Why the Kindle is Not An Endgadget
The Kindle is a technological marvel that has the potential to greatly enhance our relationship with written content — its amazing battery life and lack of eye strain could make digital reading a much deeper and intellectually satisfying experience. For these reasons, an e-reader will soon appear that will be as widely implemented as PCs and iPods.
However, most of the Kindle’s potential remains untapped. The productivity and communication potential for a mobile platform with a reliable wireless connection, long battery life, and no reading fatigue are almost endless. Unfortunately the device is too closed to reach its full potential, closed to both developers and content providers. Amazon could learn something from Apple, who succeeded greatly by allowing customers’ existing music collections to freely live side by side with purchases from iTunes. Apple has also had a huge amount of success openning up to developers with its app store, where third party content (both free and payed) is available to users. Such a business model has proved so successful that it is now being copied by almost every company that offers a competing mobile platform — every company besides Amazon.
Related posts:
- The Nook: Perfect Mobile Device for Text or Virtual Bookstore The release of the Barnes and Noble Nook should have...
- Is the Kindle Killing Publishing? The fight between Macmillan and Amazon over the price of...
- Short Stories As Singles? The NY Times’ Paper Cuts blog recently pointed out the...
- Harold Bloom on the Internet Jesse Pearson recently interviewed our most infamous professor of college...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
