably just bias based on comfort with a device that really suits how I use it and what I use it for.
I also have an Android phone and it’s fine, though as a piece of hardware (HTC) it’s not up to the iPhone. Apple just kills at design.
JenJen
I absolutely love my Google Nexus tablet and would recommend it to anyone. I can’t imagine a new Kindle Fire being a better device, but I can assure all that the Nexus makes the old Fire look like a child’s toy.
I love the tech posts. :-)
ThresherK
My curse is that I never get rid of anything with an iota of use left in it.
The natural flipside is that I’m a “late adopter”. (Blu-Ray? Not until my DVD box breaks.) So I’ll file this away for 2016 when my Linux “rescue laptop” falls apart.
PS “New Kindle Fires stuck with ads” reminds me of product placement stories in dead-tree books, except more annoying.
Soonergrunt
mistermix, did you ever get your Google Nexus 7? If you did, I missed your review. I love mine. I think I might get another tablet, but I’m not sure I want to drop the money yet, so we’re waiting.
Frankly, it will depend upon text book support for the boy when he goes to college next year.
@BGinCHI:
See, that just sounds so foreign to me as a daily PC user. So unlike my experience. Of course, when I’m forced at gunpoint to work on a Mac (and it does happen) I’m paralyzed by the inability to interface with the system to get anything done, or to make it my own. Different perspectives.
danah gaz
I’m unimpressed by the color Kindle (and surprised that they moved away from e-Ink) but I suppose I’m just looking at it the wrong way. It has become a tablet, not a reader. Tablets are fine, but I’d never replace my e-Ink e-reader. The e-Ink screen is so much easier to read than an LCD. I’ll stick with my nook. =)
Poopyman
Pardon the OT post, but Breaking News:
mistermix
@Soonergrunt: Yes, I got it and I think it’s great and have no regrets. The Fire 7″ HD has 16GB of storage, and a HD front-facing camera for $199, so I think it’s a bit better deal than a Nexus 7 right now (8GB storage, Std Def camera, $199).
@rikyrah: $50/year for 250 MB/month. This is the plan Apple charges $15/month for. It is a bargain. It’s not a huge amount of data, but would be a great “in a pinch” data plan.
For all of you mentioning ads, the ads on the Fire devices are on the lock screen. That’s as unobtrusive as it gets, though I understand why you might not want the device because of ads.
NobodySpecial
Don’t like ads, don’t like DRM allowing the companies to remove books off my devices without my say-so.
Therefore, there still ain’t anything out there for the likes of me.
danah gaz
@NobodySpecial: DRM isn’t much of an issue. You can always find a DRM-less copy of an e-book. No ads on a nook because they don’t offer (not so free) wireless connectivity.
RSR
I’m quite intrigued by the Kindle lineup. We have HP Touchpads, and a v1 Nook. My new Galaxy S III phone is my first real introduction to android, and pretty powerful device.
I see both benefits and drawbacks to the Kindle Fire units related to the Amazon integration. But in a two adult household, I can imagine getting a Fire and say a Nexus 7 or similar ‘non-integrated’ android tablet.
For now though, we’re just waiting on the sidelines with the devices we already have, and which serve our needs well.
danah gaz
@JenJen: I don’t know why gadgets like what you mention aren’t KILLING the kindle. Aside from the ad-supported wireless connectivity and the questionable “upside” of amazon integration they don’t seem to have anything that sets them apart from a “real” tablet.
jnfr
We have two e-ink Kindles and run them off one Amazon account so we can share books. We were reading ebooks already on our old Palm Pilots and such, but there’s no way to express how much we love our Kindles.
But I didn’t go for a Fire when I wanted an Android tablet. I got the Vizio VTAB instead and I like it a lot.
Cap'n Magic
@rikyrah: You read right, but it comes with a 250MB/mo limit.
danah gaz
@Villago Delenda Est: “I’ll stick with real books, exclusively, as long as capitalist vermin like Bezos try to ram ads down my throat. Fuck him.”
Nooks are ad-free, e-Ink is very easy on your battery, and the screen is lovely to read.
If nothing else, the ability to carry a library worth of content around with you makes them worthwhile.
danah gaz
@Amanda in the South Bay: I love when people talk shit about an OS they don’t know how to use. A triumph of marketing over sense. Awesome. =)
PaulW
(glances about in an evil fashion)
BUY MY EBOOKS!
(gets banhammered) (totally worth it)
WereBear
We have a storage unit because Mr WereBear and I have so many books. And this is after many many rounds of winnowing.
In our small apartment, the Digital Transition has made a huge difference in our living space. Putting all the CDs onto the Mac, restricting the dead tree editions to five bookcases, and Mr WereBear taking up digital art and packing up the painting paraphernalia has resulted in having twice the living space we used to. No joke.
RSA
There’s lots to like about the new Kindles–hardware specs, price, and integration. But I’ll speculate that their popularity will be hindered a bit by Amazon’s lack of attention to the user interface. With all their resources, they still skip a lot of basic stuff in the look and feel of their interactive software. For example, in the Kindle for Mac application, you can bring up a search box either by choosing from a menu or by using a shortcut key. So the box shows up, but you can’t type in it without first clicking in the box (or repeating your menu/keystroke action). How clumsy is that? The Amazon Web site and the Kindle Fire, in its original incarnation, have comparable small but annoying problems.
Of course, people are adaptable and many won’t even notice.
PurpleGirl
@BGinCHI: My netbook runs Win XP. (Yeah, slow with upgrading the OS.) My browser is Firefox and I have an ad blocker and Flash blocker so I don’t see ads or animated stuff unless I want to.
RaptorFence
A bit off topic, but was wondering if you’d seen this. The Verge sent a couple of reporters down to the RNC to explore the scene. Its a bit long, but pretty interesting. They cover a lot of the security theater down there, about which I haven’t seen a lot of play.
RaptorFence
A bit off topic, but was wondering if you’d seen this. The Verge sent a couple of reporters down to the RNC to explore the scene. Its a bit long, but pretty interesting. They cover a lot of the security theater down there, about which I haven’t seen a lot of play.
Emma
@Gin & Tonic: Price for e-books are set by the publishers, and some of them are really arses about it. I am actually thinking of upgrading my old keyboard Kindle to one of the new paperwhites. My Fire is newer and I’m not in a rush to upgrade. It does everything I need it to do while I’m away. However, if they had a trade program, well….
KXB
Christmas 2010 – my big brother gave me a Kindle 3G. I love the fact that if I am having lunch or coffee somewhere, I can set it down and not have to hold it in place. Granted, it is for books only – no video, no music. But that’s cool with me. Nor do I have to worry about books piling up in every corner of the house. Plus, if you want to read a piece of crap, you can do so without curious glances.
Plus, since I have a Samsung Galaxy smartphone, I can access my books on my phone as well. So, if I am discussing about something I read, but I don’t have my Kindle with me, I can just pull the book up on my phone.
RaptorFence
apologies for the double post, FYWP won’t let me delete it.
Emma
@Applejinx: That’s why I have two. I looooove my old Kindle keyboard. Total reading Zen.
castellan
@danah gaz: I’m a SQL Server Database Administrator (and a damn good one) and my preferred computer is a Mac. Seriously, the Windows OS has never been anything but a disaster. I love SQL Server (minus its own quirks) but you can’t beat a Mac for getting work done–personal OR professional.
The Moar You Know
@danah gaz: Nooks are the shit. I’ve got a hacked Nook Color (cyanogen mod) that is a kickass Android tablet that still runs the Nook reader software, took it to Africa on deployment and back, kept me in movies, internet and books the whole time. Got a Nook Touch, great e-reader. Nook apps on the iPad, mine and the wife’s iPhone. I use the iPhone reader a LOT. No DRM, no ads, no bullshit, it just works. Too bad they’ve got such poor market share, the product is superb.
danah gaz
@WereBear: Same here.
We switched to flat-screens instead of tubes, dumped all of our media on to a computer (which we access with DLNA) and ditched a large number of our books (I used to have mountains of them) for digital copies. It has improved our space situation dramatically, and it will make our next move sooo much easier. =) Yay digital!
danah gaz
@The Moar You Know: Cool. I love my e-Ink so I won’t switch to LCD, but I hear you. e-reading is great. I’d attempt to hack my nook if it was worth it – but running android’s stuff on e-Ink would absolutely suck, with the refresh time being what it is. =)
JGabriel
__
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BGinCHI:
Yep. Speaking of passive, I keep thinking the next breakthrough category for pads will be some sort of MegaPad — basically a pad with a remote and 30″-60″ inch screen to replace TVs, gaming boxes, and Home Theatre PCs.
.
danah gaz
@castellan: I think it’s a preference thing. I’m glad you enjoy your apple, but I prefer to use my PC systems for what I use them for. I like using visual studio, I like the fact that I can customize my hardware to the nth degree (this is a must for my digital-audio-workstation, I know a lot of people that run apple for this, but they don’t have my latency times ;) – not to mention my ITX stagebox project, near impossible for an apple ), and every once in awhile I like to play a game or two. I’m not saying you can’t use apples for much of this, but a win PC is better suited to it.
Evolving Deep Southerner
How does a brother get a college football open thread around here?
jwb
@BGinCHI: I have a MacBook Pro and an iPad. Use the iPad as a substitute for printing out paper. When you figure in the toner and paper costs over a year, it’s a reasonable deal if you use paper much. In any case, the iPad sits next to the MacBook Pro when I’m writing as a second screen that is also oriented properly for reading journal articles and manuscripts.
But the iPad is more: if you get a stylus and keyboard that folds up with the iPad you have a little netbook that is very convenient for travel. I often don’t bring my laptop when I travel now and have the iPad along instead. It’s not quite as efficient as the laptop since you can’t really run multiple programs, but it has good battery life.
Joy
@Emma: Exactly. If they had a trade program. I bought last year’s Kindle Fire and I now wish I had waited for this year’s upgrades. Lesson learned.
scottinnj
@SP:
Check with them – Amazon is amazingly customer service focus’d I’m sure they will take it back.
danah gaz
@JGabriel: The touch feature would be a lot less generally useful (and PRICEY) in a setup like that, I’d think. =)
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
We got my stepdaughter a Kindle with the ads last year, and it’s actually not that bad. I’d consider putting up with ads for my next Kindle, as long as it’s reflected in a substantially lower price.
Love my DX (the large Kindle, basically unchanged since it came out), but disappointed that Amazon seems to have orphaned the form factor. Perfect for reading PDFs in the two-column format that’s still standard for technical papers, especially for those of us who get eyestrain when trying to read on tablets.
Give me a DX-sized Touch Kindle with four-color eInk, and my credit card number is yours. (Fun Fact: Recently found out that of the folks who developed and patented practical eInk was the guy I shared an office with during my grad school years).
That said, any product that pushes the tablet format forward is a good thing. People like my mother don’t need a computer. What they need is a good, affordable, general-purpose tablet, which doesn’t quite exist yet.
Yet.
Amanda in the South Bay
@castellan:
Its all a matter of personal preference. I can develop software just fine on my ThinkPad, TYVM. Saying Windows is a disaster is of course your own opinion, but there are plenty of smart developers/IT professionals who think otherwise.
Bort
Ipad and kindle user here. I love them both. My ipad is my computer full stop. It’s all I need. My kindle is my “me” time device. I have huge collections of 19th century authors (2.99 for everything Dickens ever wrote? Awesome!). I also get the Guardian for 10.00 a month. That may seem weird considering I have an ipad, but I find it easier to sit back and read a 1150 word article on Bosnia on kindle than on a website. I also get Smithsonian, Science News, and Asimov. So all my reading material is with me always.
Carrying a library around with you is all it’s cracked up to be.
trollhattan
@castellan:
Meh,
Use windoze at home and work and mac at school, and I prefer windoze. Thank you.
castellan
@danah gaz: It’s been almost 10 years since I was doing digital audio, but disk latency wasn’t (and never has been) an issue for me. As with Windows, there are plenty of disk utilities for the Mac and if you can use a particular drive, so can I. Any stage boxes I used were custom hardware jobs (again nearly 10 years ago) but even now, in that particularly narrow portion of the A/V world, the venerable Apple II holds its own (that’s a conviction of the state of affairs versus praise for the Apple II).
As for games, I don’t know what you mean. I can run anything you can run. :)
BGinCHI
@Soonergrunt: You’re a more skilled and technical user than I am, for sure. I don’t really do tech at all. Probably the Mac suits me because of the targeted stuff I do on a computer, which is admittedly far less than you do.
See, we can all get along.
BGinCHI
@jwb: That’s what I thought and that is why I’m considering getting one.
The big letdown is that the iPad doesn’t run a word processing program, that I’m aware of, that lets you do editing (or Track Changes in Word, for grading or commenting, say).
I bet they’ll fix this soon by MS offering Word for Pad, but I don’t think that’s available yet in any form, is it?
BGinCHI
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God: Totally agree they sold the large format WAY short. My regular Kindle screen is TOO SMALL, and I have great eyesight.
SP
@scottinnj- Thanks, they will take back Kindles within 30 days even if the package is opened. I do have to pay the return shipping.
Brachiator
I mentioned in a prior open thread that The big story after the elections may be the tech wars. You recently had google come out with a competitive 7 inch tablet. And now, Amazon has dropped a bomb with a slew of new Kindles..
Next up will be the next iteration of the smartphone wars. The new Nokia phones appear to be very good, but unable to get any attention. Apple is announcing their new iPhone on September 12, but there seem to be a rumble of tech writers who previously loved the iPhone who may be defecting to the Samsung III. A lot of people simply like the bigger screen, which makes the iPhone look, well, quaint by comparison. And after testing the phone for two months, tech writer Andy Inahtko noted that nearly every previous issue he had in the past with Android had been addressed.
And Badda Bing, Badda Boom, Amazon has acknowledged that Bing, not google, is the default search engine for its customized browser in their new Kindle Fires. And Apple won’t be using google maps anymore. Talk about your tech mob wars.
The complicating factor on the tablet side is that Amazon notes that its tablets are primarily ways to use Amazon services, so you have the strong tie to Amazon Prime. And while the google Nexus 7 tablet uses the latest Android operating system, Jellybean, the Amazon tablets use a heavily customized Ice Cream Sandwich. And it is not clear whether other Android apps will run as well on any Kindle Fire as on a Nexus 7 or other standard Android tablet.
Still, the prices for both the google and Amazon tablets are very good. You can order a Kindle Fire HD with 32 GB for $250, the price of a google Nexus 7 with 16 GB. Apple, on the other hand, might set their prices too high (to protect their iPod Touch line).
And, poor Microsoft, nobody is talking much about their tablets anymore, even though the specs on the supposedly soon to be released machines look pretty good.
danah gaz
@castellan: FYWP ate my post.
You must not have worked much with digital audio or you would have known I was referring to the only latency that ultimately matters.
My under 2ms latency I get for audio output from my box, even when applying massive amounts of audio processing into the chain. I’ve never needed pre-delay. This latency is the FINAL, rubber meets the road latency that rides on the shoulders of ALL OTHER bottlenecks (such as they are) in the system.
You’re making yourself sound ridiculous. Have a seat.
ASIO INPUT –> { processing, FX, etc } –> Asio output
Under 2ms end to end (I don’t know how much less because I don’t have tools to measure under 2ms)
jnfr
@WereBear:
We were in a similar state. We’d literally run out of walls for bookcases, so ebooks were a dream for us.
castellan
@BGinCHI: I don’t think being technical or non-technical is a good way to partition the experiences. As a DBA, I need to be able to monitor system resources, manage logs, look for intrusions, and do all the database maintenance and tuning that is required for such systems. Since SQL Server only runs on Windows, I’m forced to interact with it on a daily basis, but there are no built-in tools for doing such management in a quick/efficient/useful way (don’t mention PowerShell, please, because that thing is an awful mess).
I use a Mac for everything and if I need to do low-level maintenance or write a script so my wife can do things on her Mac, it’s a cinch. So at work–stuck in a Windows world–I did what I could do: I installed the SUA package (Subsystem for Unix Applications) and worked closely with the Microsoft team that supported it so I could get my database administration done. Now that SUA has been end-of-lifed, I’ve switched to Cygwin. I need a bash command line so I can manage numerous servers, database instances, and databases. I need to be sure backups are happening and I need to be able to script out my restores fast. When I ask other Windows admins what their System and Application logs look like (i.e. are they error-free, or not?) they give me blank stares because they hardly ever check them. But for me, it’s a daily task. And I’m using the same tools I’d use on the Mac, via SSH (instead of Remote Desktop), because I need efficiency.
Bottom line: for someone who is managing Windows systems; VMWare deployments; SQL Server databases; handling networking, backup, and disaster recovery; and getting it all done quickly so I’m not pointing-and-clicking my way around a GUI hell, I’ve had to bring all of my Windows deployments up to the level of a barebones Mac OS install. And I can do all of that via a text interface via my iPhone while camping somewhere that I barely get one bar of service (and am sometimes stuck on a crappy non-3G connection where a remote desktop session would choke and die).
I love my Mac not because I’m non-technical, or because I have some deep-rooted Windows hatred (I make my living from Microsoft software, after all), but because I don’t have to spend all that time fiddling and tweaking the OS just to make it usable.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Amanda in the South Bay: True dat. I never have to see ads or pop-ups on my PC. There easily blocked. The only “hassle” (and it’s a *tiny* one indeed) is the occasional need to allow pop ups on a site for which it’s a necessary function.
castellan
@danah gaz: You’re right: I haven’t done much digital audio, especially for 9+ years. My career changed track completely and I left that world behind. However, last time I spoke with some former colleagues, my statements were still true, even if they sound ridiculous to you.
Interestingly enough, it’s becoming clear to me that “the only latency that matters” is industry specific. I’ll defer to your audio latency knowledge since I haven’t had to deal with it in so long. When you’re a DBA, disk latency is “the only latency that matters.” :)
danah gaz
@castellan: Your sales pitch is falling on deaf ears. Most of us get plenty of ads in our life as it is without you coming in here and spewing your off-topic apple fanboy rants. We. Don’t. Care.
Plenty of apple users here. Plenty of PC users here. Nobody is going to switch because of the things you say.
(Although your software suite on windows is nothing short of laughable – it’s no wonder you hate windows – you use shit software on it – VMWare? Please.)
Anyway, stop trolling. This thread was about kindles. Not apple’s computers.
And no, the latency I mentioned isn’t specific to anything, other than digital audio. It’s universal in digital audio, by it’s very nature. INPUT -> DAW box -> OUTPUT is what matters in DAWs. Period.
And Another Thing…
@danah gaz: It’s also very handy to carry certain PDFs, like manuals for my cameras,etc. There are no ads Kindles. There’s an Amazon app for iPhone/iPad so I can use my Amazon content on iOs devices. There’s a Sibley bird book that is fabulous on my iPad. It’s in color, has easily searchable content and includes bird calls.
To me, the exciting aspect of smart phones etc is how fast & easy access to knowledge is… Lots of disagreements/discussions etc get settled or clarified on the spot. A couple of weeks ago my rightie brother was doing Republican talking points on soc1 alism and health care. I challenged his use of the word, one of his kids whipped out a phone to look the word up. It totally changed the nature of the discussion.
jwb
@BGinCHI: the iPad has Pages, which works perfectly fine as a general word processor and is very inexpensive. It does pretty much anything you need it to do to write a standard manuscript. Not sure how well it would do in handling tables and more complex objects like that (when it comes down to it, Word isn’t particularly good at handling tables either), but it has good page layout tools in general, much better than Word. The files from pages transfer more or less transparently to Word, though there are occasional font issues, and I haven’t tried transferring a complex document.
Grading would have to be done differently than you would using Word. If I go that route, I’ll have students submit PDFs and do markup using a PDF reader with good annotation tools. One thing that does not work at all is using the iPad in place of a hard copy of articles and books in class. I’ve tried using it in seminars, and it’s simply too hard to navigate multiple documents while discussing compared to hard copies. Or I don’t yet have enough practice to do it efficiently in the classroom setting.
castellan
@danah gaz: Yikes. Well, I guess if you want to be an asshole, OK. I’m sorry I got your feathers so ruffled. I didn’t mean to poke at a sore spot.
Weird that you’d pick on VMWare as laughable. I guess that much as I’m unfamiliar with current audio technologies, you’re unfamiliar with current enterprise and cloud computing technologies.
I wasn’t trying to pick a fight. Looks like we were both off-topic, and it seemed amiable enough at first. We can agree on two things, I think: I wouldn’t cut it as an audio tech and you wouldn’t cut it as a Windows system admin.
Brachiator
@BGinCHI:
People who have this view might want to check out episode 100 of the Mac Power Users podcast, available at their site, the 5by5 podcast site, and as an iTunes download.
I find it very useful to learn the ways that a range of people, especially people who are not in the tech industry, or who are not developers are rabid game players, use devices to get things done. Before I bought my iPad I learned a lot about its possibilities by watching some podcasts on the use of the device by medical students at UC Irvine. An entire incoming class of students were given iPads instead of laptops to use for coursework and labs.
Katie and David, by the way, are attorneys who use Macs and iPads extensively for work and home purposes. David Sparks has recently done an amazing ebook on going paperless.
I have an iPad, but no other Apple product, and use a Windows PC for work, so I am neutral in the unending Apple vs Whoever wars. I have an older Laptop running Windows XP, and some days I do not turn it on at all. I am impatient, can’t wait for it to boot up, and by the time it does, I have already used the iPad to check my email, review and and appointments on google calendar (linked to my PC at work and home) and outlined tasks for ongoing work assignments.
And the biggest thing for any tablet is the combination of portability and long battery life. I commute a lot and do some work in coffee shops with good wi fi. Tablets rule.
danah gaz
@And Another Thing…: LOL. I just visualized a world where smartphones make wingnut talking points obsolete. Maybe they’ll have to invent a whole new Internet just for them, so they can stay in their bubble.
I’ve considered getting a smartphone, so long as it has actual tactile keys, but I haven’t gotten around to it. My phone is a dumbphone, but at least it’s cheap and durable and has a slide out qwerty keypad.
I probably won’t get a Kindle just because I already have a nook. I don’t have anything against a kindle e-ink reader (so long as it’s ad-free), we got our nook because at the time it was cheaper, and did all the things we wanted (including PDF reading)…
danah gaz
@castellan: “Windows system admin.” LOL. My MCSD, MCSE, and 14 years in the field (including writing part of XP) begs to differ, but again, off topic. (SQL Server runs better on a raw partition – if you are so concerned about latency, BTW – also you need to add “spindles if latency is an issue, or better yet, a bunch of SSD devices).
Regarding VMWare: I was referring to the fact that you seemed to imply you were running it on your workstation, which is stupid. As far as maintaining a cloud, there’s no real alternative for virtualizing PC’s on an enterprise scale, but that’s NOT what you were talking about – or at least it didn’t seem to be.
WereBear
Got my MIL a Chromebook, which is along those lines. She’s coming along with it, bartering lessons for my 8 year old nephew’s use of it; he’s flat in love.
Computers are no longer necessary for much of the population; what they want is access to the internet and some games and apps. My husband’s cousin works for a non-profit, with the subsequent poverty, and smart phone is her phone, computer, camera, Facebook access; etc.
Dennis SGMM
@castellan:
I was, long ago, techie. Speakest thou Assembly Language? You are welcome to correct me if I am wrong but, I seem to recall that the current stable of MAC OS’s are based on the attachment of a nice GUI onto some flavor of BSD. The gripe from my still techie friends is that Apple has given back exactly dick to the Open Software Community.
castellan
@danah gaz: [citation needed] or it didn’t happen.
castellan
@Dennis SGMM: http://opensource.apple.com/
Dennis SGMM
@castellan:
Thank you for enlightening a corner of my (vast) ignorance. And I’m not being ironic. I suspect that your work may have touched on the Open Source community at one time or another. They are the only people who bitch as much as the folks like me who write comments on politics blogs.
castellan
@Dennis SGMM: No worries. I’d love them to contribute more, but at least they’re doing some, which is good.
danah gaz
@castellan: You’re asking me to reveal my meatspace identity in an online forum. Sorry, I won’t, since I wasn’t born yesterday. (Anyone that has followed this blog for any length of time knows I’m a hardcore techie) and why is it that you can anonymously post your credentials, but I can’t do the same? Double standard, much?
I started at MS in 1998 after deving since I was a kid.
I left MS later and worked for several outfits including Excell Data, Caldwell Banker Bain, Acrosonic, A Far Site Better, and others, and ended up back at MS eventually. The codename for XP was whistler while I was working there, and halloween looked like a star trek convention. You can get your certs for about $150 each at the Union Square building in downtown seattle, not far from the restaurant. As far as my SQL Server creds, I’ve been using T-SQL since 7, and used Oracle for a time (mostly 8i – mostly running on a sun 6600 enterprise machine that looks like a large purple refrigerator).
Anyway, that will have to be good enough.
castellan
@danah gaz: Nope. I’m just not claiming to have written part of Windows XP. Of course, practically speaking, I can concede that you might have developed part of XP. You being a developer explains to me why you’re such a poor system admin.
Fighting is over. I’ve agreed with plenty of your political viewpoints on this blog and I’m sure I still will. Your technical knowledge is dead to me, though.
Scout211
Like many here, I have a Kindle (Kindle Keyboard 3G without ads) and an iPad. The e-ink reading is far superior for my tired eyes than the backlit screen, especially at night and outdoors.
Amazon releases so many books for free (sometimes for only a short time) that I am not even worried that we will have to start paying sales tax here in CA next week. I have dozens of freebies waiting for me to read on my Kindle right now.
I do like my iPad, but not for reading. By the way, the Chrome browser for iPad is really great. I am not a Safari fan.
rammalamadingdong
My ten-year old niece has a Nook. The parents just discovered that she downloaded $1000 worth comic books, because ‘she just couldn’t stop.’ LOL
TaMara (BHF)
@BGinCHI: For business reasons, I just bought the newest Acer netbook and so far love it. Speed is great, keyboard is usable (I have a 17″ laptop, so the small keyboard is taking some getting used to) and it runs the software I need for business.
For $350, I get compact, travel worthy and fast enough. So far so good.
Though I am very tempted to upgrade my kindle now….
patrick II
Can you read gmail on the new ebook reader?
danah gaz
@castellan: “You being a developer explains to me why you’re such a poor system admin.”
Sniff… Some anonymous idiot bashes my sysadmin cred. I haz a sad. I’m sure glad my employers wouldn’t agree with you.
Dennis SGMM
@castellan:
Arguing over computer tech is such a fruitless task. Was a time when knowing COBOL, PASCAL, and FORTRAN made you king. Those days passed until Y2K (Made a pile with that one).
The only thing that I learned for sure from my years late in life in IT is that there’s always someone out there who’s smarter than you are and they will figure out a way to charge your employer a bundle.
danah gaz
@Dennis SGMM: LOL. FTW!
danah gaz
@rammalamadingdong: Generally it’s considered bad form to plug your credit card info into something your kid has unfettered access to. I hope they learned their lesson. =)
pseudonymous in nc
@BGinCHI:
A decent Bluetooth keyboard — one for $100 that also serves as a case — can work in those situations, though it’s fiddlier than a small laptop.
I actually bought a Nexus 7 to see how it works as a travel device. Might end up returning it if I don’t get on with the form factor or with Android on a tablet, but we’ll see. I may also try the Kindle paperwhite, though I’m still wedded to paper books; I’m still unconvinced by the Fire and its ecosystem, but I’m sure there are lots of people for whom it’s ideal.
Dennis SGMM
@Scout211:
I went ahead and paid Amazon the eighty bucks for a Prime membership. One of the perks is that many books are available to be borrowed to my Kindle touch fer free. Many out of copywrite books are also free for the downloading of them.
danah gaz
@pseudonymous in nc: “I’m still wedded to paper books”
Try e-ink sometime. Seriously. It’s amazing.
TheronWare
I can see Amazon giving the kindle away for free in the near future.
Ked
I ordered the new (5th-gen) Kindle reader immediately, with ads since honestly I haven’t much liked the lock-screen wallpaper on any Amazon device so far. I have a 2nd-gen model, skipped 3 because I didn’t like the buttons, skipped 4 because I hated the bezel color. The latest generation e-ink screen looks astonishingly white, I’m not counting on it matching the pictures but it’ll definitely be an upgrade. And the “frontlighting” is way too cool.
I got a Fire last winter and while it’s an okay little utility tablet, I’ve found myself chafing at being limited to the Amazon app store (Final Fantasy 3 is only in the Google Play store, and I’m too lazy to hack it), and it’s too small to do any actual work on. (Work defined as remote desktop sessions to Windows servers, mostly.)
…but I’m not going to buy another 7″ tablet, so the Nexus 7 and the smaller Fire 2’s are out. Not interested in buying into the Apple ecosystem so no iPads. I might get the larger Fire HD if there’s nothing better on the horizon by Thanksgiving, but what I’d really like is a “Nexus 9″, whenever Google gets around to putting a model like that together.
The real wildcard is what’s going to happen with the Windows 8 RT tablets which will show up in October. There have been rumors that Microsoft will undercut the market much like Amazon does in order to jumpstart their own app store, and it would almost certainly integrate better with my home and work PC’s. If there’s a 9-10″ W8 tablet in the $300 range, I’ll be looking at it. Even if I refuse to put Windows 8 on my desktop. (Those rumors were of an MS branded 9” at $200, though what I’ve seen on OEM W8 RT licensing makes me expect that’s a crock unless MS wants to destroy 3rd-party tablet makers from the start. Which isn’t impossible, but they’re going to need all the help they can get with the W8 launch.)
danah gaz
@patrick II: I think if you want to do that kind of thing you are probably better off getting a tablet, or at least a tablet/reader hybrid like the Kindle Fire (i’m near certain you can check your email on that)… I’m not saying you won’t be able to check your mail on a reader (especially a jailbroken reader) but basically:
1. Once you abandon e-Ink for an LCD you’re approaching tablet territory anyway.
2. Can anyone honestly deny that wanting to check your email will lead to wanting to do other interactive internet stuff? A tablet is better suited for that.
Van
A friend at work has a Kindle Fire and it’s pretty amazing. It may be a little under powered for some things, but when I see her play with it I want one. And my dad has an Ipad which I don’t think is that great.
danah gaz
@Van: Well, in defense of the iPad, it’s shiny. =)
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@BGinCHI:
I’m confused. Are you talking about popups and ads while browsing or while using the operating system?
pseudonymous in nc
@danah gaz:
I have. I don’t doubt the tech; I like the quietness of e-ink.
Judging from my friends who are avid readers with massive physical libraries and were initially just as sceptical, I haven’t spent enough time with one for it to click. But I’m also aware of the woeful state of e-book design right now — and the laziness of many publishers’ digital work — and that still niggles me as much as a badly-chosen font or sloppy layout or crappy printing on a physical book.
danah gaz
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I think the fact that you even had to ask that question illustrates why they use an Apple.
Brachiator
@danah gaz:
People are funny. Among some of my fellow commuters, “the Internet” means email and Facebook. And that’s it.
Another commuter won an iPad 2, and used it as a Bible reader and to take an occasional instructional video for her seniors yoga class. Then she decided that the iPad was too heavy, and went back to using her iPhone.
In his pitch for the new Kindles, Jeff Bezos kept pushing Amazon services. There is a browser in the new Kindle Fires, and a version of Skype is baked into it, but the company appears to be betting that users are not going to be doing a lot of general Internet use, even with the LTE connectivity in the higher end, larger tablet.
As an aside, I think this will be the first time that Kindle Fires will be available outside the US. It will be interesting to see what the user reaction will be.
danah gaz
@pseudonymous in nc: You make a fair point. I’m hoping it gets better as well. For me, the sloppiness of some of the titles is outweighed by the portability, the durability (no cracked spines, dried out glue and missing pages), and the ability to travel with a massive library in case I’m not sure what I want to read when I leave. For those reasons, I switched. The display is a HUGE factor in that, since LCD contributes to eye fatigue compared to my e-ink display. I absolutely adore that.
danah gaz
@Brachiator: As far as I can tell, it seems to me that the Kindle Fire is slowly evolving into a tablet. IIRC, you can play videos on it, browse the web, etc. so I don’t see a lot of difference between a Fire and a lower end tablet. I’ll never use one as a reader just because the lack of e-Ink is a deal breaker for me. Eventually, if someone offers a tablet with color e-Ink and at least 30 frames per second refresh at a price I could afford, I’d snap it up in a New York minute – but that’s a long way off. LCD just doesn’t cut it for extended periods of reading, IMO.
Brachiator
@Ked:
The early rumors were that the Microsoft tablets would be close to the iPad with respect to pricing. And even though the new tablets seem to be important to Microsoft, their marketing has been odd and unfocused. There have been some grumblings that Windows 8 tablets will not necessarily interoperate as smoothly with Win 8 desktops as some expect. It’s not clear whether some notable Windows evangelists (e.g., the folks on the Windows Weekly podcast) have been able to do much hands on with the devices and whether Microsoft is still doing some last minute tweaking.
I thought that the tablets were set for an October release, so I am betting that we will hear significantly more after the September 12 Apple iPhone announcement and well before the rumored Apple iPad show in October.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Brachiator:
Are you referring to the distinction between x86 and WinRT tablets?
jwb
@Scout211: Chrome runs on the Safari engine on the iPad, and so it doesn’t solve the most irritating aspects of that engine. BJ on the iPad, for instance, keeps jumping back to the first comment until the site fully loads (which for some reason takes a long time), and this happens in both Safari and Chrome. I presume that is a Safari engine problem combined with the usual FYWP issues.
Davis X. Machina
If the screen isn’t matte, I’m not interested. This is the one thing that’s kept me off iPads from the jump, and it’s the one thing that the e-ink Kindles shine at.
gnomedad
I wish I could send in dead-tree books for recycling and have them upgraded (downgraded? sidegraded?) to e-books for a fee.
trollhattan
@Davis X. Machina:
Heh, Kindles shine because they’re matte. It’s funny because it’s true. Have a white screen Kindle and a Fire–both gifts. The first Kindle is the keyboard 3G model and the browser is worthless, unlike my Fire and its somewhat usable browser, but readability of the eink screen is far, far better.
Hey, if they’ve illuminated it, all the better.
One unifying aspect of tablets–they suck for typing.
gnomedad
@trollhattan:
Just FYI; I have not used Touchfire.
Central Planning
@mattH: I think you’re mis-informed about the Kindle, at least the older ones.
I use a program called calibre to add 3rd party e-books to my Kindle, plus add tons of free classics to it. Also, there are plenty of free books on amazon.com
You can also pay to get the ads removed. I think it’s $20 or $30 or something like that. Frankly, the ads don’t bother me.
Brachiator
@danah gaz:
I am not sure what you mean by lower end tablets. Before the earlier Kindle Fire, Android tablets simply did not sell very well. The google Nexus 7 is a breakout success, but I am not aware of any other 7 inch tablet that runs Jellybean.
I keep watching tech people on video podcasts such as “All About Android” bashing the Kindle Fire for not being a real tablet, not offering the true Android experience, not being worth rooting, etc. I don’t know. I don’t care that much. But I get a sense that Amazon mainly wants to make their services available everywhere and on any device. They offer special features, such as free book rentals, on their own Kindle devices, but otherwise, Amazon doesn’t much care about “optimizing” a tablet experience. They might be just as happy if you forgot that you were using a tablet.
I had an earlier Kindle model, but stopped using it for reading once I got an Ipad. Maybe I am ruining my eyes, but using it for reading is not a problem. However I note that the vast majority of people I see on my commute and elsewhere use traditional Kindles and Nooks for e-reading, although there are a considerable group who use Kindle apps on their smartphones, which I could never do, even if I owned a smartphone.
A side note, I do not know if the traditional Kindles do audio books well. Amazon is touting the Kindle Fires for use with the Audible audiobook service and for the ability to sync an audiobook and ebook.
And e-Ink or LCD, I wish that somebody would do more with respect to e textbooks.
jenn
I have a Nook tablet that I love – it works really well for what I want it to do, plus it supports real, live bookstore floor space. And as someone who wants paper versions of her favorite books, and who loves to poke around on shelves, that’s important to me!
Brachiator
@Amanda in the South Bay:
Both have been discussed on recent episodes of Tech News Today and Windows Weekly, but to be honest I am just aware of the general cautions, but did not follow the details of the discussion.
But I am presuming that more of this will become clear as we get closer to the purported October release date for Microsoft’s OS and tablets.
N W Barcus
@mistermix: For all of you mentioning ads, the ads on the Fire devices are on the lock screen.
They’re also on the home screen so you can look at them every time you use the Kindle.
@Central Planning: You can also pay to get the ads removed. I think it’s $20 or $30 or something like that.
Not on the Kindle Fire. The ads are subsidizing the low cost of the device.
Maude
Amazon is behind the curve on this. There are different Nooks. Where’s Steep when I do this? There is also a glow light you can put on one of the Nooks.
Nooks have wifi to download and use the internet.
DRM is chosen by the publisher.
There are plenty of ebooks for free.
There are quite a few ereaders to choose from. Kobo is one.
What is lacking is the buy the hardcover and get a real discount on the ebook.
Text books need a larger screen and there are rumors that B&N is trying to come up with one.
Me, I am on my lovely “new” refurb laptop with XP Pro. I chose it over Win 7.
danah gaz
@Brachiator: “I am not sure what you mean by lower end tablets”
I mean tablets with a cheap cpu, an off-brand OS, a cheaply built enclosure, or all of the above. (I’m not saying that Kindle is necessary guilty of anything other than the CPU bit).
You can buy a budget tablet at a drugstore these days. I imagine they’ll end up in a happy meal soon enough.
Brachiator
@jenn:
But here’s the sad thing. Book stores and news stands are disappearing, and there is an increasing shift to ebooks. The Barnes and Noble on the west side of Los Angeles, with strong book reading habits and high disposable incomes, recently closed down.
And interesting collateral damage. A few years ago, Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena expanded its pens, personal stationery and holiday cards section into a separate building. They recently shut this down and moved a much smaller section back into the bookstore.
Have smartphones and tablets and email and Facebook killed the need for personal stationery and greeting cards?
As an aside, my teenage nieces and nephews have never written a personal letter on a piece of paper in their entire lives. If you tell them that people used to write letters to friends and mail the letters at the post office, they look at you in amazement, as if you are describing someone in the Stone Age hunting gazelle with a spear and a bow.
Maude
@Dennis SGMM:
I haven’t read open source sites with the fights in a long time. I had forgotten.
I don’t read tech sites much.
I have looked up DEC from time for nostalgia. I have one and it is sitting here in need of a motherboard. Other than that, it works. I haven’t replaced the board yet. Maybe later in autumn. It was given to me many moons ago.
danah gaz
@Brachiator: The endless march of technology is not without it’s casualties.
Factories are shuttered, and new factories take their places.
Jobs are lost, and new jobs take their places.
etc.
Such as it’s always been.
Can you imagine the moaning from the horse-drawn carriage industry (not to mention horse breeders in general) when cars started taking over? I’m guessing it wasn’t pretty.
Dennis SGMM
@Maude:
During my time I had a DEC (Alpha?). It ran WINNNT 3.something and it was amazing. One thing I remember was that it ran hot.
Brachiator
@danah gaz:
I don’t know anyone who has bought one of these low end tablets and have never seen one in the wild.
People buy lower end smartphones and feature phones because they can still perform their core functions well.
Cheap tablets and cheap net books are sucker bait shunned by the vast majority of people. And most tech reviews of these products typically conclude with a “don’t buy this” caution. Consumer Reports does regular reviews of tablets. I do not think that they include the low end tablets in their reviews or summary tables.
You give a kid a cheap tablet with a happy meal, and I bet that it would end up chucked in the trash. Any self respecting kid would prefer a toy, an iPad or a google Nexus 7.
danah gaz
@Brachiator: I won’t argue with that.
And, aside from the advertisements (I’m biased, and have done EVERYTHING in my power to strip ads and branding from my life) I’m not so much opposed to the Kindle Fire, I’m just unimpressed.
Also, I should add that as far as I’m concerned once you go from e-ink to LCD then the primary appeal of an e-reader is destroyed. Again, this is my opinion. If I couldn’t get an e-ink device I may as well use a netbook (or a tablet) for reading books on the go – and in that regard, paper books are much more appealing.
castellan
@Dennis SGMM: Yep. Touched a nerve….
rageahol
They also have removed the audio jack, meaning that these devices are useless for visually impaired people. So yeah, nice hardware i guess, but shafting handicapped people, not cool. fuck Bezos.
more here, though i have no connection to the blog other than a bit of fanboi-ism.
JGabriel
__
__
danah gaz:
Yes, that’s why I added a remote. Also, you can extend the touch gestures past the screen with something like Kinect technology; implement gaming features into the remote such that it’s something like a combo remote and gaming wand; and add voice activated search, help and navigation, like Siri.
Basically, it would be a broadcast and cable TV killer, with all entertainment/news/etc. coming through a large screen internet console designed mostly for passive viewing, albeit capable of much greater interaction than TV. We’re more than halfway there already, I think.
.
Brachiator
@danah gaz:
Actually, what I have been seeing over the past several years, even in a relatively strong state like California, is that factories close, jobs are lost, and either nothing replaces it or lower wage jobs replaces it.
Of course, some of the people who made carriages and bicycles moved into the auto, motorcycle and aircraft industries. It was both frightening and exciting for many people. But I take your larger point.
Technological and social change can be very disruptive. But the adjustments can be hard and leave long lasting scars.
PaulW
…no one even complained about me trying to hawk my ebooks. (cries) (breaks out the sad kitty expression) (tries to induce wave of guilt upon commentators)
WereBear
I totally understand bemoaning the passing of “real” books but we are in the midst of the most transformative technology since the wheel and that’s just the way it’s gonna be. For a lot of things.
We had two bookstores within 15 minutes of our little town. One of them just kept doing the same thing until it went under, despite me trying to tip them off to The Future.
The other is still doing pretty well; it expanded into art supplies and journals and writing implements, became an outlet for Google Books, and aggressively pushes author signings, has a website and a Facebook page and an email list to let people know about what is going on.
It’s going to cost a lot of money, going forward, to chop down trees and truck them to be pulped up and truck them to be made into paper and truck them to a place where ink gets smashed on them and truck them to a warehouse which will truck them to a store where they are sold.
We’re looking at hardbacks going for sixty and seventy and eighty bucks at that point; and nobody is going to do well at that point.
Maude
@Van:
The iPad is easy to drop out of your hands.
danah gaz
@WereBear: I like your “truck them” paragraph because it so perfectly reflects something I almost always think about every time I activate my nook. There’s definitely room for improvement, but I think it’s safe to say that the switch to digital media can reduce the environmental impact of books.
As the world changes, businesses and people will either adapt or die. It’s a rough gig, but it’s a necessary one. If there’s one constant that defines our universe, it’s change.
Not all change is good. Obviously, the Citizens United decision was terrible and changed our democracy for the worse.
But the rise of the Internet, and all of the sweeping change that comes along with it (including the e-reader phenomenon) is almost certainly a net win for humanity. Ultimately, it’s a new age, and the change is dramatic, and sometimes crushing, but it’s a vital component of our evolution. There will be disasters in it’s wake, but also triumph. We’re turning the page. =)
Brachiator
@rageahol:
Good observations. I wonder, though, how popular Kindle devices are with the visually impaired. I also wonder whether publishers and authors complained about TTS. I don’t know what royalty payments are like compared to audiobooks. It’s often a cruel marketplace, and there are very few angels. But this does create opportunities for other device makers.
By the way, thanks for the link. I am very much interested in how libraries adapt to the digital age. Are you familiar with the Librarian in Black?
http://librarianinblack.net/librarianinblack/
jackmac
I’ll confess to really liking gadgets and own a Kindle reader, Nook, Lenovo tablet and a first-generation iPad. I’ll be in bed and comfortably read a book on a Kindle or Nook. But those devices — along with the Lenovo tablet — are otherwise seriously restricted for any other use by that 7-inch screen.
The iPad is my workhorse — for browsing, email and writing (I’m a freelance journalist), music as well as games. It’s the larger screen, reliability and track record, plus integrated Apple and other apps that make it the winner.
WereBear
I know three people who got Kindles because they could bump up the font size and read anywhere, no matter their glasses status.
Scout211
@jwb:
Thank you for this info. We are new to the iPad so I am just learning. I thought that jumpy thing was because we have satellite Internet at home–very slow.
My husband got the iPad free from his university–they are moving to an all online summer school catalogue and I guess they needed a bribe to get the old school profs trained for online teaching. Don’t get me started about how sad that is for college profs who love to connect with students in the classroom . . .
We share devices so we use different browsers on each. I was just happy to find I could use chrome since he has been a mobile me user forever and has a million bookmarks on Safari.
This is a really informative thread. Thanks BJers,
Maude
@rammalamadingdong:
87 So much for easier said than done.
Passwords are a parent’s friend.
But, it is funny.
WereBear
I’m a Taoist: Change is the only constant.
My interest in The Future has been active my whole life, but like Cassandra, it does not make me popular sometimes. Like I tell my MIL how all shopping will become virtual in the next 20 years, and she complains that she likes shopping “real world,” going to a big building they have to heat and cool and stock with people.
And I say, “What makes you think they care what you think?”
Maude
@WereBear:
Internet shopping has gotten more popular.
I do know that a lot of people don’t like learning new things. I found that out the hard way.
danah gaz
@WereBear: =)
Speaking as a recovering Buddhist, I wholeheartedly agree.
It’s people’s attachment to the way things are that cause them pain. =P
Brachiator
@WereBear:
Oh, absolutely.
I was wondering how much text to speech (TTS) was used by visually impaired Kindle owners.
BTW, my mother loves her Kindle. She has actually started reading more because of it. And the irony is that thanks to some recent surgeries, her eyesight is better than mine.
As an aside, I wonder if ebooks have knocked a big dent in the large text book market?
@WereBear:
Of course, there used to be a lot of jobs here, including that of the clerk who ultimately sold you the book.
And producing ereaders and tablets, and dealing with discarded older models, is not environmentally friendly. No easy answers here, unfortunately.
BruceFromOhio
Kid saved her money, bought her own Kindle. Us oldsters all run XP on refurbs at home, but the Kindle is always a hit on long car rides as we try to steal it from eachother.
Finally we all agreed it was acceptable to take turns reading it aloud.
My Mac Cube sits sadly abandoned, occasionally fired up for jukebox duty.
I love tech posts, everybody has so much interesting shit nowadays, and freely writes about it.
Carol from CO
I bought a kindle touch last year when library books became available for them. Since then, 3 publishers are refusing to sell eBooks to libraries. My library has a notice up to this effect. The publishers are MacMillan, Simon & Schuster, and Penguin. I used the links provided by the library to send off nasty notes to each one (I did try to be civil) and received a response from Penguin. They said they were experimenting with a 3M cloud thingy that they hoped to use to provide books to libraries at some point in the future. They will be introducing the concept at the NYC and Brooklyn libraries at some point.
I’m passing this along in case this is an important issue for some of you. It makes me furious for them to treat libraries, which are going through hard times anyway, so shabbily.
I love my KT, but may spring for the new reader with the light.
Corpsicle
It seems that there will be two kinds of Windows tablets. One runs on x86, and will run windows desktop and the touch interface formerly known as Metro. This will compete with MacBook Airs so will probably be in the same price range. The second runs on cheap ARM processors, and will only run the touch interface. This one will compete with higher end tablets like the iPad, again presumably in the same price range.
Darkrose
@BGinCHI: I bought an Air a few months ago, and I love it. It’s so much lighter than my primary laptop, which is designed for gaming. I’ve got Scrivener on it, so I can actually take it somewhere and write.
I have the 11″, which only works because I have very small hands. For most people, I’d say get the 13″.
BethanyAnne
@castellan: Yeah, looks like that was taken **really** fucking personally. On the other hand, it sure is nice to have an absolute expert on all technology here. Relaxing, even.
Maude
@BethanyAnne:
Isn’t everyone here a tech expert? /snark
BethanyAnne
@Maude: Not the expert that danah gaz is!
djheru
No GPS = deal killer
PeterJ
1. I want an e-reader that is as dead as a book is. No 3G. No WiFi. Just a book that’s digital, no distractions. If I want to buy a book I can do it from my computer. Transferring books to the reader with a cable, that’s no hassle. Nor do I need to be able to buy a book within 60 seconds.
2. The 8 weeks battery is if you use it for 30 min/day. So, in reality, it’s a 28 hours battery. Nothing wrong with a 28 hour battery, but I just wish they could be a bit less dishonest in their ads and information.
Gromit
@jwb:
Yeah, this is really annoying, but if you tap on the title of the post instead of on the comments link, you don’t get this behavior.
Rena
@BGinCHI: You might want to look at the soon to come Microsoft Surface hybrid machine.
Steeplejack
@danah gaz:
Yeah (as I’m sure you know), the Nook has a feature where you can require password entry before each purchase. Would have saved those people a bundle.
Steeplejack
@PaulW:
You must be the most hapless hawker ever. Would it have killed you to put in an actual link to your book(s) at Amazon or B&N or wherever? Or, God forbid, a blurb or a short description? Or is everybody supposed to automatically troop off to the site linked in your nym?
. . . Jeez, I just trooped off to the site linked in your nym, and I can’t even find your e-books there. WTF?! Give us a fucking clue.
Central Planning
I know this thread is mostly dead, but Amazon is letting you pay to remove the ads from the fire
“Amazon caves in, will remove ads from Kindle Fire for $15 fee”