After spending over a year with a hand-me-down first generation Kindle I received a Kindle 4 as a gift recently and just finished reading my first e-book on the new device. Reading was a pleasure (thanks partly to the terrific story and skillful prose) and a serious step up from the original Kindle. I haven’t used any other e-readers, unless you count the iPad so my impressions can only compare the Kindle 4 to the original Kindle (or to print books).
Can’t Touch This
After reading Marco’s Review of the Kindle Touch I’m especially glad to own a $79 Kindle instead. I find myself contacting the screen a lot by accident and the Touch probably would have driven me crazy, especially given reports that it is significantly less responsive than the non-touch version. I like the hardware page turning buttons and although entering text with the four way controller is inconvenient, it’s not something I do that much of. It may be true that this Kindle doesn’t represent a major upgrade from the Kindle 3, but since I’ve upgraded from a first generation Kindle I’m not in a position to be bothered by that.
The Basics
After using the original kindle and finding it lacking there were some improvements I was expecting from an upgrade. I wanted the Kindle 4 to be faster, lighter and easier to read. The new hardware delivered on all fronts.
Speed
Gone are the tediously slow page turns and other on screen transitions. The new kindle turns pages at least as fast as you would with a physical book, fast enough that it ceases to be an issue. While the first generation kindle felt sluggish and clunky, the Kindle 4 seems responsive and snappy just like a modern mobile device should.
Weight
The form factor is also a big improvement mostly because of uthe heavily reduced size and weight. Without a keyboard to add bulk the Kindle 4 is positively svelte, easy to hold in one hand (unlike the iPad) and even storable in a jacket pocket or back pants pocket. The slim profile allowed me to take the kindle with me to read while running errands in the neighborhood without being inconvenienced or feeling too conspicuous.
Readability
So the Kindle is comfortable to hold but even more importantly it’s comfortable to read. The e-ink text is dark and fairly high contrast against the light grey “page”. It’s not as good as print on paper but it’s close enough. Truth be told, the text doesn’t seem as crisp as on my iPhone 4 but the fact that it’s e-ink rather than a backlit display means it’s much more comfortable to read, especially in ample light. Some day e-ink will be good enough to truly compete with the legibility of print but we’re not there yet.
Other Features
Everything else about the kindle is at least satisfactory. The battery seems to last long enough that I’m not worried about running out of juice before I think of recharging. I have the least expensive model without 3G and with ads but the kindle is mostly for home and the ads are unobtrusive. Maybe some day I’ll pay an additional $20 to remove the ads but I’m in no hurry to do so.
The Kindle was designed to enable the purchase and consumption of Amazon digital products. Amazon’s ebooks are DRM protected and not readable on other software although they are readable other hardware via Kindle apps for other devices like the iPad. I’m a little bothered by the restrictions of this system but I’m willing to bet on Amazon as the platform that’s going to last when it comes to ebook distribution. If I acquire books in ePub there’s many ways to convert to mobi for reading on the Kindle.
Still the Same
The problems I have with the Kindle are the same as they’ve ever been with this platform: syncing last page read is useless in a book with endnotes, random access is much easier in a print book and overall the software feels retrograde in the era of iPads and other elegant interfaces. I’ll keep reading print books (especially since Kindle support for library lending seems not ready for prime time) but there are many situations where the kindle is the right device. Reading from instapaper on the Kindle is particularly great even when compared to the stellar instapaper app for iPad.
Bottom Line
Even though I got it as a gift I would have shelled out $79 for the Kindle 4. It’s not a replacement for every book and certainly not for the iPad but I enjoy the ease and convenience of reading on the device. In three words: it’s good enough.
Earlier today I tweeted:
Much faster mobile Safari is perhaps the new “feature” of iOS 5 I appreciate the most.
Even with all the great new features of the new iOS this simple enhancement has proven to be the most valuable to me. Well made pages load much faster, often almost instantaneously on a good wifi network, finally catching up to the kind of performance I’m used to when browsing the web on a Mac. This made me realize how crucial speed is to the user experience.
The Analog Experience
The digital world has always had this drawback in relation to analog tools that we use. With computers you often have to wait for machines to start up, applications to load, files to be transferred, etc. Analog tools don’t have this problem. Keys on the typewriter activate immediately when you hit them. There’s no lag when you pick up a piece of paper from your desk and throw it in the trash. Even when analog tasks take time you can easily see how the task is progressing and how long it will take to finish. Digital progress bars can give you an idea of the quantitative amount of time is remaining to complete a task but almost never communicate the quality of that progress. All this is a major weakness of digital tools.
Only One Solution
All the progress bars, status messages and other mitigating interfaces won’t really make slow responses much more bearable. The only solution is to make processes faster. Apple keeps doing this with every hardware and software interaction. New macs and iOS devices include faster processors and, more impressively, new OS releases often run faster than their predecessors even on the same hardware.
The World Wide Wait
Once upon a time the speed of loading web pages was a joke. I’m old enough to remember waiting what seemed like several minutes for pages to load, especially if they contained images of decent resolution. You didn’t surf the web so much as wade through it. That situation largely disappeared when broadband became more available and affordable and penetration of high speed internet connections has dovetailed with increased internet usage all over the world.
Still, performance continues to be an issue on the web as faster download speeds seem to give permission to create sites with bigger images, more scripts and other bandwidth hogs. All this even as research shows that slow sites cause users stress and Ecommerce sites lose money for every extra half second it takes to load pages.
If load speed is so important then why is it so often disregarded? One problem is that those responsible for maintaining a site’s performance (usually IT or engineering) are not the same as the people who are creating site content (design, marketing, etc.) This means that performance issues are usually only addressed after the elements of a site responsible for slowest loading down are already in place. The obvious counterexample is Google, for whom performance is a fundamental design principle.
You’re no fun any more
So should all websites be like Google, vanilla white expanses of data undifferentied by any sense of style? Should we just go back to 1997 in terms of the designs and technology we can bring to bear? Of course not. Perhaps we can all just be more mindful of what our audience is actually experiencing on the web and not just how the design looks in Photoshop or how to maximize ad revenue. Otherwise that audience will find their own way to consume your content faster and more pleasurably. There’s a balance to be struck but I would say that for the most part faster is better.
Instapaper 4 is here and better than ever. Up until now Instapaper has been fantastically useful. Now it is simply beautiful. The majority of new features are for iPad but I’m really appreciating the smaller changes to the iPhone app. The icons, typography and other minor interactions have been polished to the point where every moment with the application just feels right.
In many ways Instapaper has grown in parallel with the iPhone and iPad hardware and iOS: every new release has brought a greater maturity and now the product is a proven hit. There’s going to be more room to grow for Apple’s mobile devices and for Instapaper but it feels like the vision behind all of these products has been fully realized.
If you want to find out more about the new features of Instapaper 4 Ben Brooks has a great rundown on his site. I also enjoyed reading Merlin Mann’s analysis of what Instapaper has meant for his own reading.
If you haven’t already, purchase Instapaper today. You’ll be glad you did.
Moments after it became public that Steve Jobs had passed away I got a text from my mother with the news. She sent it from her iPhone to mine. In addition to that iPhone my mom owns an iMac, a Macbook Pro, a Mac Mini, an iPad and an Apple TV.
She loves those machines.
Although she was born before the [first general purpose computer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eniac) was invented, Apple devices have become an integral part of my mother's life, keeping her connected, entertained and organized. She doesn't really understand how these machines work, not completely grasping concepts like the file system or the difference between OS X and iOS. When she has questions she calls me or she calls Apple phone support or walks into an Apple retail store to talk to a Genius. Those are all positive interactions leading one step closer to more comfort with our digital world.
I'm amazed at this phenomenon and give credit to two people: my mom for her courage to learn new things and keep up in a world so different from the one she grew up in, and Steve Jobs for making it all so much fun.
As a Netflix customer I’m not thrilled about the Netflix/Qwikster shakeup. Sadly today’s business environment doesn’t necessarily reward good customer service. It rewards growth. DVD rentals are not where the growth is so Netflix has siloed that part of the business to focus on the fast growing market in streaming content. I just hope they deliver on their promise of vastly expanding their streaming library, otherwise this deal is going to be even harder for customers to swallow.