Amazon Kindle - Criticisms With Which I Agree
Having laid out my case for disagreeing with many of the criticisms of the Amazon Kindle... I do have a few complaints of my own.
Poor button design
Perhaps it's not fair for me to come to this conclusion without ever holding a Kindle in my own hands... But I can see a lot of merit in the many complaints that the paging buttons are too large and too easy to press by accident. There are also complaints that the buttons are unintentionally pressed when the leather cover is closed. Finally, just looking at the pictures, it's difficult to see many options for different ways to hold the thing without accidentally hitting buttons. The edges are all buttons and the front real estate is either screen or more buttons.
It has been reported that the Kindle is meant to be used with the leather cover in place, and that this gives you more options on where to place your hands. However I don't think that users should be forced to operate the device in the cover. The vast majority of marketing images and videos show the Kindle being operated without the cover. Indeed, it is also reported that the cover does not hold the Kindle very securely in the first place Velcro is suggested by one reviewer as a solution.
Velcro? That's crazy talk.
I will withhold final judgement until I actually use the Kindle. But at this point it seems to me that Sony has a better usability design.
Plastic Case
The white plastic looks cheap to me. Sony's metal case looks much more sturdy, and I doubt that it makes a big difference in weight.
Misleading pricing
When browsing the Kindle Store, it is common to see books listed as being at a 60%+ discount off of the list price. Take for example An Inconvenient Book which as a print list price of $26.00 and a Kindle price of $9.99, a 62% savings. However if you look at Amazon's actual price for a print copy of the book, they actually sell it for $15.60. So the actual savings on the electronic version is actually much smaller.
Now, I admit that the discount off of the list price is completely technically accurate. They are not lying. But come on, that's lame. It's not like I'm asking them to do a MySimon search and tell me all of the prices for the book that exist at various others stores. I would just like to know what the real savings is based upon the price on their very own store!
Bad show Amazon. Treat your customers with more respect. Especially your early adopters.
Bundled Pricing
I really expected to see bundled pricing between print books and Kindle books. I even harbored dreams that the bundled pricing might be retroactive. If I have paid for a print copy of the book, I shouldn't have to pay full price for the Kindle version. The publishers made the decision to have confidence in their DRM, lets see some payoff for the customer and give us deep discounts on books that they know we already purchased.
Yes, there is potential for abuse. But there is also potential for providing a lot more value to customers, increasing sales and building goodwill with readers.
Ambiguous PDF Support
PDFs can be converted for use of the Kindle, either by having Amazon convert them with an "experimental" service or by converting them yourself with Mobi Creator.
Not good. PDFs are a very commonly used publishing standard. A electronic book reader needs to support them fully right out of the gate. Yes, there are challenges in rendering the exacting layout of a PDF file on an e-ink screen. But that is why we are paying the big bucks. It should have been in there.
The really odd thing is that Amazon bought MobiPocket years ago. It is MobiPocket's software that can convert PDFs into a Kindle friendly format. It seems odd that this already existing technology did not make it into the Kindle in a production ready form.
No text to speech
I really think this was a missed opportunity. The Kindle has the text and it has the ability to play audio. Built in text to speech would have been a fantastic feature and it sure seems to have been within their grasp. Perhaps it will be added in a patch at some point in the future.
Next up... There are many things that the Kindle knocked out of the park. I want to give some credit where it is due.
3 comments:
I can totally understand why they would leave out text-to-speech. This is very CPU intensive for a good quality voice and so would require a fast CPU to pull off and of course battery life would go down the drain.
It does play MP3's so you could make your own anyway. I listen to a lot of books I converted using ATT's Natural Voice.
Mobi Converter is Windows only, so other users would always need to send it via email for conversion fist.
Another odd thing is that you will find that some Kindle books are more expensive than the same one in hardcover. I don't think that the large majority of Kindle books should ever be more than $9.99 anyway. A book you can't mark up, can't resell, and has none of the production costs of paper books should never come close to the cost of a normal book.
As for bundled books - dream on. This though would be a great feature and great selling point especially if the Kindle version was free or at a very low price if bought with a hardcover.
I do hope the next generation Kindle will have features more directed to the user than to Amazon. Annotation I think is a must. I want a good text reader and Amazon has the ability and clout to pull it off. The Sony Reader is much improved in it's second generation - but I would much rather have Amazon's catalog.
One thing I seriously hope for is that Ignatius Press titles will become available on the Kindle. That in itself would make me want a Kindle. I want Ratzinger on my Kindle!
Ah.. I didn't realize how processor intensive text to speech it. In hind site, it makes sense that it would be. I use Natural Voice as well. It's easy to be spoiled by the processors in desktops and laptops these days.
I noticed the pricing problems as well. There's a few computer books that I want, which I already have print copies of, that are over $40. Crazy. Hopefully this will settle down over time.
I can see why Amazon couldn't bundle in a Kindle edition of a book for free... But I think a case could be made that they could make more money off of a bundled discounted price for the Kindle version. Amazon should have all of the information necessary to run metrics on what bundling prices would cause a net increase in revenue do to increased sales of the print copies.
The Kindle will let you add notes to a book. One review (don't remember where) also said that your notes are backed up at Amazon.
Couldn't agree more on Ignatius. I have an email into them asking if they have any plans regarding releasing on the Kindle.
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