Why did it take us so long to see the need?

John Martellaro writes.
Apple resisted the idea of a phablet for a long time and so did its customers. But times have changed, and we've moved on.[...]
...as the iPhone grew in great power and complexity, people started to use iPhones not just as smart telephones but as portable Internet devices for all kinds of new services.

Well, personally I don't get this long cultural lag. For one thing, I've been writing articles here since the Note 1 came out, begging Apple to make a similar "bigphone" as I called it before the clumsy term "phablet" was invented.

For another thing: way back in 2007 (for heaven's sake), Jobs introduced the iPhone as *three* things, only one of which were a phone. (Why did they even call it a phone? It's a hand-computer). One of those was a web browser. And then when I tried web browsing on a 3.5-inch iPhone, I screamed in frustration. It was like digging a garden with a teaspoon. Most web sites were nigh impossible to use or read.
Who, I wonder, did not have the same experience?
In other words, how could it not be obvious to anybody that smartphones are/have been too small?

I must admit that for a while, this size category did not occur to me. But I did write in mid-2009: "I don't even like many regular web pages on my iPod touch, very often the screen is simply too small for it work well."
And when the Samsung Note1 5.2-inch came out, I yelled (and wrote) "Heureka", and not: "Booo, that's for geeks only..."

Image by me, from my 2011 article, saying:
"apart from the price, this is currently the portable ereader to have"

Oops, it's official now! New Kindles and Fires (updated)

And just as I was going to bed after a hard evening watching Miyasaki films, our friend Len Edgerly announces that Amazon has, in conspiracy with a lot of journalists, sneaked out an announcement of new kindles.

I haven't even read it yet myself, but Len already has two articles out, one here, and then one here.

Update:
Well, it's undeniable that it's pretty amazing that you can now get a quality color tablet for just $100! Even if it is last year's model, basically.
There were already tablets in that price range, but they were, not to put too fine a tip on this: junk. Cheap plastic things, slow and unreliable. Amazon in contrast vary the amount of features to vary the price, but the quality you can trust.

And as to the Kindle Voyage, the reports are very positive.
I may just get one, as I do every time. At least I want to have the history of ereading, it's that important. And who knows, maybe *this* time is the one which has an e-ink Kindle pushing over a tablet as my hand-held reader of choice. (Though this time it also has the awesome iPhone 6 Plus to content with, it'll be a fearful battle.)

New Kindle PaperWhite flagship model coming

[Thanks to Ganesha Games]

There has been leaks on foreign Amazon sites which shows that a new Kindle Paperwhite is coming, called Kindle Voyage. It's roughly $50 more expensive than the current one, so it may be a new top model instead of a replacement.

It will be a bit smaller in all dimension, and a bit lighter, all good things.

It will have some pressure sensors in the bezel, so you don't have to move your thumb for each page change, something I think is good.

It has a bit higher screen resolution: 300 PPI. This sounds very high, but to me it seems that the present model with about 230 PPI (pixels per inch) does not look at all as sharp as an LCD screen with the same PPI. It may be because the pixels are composed of little physical plastic balls which move, and perhaps getting 100% of them to move perfectly is not attainable. In any case, I'm sorry to say that while the front light made the Kindle a LOT better, I've gone off it a bit again, since when I take it out, the screen just seems significantly less sharp and less even than the great HD LCD screens we have become used to since Apple introduced the Retina Display four years ago, and later put it in the iPad. So I mostly use a tablet. (Which are also much faster.)
(Sorry, Paperwhite fans, it's just a feeling. If it works for you, I'm only happy. Perceptions are very subjective.)

Watch ereader?

I wonder when there will be an ereader app for the Apple Watch?     :-)

I know, I know, it's tiny, the opposite of what I've been campaigning for. But this would not be for my main reading platform. It would mainly be for fun, actually.

And I actually know people who have been reading novels on cell phones *before* smartphones... display barely bigger than this, and much, much cruder in resolution.

Mockup by me. I might use
a bigger font, but it looks good.

Update:
Len reminded me of the perfect app for tiny screens: Spritz, one of several apps which show just one word at a time. It sounds odd, because professors with letters after their names have told us that it's important to read by seeing several words at once, preferably a whole line. Well, personally I consider this debunked, because the other method is remarkably workable. I could read 300 words a minute even without any training.

We just need the app on the watch, and then to have it integrated with the Kindle App, so all the popular ebooks are included.

Oh, and I also think another thing is important, a feature which didn't seem to be in any of those apps: the ability, if you miss something, to go back a few words, or to see a couple of lines together. It's easy to miss something if you come across an unfamiliar words, or just get distracted by something happening elsewhere. Or heck, if the reading just stimulate thought, it happens to me all the time, and I'm sure I can't be alone!

Samsung has actually already put Spritz on their Gear S smartwatch. Well done.

Wallpaper enthusiast (updated)

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.