Last night I was over at my brother’s house helping him unload a brand new snow blower. Given the way the fluffy white flakes have been falling all day today, I bet he is glad to have bought it. After our work was done, we retreated into the warmth of his house where my wife played with his daughter, and Joe showed me his other special child: his newest Kindle. Yeah, this one: Kindle 3.
For comparison, he handed me his Kindle 2. I perused a book on both while he enumerated the features and we argued about whether it was better to sell his old Kindle on eBay or Craigslist. (As a frequent eBay seller, I supported the online marketplace. He preferred the down home local feel of Craigslist.) As I held the Kindle in my hands, I admit that I was very impressed with the craftsmanship and the texture of the device. The text was clear and easy to read; the font lines were crisp and unblurred. The “pages” turned quickly, and the device was light in the hand.
I own a 3G iPad, a device I use constantly and value highly. The first thing I thought when my brother placed his new Kindle in my hands was that I couldn’t see the text. There was only dim lighting in the room (mostly his Christmas tree) and the Kindle has no backlight. Being used to my brilliant iPad display, I was immediately frustrated to not be able to see the screen in low light. Next, a message of some sort appeared on the screen, and I instinctively reached up to touch the “x” in the upper corner of the message to make it disappear, before belated remembering that the Kindle is not a touch screen device, and my brother pointed to the rather obvious keys put beneath the display for such purposes as typing and selecting. But, once a light was turned on near to me, and after Joe helpfully produced his little Kindle reading lamp, I could see everything just fine.
Despite being an admitted Apple fanboy and an iPad lover, I see obvious and distinct advantages to owning a Kindle. It is an excellent device, especially the 3G version. The 3G is free, and useable world-wide. I once used the 3G connection on my iPhone in Italy while on vacation (mostly the Maps app to navigate the incredibly confusing Venice streets) and incurred a hefty data fee while browsing the local cellular data network. So, the free world-wide 3G connection is definitely a bonus. But, even my unfortunate incurring of a large bill shows why the iPad is superior to the Kindle: my brother can only read on his Kindle. He can’t find his way back to Grand Canal when lost in Venice. I can watch movies, view photos, surf the web, type this blog post, look up recipes, play games, tweet, mail, and a thousand other things on my iPad. And I can do it in full color. Even reading books, I can see illustrations in full color. The Kindle is only black and white.
If reading were all one wanted to do, I could understand owning a Kindle over an iPad (for one thing, the cost of a Kindle is a fourth of the iPad’s price tag) but I can’t see opting for Amazon’s Kindle in a world were very few only want to read on a mobile device. In order to afford my iPad, I sold a Macbook that was barely 2 years old, a decision I have not once regretted. I can do everything I ever did on my Macbook on my iPad (and some things I couldn’t), and without the weight, heat, and shorter battery life. As for reading digitally, given the current status of the eBook market (small selection, and relatively high pricing) eReading simply isn’t that feasible right now. I have whole shelves of books that I love to read that I cannot download in the iBookstore, Kindle store, Nook store, or any other digital book store, and haven’t the time or patience to locate in decently pirated iteration. My number one most looked forward to app on the iPad was indeed the iBooks app, but after seven and a half months, I barely read on my iPad. If I had purchased a Kindle, I fear the money would have been wasted. The overwhelming amount of apps available for the iPad make it a much more valuable device. As is already cliche to say: there is an App for that. If you want to do it, chances are you can download an app that let’s you. Usually you have more than one option.
I can control my entire media library with the touch of a finger, push it onto my HDTV via my TV, browse my iMac for content, and do anything else that I routinely do in cyberspace, all with a device that I can hold with one hand. None of that is possible with a Kindle, and I believe that in a world where more people are doing more things with digital devices, an electronic book reader will be swallowed up by devices that allow their users to read — and everything else. I find this disappointing to say, mostly because the newest Kindle is so well designed, but a great design, if unneeded, is ultimately a useless design.
But, even the most versatile of devices, such as the iPad, is overkill if all one wants to do is curl up and read digitally. And the Kindle allows anyone to do just that — with elegance.
a simple man 