I not sure bowerbird, maisonbisson, or myself perfectly described what iOS or Android would begin to bring us just a few years after, but if you pull together all the most salient points from each of us, I think we were extremely close.

Just a few words here on cream soda, which is my other cross- platform flavor obsession. This one is much easier to copy using booze: ginger ale and a half shot of Captain Morgan\’s on the rocks, spritz of lime. You have to order it weak to get the p…

you aren’t the first to call me crazy.
and i’m sure you won’t be the last…

however, my predictions will come true,
and yours will just sit there like a stone. :+)

the problem with a “dedicated” e-book machine
is that once you’ve paid for the chip and the screen,
you’ve paid most of the cost for a full-blown computer,
so why hobble it?

> Do we all really think non-technical users
> want the full power of a desktop computer
> everywhere? In the palm of our hands?

not all the time, no.
and not everywhere.

but they will want some piece of it, and
in places all over of place, and sometimes
they will want one capability, and other
times and places another, so unless/until
they actually have a fully-capable machine,
they won’t bother _always_ carrying around
some machine that does some limited subset.
(unless it’s a phone, which — for most people –
seems to be worth the hassle of carrying around.)

such machines already exist, of course.
rocketbooks, playstations, p.d.a.’s, etc.

and in the future, better ones will appear,
such as roger’s beloved nokia770. but
none of these machines will be able to
obtain the marketshare that is needed
to bust things wide open for e-books.

> The hugely successful devices have
> an undeniable simplicity and appeal.

“hugely successful” from the standpoint of
profitability for their companies, certainly.

but from the standpoint of staging the
revolution of electronic books? not hardly.

> bowerbird, they can do the miniaturization now,
> and make it the $1000 you want, but the execs
> see that a lage enough market for such a device
> does not exist yet, and likely never will.

no, they can’t. not yet. but it will come soon.
and when it does, the units will fly off the shelf.

and a good part of the reason for that is that
different people will buy ‘em for different reasons.

but once they are carrying the unit around,
they’ll see that e-books are one of the uses.

i expect e-books will _never_ be the main use;
i would think that would be web connectivity,
including access to your e-mail. nonetheless,
_until_ people routinely carry around machines
like this, e-books don’t stand much of a chance.

and i say that as a person who has looked forward
to electronic-books for some 25 years already. and
i’m guessing that’s about how old you are, zach. :+)

-bowerbird

Let’s briefly list some successful devices that most would not be labeled as conventional computers, yet they possess much of the power and subsets of the funcitonality. Nintendo’s Game Boy franchise, the PSP, cell phones, home DVR systems, the interactive guide on digital cable, digital cameras, XBOX, PSX, GameCube, iPod, Creative MP3 players, and this list will continue to get longer. All these devices have wide appeal, large profits, and a significant number of deployed units.

Compare against devices attempting to do too much that have never enjoyed broad acceptance: PDAs, tablets, cell phones with PDA functionailty, and sadly the Nokia 770 will find its way here as well, no matter how cool we think it is. The hugely successful devices have an undeniable simplicity and appeal.

You don’t need to convince people they need them, they understand immediately, implicitly. No one had to be sold on the first cell phones with bells and whistles, this is just how cell makers continue to make money. All users really wanted was better service and a simple contact list. When cells hit the right price point they exploded in popularity.

Now I know a ton of people here love their Palms, Axims, or over powered cell phones. How many of you continue to use these features months after the initial gee-whiz factor wears off? Input remains a problem as miniturization continues. Voice recognition is still not ideal. Handwriting recognition will quite likely never match the speed and versatility of a keyboard.

bowerbird, they can do the miniaturization now, and make it the $1000 you want, but the execs see that a lage enough market for such a device does not exist yet, and likely never will.

I do think Pepper Pad is different, still not ideal, but better. They included a keyboard making input more reasonable. They stuck to a subset of features hiding a full OS beneath the surface. That satisfies geeks and users alike. For more a bout Pepper Pad, read my review.

i will be willing to pay $1,000 for this, plus a reasonable
monthly fee for phone/web access. and frankly, until we
have such a machine, nothing much is going to happen.
and once we _do_, everything is gonna bust out like crazy.

some people will want smaller units, the size of a pda.
others will want bigger units, the size of a clipboard.

all of these form-factors will probably cost the same;
the smaller one because minaturization costs money,
and the large one because a bigger screen coss money.
so you will pick the form-factor you prefer, based on
form-factor alone, and not price/performance issues.

by the way, i’ve been saying this for over 5 years now.
since the screens are now available, and coming within
range of affordability, and minaturization is proceeding
on a steady (if slow) pace, it shouldn’t take much longer
for this form-factor to emerge. after that happens, it’s
simply a matter of how long the computer companies will
choose to exploit this market by keeping the price high.
based on past experience, it’ll probably be a couple years.

-bowerbird

Its also in the Macintosh now.

We make a huge mistake in assuming that our definition of a “computer” is the necessary definition of an internet tablet. Less than half of the US population has internet access at home, but almost 2/3 have cell phones and virtually all have TVs. Those people aren’t linux users and probably don’t want to be. The right solution is probably based on linux, but by that time people will care about that as much as they car about what OS their cell phone uses.

There are a lot of passionate opinions about particular devices already, but I’d like to step above that for a while. My concern is that the feature sets of these devices be driven not by geeks — and I consider myself a geek — but by the needs of people who don’t yet see internet access as valuable as a cell phone or TV.

Uh…. in Linux.

Oh — and the 770!
http://nokia770.com/index.php/101/

The Pepper Pad fits in this trend. Like Mike, I see many advantages to the 770, like David and Casey I want to see everyone succeed. I think the more devices there are that work for e-books, the sooner we have our explosion.

I encourage other viewpoints, just so discussion is civil and just so vendors involved identify themselves as much.

David

Me, I want to read e-books, and what I expect now is that the easiest and best experience I can get is from a general computer, as open as possible, rather than a specialized device or even a semi-specialized device like a PDA. And I think that Sony won’t be able to make everything we want on its PSP nor Pepper on its Pad nor any other maker that doesn’t use an open enviroment and a full OS. Nokia is on its own right now, but I wouldn’t expect it to be for long.