Happy fifth birthday, Kindle!The first Kindle was much criticised for being ugly, for the odd keyboard, and not the least for the very big page buttons on the sides, which were all too easy to hit by mistake.
But most of this was corrected already by the second generation. And it can't be argued that the Kindle and Amazon's aggressive ebook market has been the midwife to the e-book revolution, a market which is already now over one third of the whole book markets in many sectors and is still growing.
From my viewpoint, the dark background of the e-paper screen was a problem, so the new Kindle Paperwhite with frontlight was the one which really made the Kindle come into its own for me. I use my iPads, both sizes, for reading of articles, particularly those with links and pictures in them, but for long articles and books, nothing in text form beats the Kindle Paperwhite, I lurv it. It's not perfect, the frontlight can be improved yet more in evenness and such, but for me it's the best device yet for long form reading, including paperbooks.
And the iPad Mini has really filled the hole of a very portable iOS device for ereading. So I think I will nominate 2012 as the year the ereaders broke through!
6 comments:
Glad that you, finally, got what you were hoping for! It can only get better, from here, Baby! :-D
Is the first picture of one that you had and took a picture of, Eo?
Not my photo, but I had it and I still do. Though for some reason it 'don't' work anymo', despite me having gotten a new battery for it.
Bummer! Looks like something from the 50's! WEIRD how it can look that ancient and it's only 5 years go! :-/
Uh...that was supposed to read "ago"...of course. :-/
I think they were aiming for modern and edgy. Some people will always react badly to something different, and if it's not done *quite* well enough, the tide can turn nasty.
Right. :-(
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