August 27th, 2009 by K. T. Bradford
Over on MacWorld, Jeff Bertolucci lists several ways in which the Apple Tablet (which is still just a rumor… right) will be better than current eReaders, thus sending them to the trasheap of history where they belong:
…let’s assume the tablet… has a 10-inch backlit display… If so, it would provide a better ergonomic experience than the Amazon Kindle 2, which lacks backlighting and a touchscreen. Let’s also assume the tablet’s display will have a higher screen resolution than the Kindle’s 600 x 800 pixels, and that it’ll do a better job of managing PDF files.
While better management of PDFs would be welcome, I think Bertolucci has forgotten one of the main reasons why eReaders and eInk exists: computer displays are not the best for reading. I wouldn’t want a Kindle display on my netbook, but I do want a Kindle display on my eReader. Very much. So do my eyes. If laptop displays were acceptable for eReaders I don’t think the market would have struggled for so long nor would the devices be so pricey.
I agree that the unitasking nature of the Kindle and other eReaders is a hindrance, and I suspect that I’ll do a lot of eBook reading on a tablet in the near-future. But that will be despite the backlit, higher-resolution screen, not because of it.
Voracious readers already have multiple choices when it comes to reading on-screen: smartphones, PDAs, even netbooks (flipping my PDFs sideways and holding my netbook like a real book is great). I know people who’ve been reading eBooks since before the Kindle came out on their Palm handheld devices. But the eReader market has grown stronger as devices improved, and will continue to do so. I don’t see the Apple Tablet completely overshadowing them.
Later in the piece, Bertolucci claims that Apple also has an edge over Sony because they’ve got the iTunes store and can sell books as easily as they sell music and video. Maybe he’s not aware that sources say Apple won’t be selling eBooks. Even if they decide to, the Sony eReader isn’t limited to just what’s in their eBook Store. Any bookstore that wishes to sell eBooks in the EPUB format is open to Reader owners. Users aren’t locked in to one piece of software or one website for their purchases, and consumers appreciate that.
I’m sure the Apple Tablet will serve as an eReader for many, but to say that Apple will dominate eBooks the way it dominated electronic music is an overstatement. If it was that simple, any tablet could have claimed the prize.
Image Credit: Smarter Gadgets Blog
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5 Responses to “Apple Tablet Set To Destroy eBook Readers? Not So Fast…”
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August 27th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Garbage! E-book readers are crap since they are 1 trick ponies and don’t have backlighting or color in most cases! Who gives a crap about “wispernet”? I can have WWAN access with a full res screen that is backlit and can do so many other things. The main hurdle is the price point. Since it’s an Apple device, you are going to pay the usual 3-4x the cost of what the hardware included should run because it has their logo and their locked down OS on it. To credit the iPhone though, only the morons that want separate devices for phone, music, nav, etc. will want separate ebook readers. Why would you want that when you could have a single device in its class and scale that does everything??? And fairly well at most of that! AT LEAST the iPhone is subsidized. Apple manages to sell a ton of their gear to ignorant sheeple and some smarties (read elitist) alike but I know they COULD sell TONS more if they would swallow their pride and TRULY lower the price to be competitive instead of ridiculous. I guess we will know how things turn out soon enough. Apple won’t survive forever on wit alone…
August 27th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
I’m not very familiar with this rumored Mac tablet, but if the picture hints at what it might be like I see a huge drawback. It looks like half the screen is covered up with the digital touch-screen keyboard. I suppose most browsing these days is point and click, but I could just see myself, a heavy typer, having to move too many screens around just to get the text positioned so it’s not blocked by the giant keyboard.
I don’t see any one platform dominating e-books in the future either. The fact that Sony supports the cross-platform EPUB format hints that things will be much more varied and interesting. E.g., it doesn’t matter how I read my email, whether from Outlook, Mozilla, Gmail, Yahoo, or Squirrel Mail. I can still *read* it. Same, I believe, will go for e-books. Use your client at your leisure. At least, that is my eager hope.
August 27th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
The image above is just a concept. This Apple tablet doesn’t even officially exist yet, so there’s no telling what the screen and UI will look like.
Also, I agree. ebooks should be like any other form of text data. Read it on any device with any program you like and your preference determines which wins out in the end.
August 28th, 2009 at 4:52 am
When all the kindle rage began I for one was envious of my southern counterparts in the USA who had kindle while we Canadians had squat. Now we have Sony readers in Canada and after demoing one at the Sony Store I can honestly say I WOULD NEVER ever consider buying a Sony reader. In a span of 20 minutes the reader locked up on me not once but twice and an embarrassed sales clerk was forced to reboot the device. My opinion is if I’m going to pay 300 dollars Canadian for a e book reader I shouldn’t have to worry about the hardware locking up, neither should I have to wait 6 to 7 seconds for a simple page flip and neither should I have to wait anywhere from a minute to 90 seconds for a simple 30 page book exert to load up. To compound the problem the Sony readers PDF support is both shoddy and painfully slow and you can’t zoom to read any small print on a PDF file.
The kindle although I have heard little in negative feedback pertaining to how its hardware functions has one HUGE drawback that scares me away from buying it even if it did come to Canada. With kindle you can only read e books in the kindle format and that’s it. What happens say 10 years down the road if I decide I don’t want to use kindle and decide I want another type of e book reader? The answer to that question is I’m S.O.L and any money I used to purchase a kindle format e book is gone down the drain.
The drawbacks to an Itablet is that Apple loves to sock it to the customer price wise and because it will have a back lit screen it will be nearly impossible to read a e book under direct sunlight never mind watch a movie or play a video game. This being said I WOULD STILL rather pay the one time exorbitant cost of a Itablet and have a device that’s both concrete in its design (lets face it the itouch iphone and ipod has shown that Apple can design a good device when they so choose to) and gives me the options of multiple tasks such as music, movies, games e books comic books surfing and whatever else I deemed useful for my personal use by simply using their apps store.
Although I doubt that the e book reader is doomed I strongly doubt it will ever move forward beyond a small niche product or at least it won’t in its present form. E book readers are still far to primitive in their design and performance and bring to little to the table to warrant me shelling out 300, 200 or even 150 for the devices. Whether people like it or not the SON OF NEWTON (nickname some apple heads have given the itablet) will very much squeeze both the e reader market as well as the net book market. Once it finally gets released Apples CEO Jobs is going to be laughing all the way to the bank.
September 7th, 2009 at 5:00 am
I’ve been reading ebooks on my iPhone since day one using Stanza and Kindle and must say that it’s very easy on the eyes. The backlit screen allows me to read at night without disturbing my wife and I can listen to music at the same time, not to mention not missing any phonecalls. One thing I can wish for is a bigger screen and that’s exactly what the Apple tablet will provide. The battery life isn’t too good either. The eee reader that Asus anounced today will have a 2 screen display making it maybe more attractive than the tablet especially if it has a low price and high battery life.