More on TechnologyTell: Gadget News | Apple News
Huh? The Kindle e-reader ISN’T ugly? So says Steve Levy, author of Newsweek puff piece—in response to my Publishers Weekly blog
November 18, 2007 | 5:33 pm
|
By David Rothman
So, gang, is Amazon’s Kindle e-reader really a thing of beauty? The overwhelming reaction online is a big fat No. "Same fugly hot mess we’ve been seeing for months," says Jane at Dear Author. My Publishers Weekly blog describes the Kindle as "like a prop from an old sci-fi horror flick."
But wait. Maybe the aesthetics look different to you when Amazon gives you an exclusive interview with CEO Jeff Bezos and allows you leisurely access to a sample unit. Lots of other issues might come up, too. Did Steve Levy, author of the Newsweek puff piece about the Kindle, downplay some matters such as DRM and the Tower of eBabel to pay back Amazon?
Linking in to my PW item, Steve defends Amazon’s creation: "Because Amazon had to file for FCC approval, some details of the book, along with a picture, wound up on Engadget. Because the picture was taken at an angle that make the device look like it was dominated by the keyboard—and the picture generally is not flattering—some people are calling it ugly. In person, the Kindle is, in my opinion, pretty attractive. And since I’ve had the thing for a few weeks, I’ve had the experience of showing it to people who haven’t seen it at all. I watch carefully to see their first, gut reaction. In just about every case it is a positive, visceral response to the product design."
Invokes iPod nano example, natch
The new iPod nano, too, looked ugly in the first leaked shot, Steve says, and then he scolds the rest of us with the following "lesson": "Wait to you see actually see the thing (or at least some pictures make by real product photographers) before you judge it as beastly." Hmm. Real product photographers? Wow! Actually, Steve, it’s real life that counts, and you can bet that I pulled out all stops to try to get Amazon to send me a sample for a review in PW’s print edition. I still think that the damn thing will look ugly from any angle, that we’re in Emperor’s New Clothes territory. But who knows? Can you get your pals at Amazon to send me a review unit? Seriously. I challenge you. An Amazon flack, initials HH, rudely hung up on me when I requested one. Perhaps Amazon has actually avoided some of the pesky people who care the most about e-books and their potential for readers and publishers. Far better to pass the units on to people who do CEO interviews and won’t pick up all the nuances because they’ve simply parachuted in, so to speak.
About the F word, Steve
Speaking of which, Steve, when are you going to write about the pesky issue of e-book formats, the stuff that old e-book hands know will count a lot more than aesthetics? Will Amazon’s Kindle work in the future with .epub files, or will Amazon thumb its nose at the IDPF, publishers and us e-book readers who are sick, sick, sick of eBabel—all those clashing e-book formats. Oh, and don’t forget the DRM issue, too. Remember, if DRM systems aren’t interoperable, the core e-book standards will mean squat in the case of "protected" books. Aren’t you the same guy who wrote Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution? I liked that book, and will be appreciative if you’ll be as socially minded in your Kindle coverage as you were when you wrote Hackers. The Kindle sounds like a marvelous device in many ways, but you’ll actually harm the cause of e-books if, in your enthusiasm for the latest gadget before you, you gloss over the grubby issues such as e-book formats.
Standards linked to ‘the future of the book’
You can’t divorce these standards issues from "the future of the book." Do publishers and readers really want Amazon or Google to be the ultimate controller of interactivity? How about an annotations standard? The IDPF has yet to tackle that one. Steve, will you write a column on this and related matters?
In a related vein, just where should in-book discussions, shared annotations, be stored? I’d feel better if this happened mainly on the servers of libraries and publishers rather than on those of Amazon and the like—or better still, how about a consortium of publishers and libraries, with the involvement of Brewster Kahle at the Internet Archive. We already have the Open Content Alliance; that’s a start. I also like the idea of a well-stocked national digital library system, although it’s important to have profits and nonprofits providing redundancy, since I take it for granted that Washington will try to censor certain books.
And a tip to Amazon: I’m still game for a Kindle for a fair-minded review (I’ve already said how much I appreciate certain features in the specs—-such as word search—and now I’m wondering if there might even be a touch screen). Meanwhile I’ll not feel the slightest guilt if the Kindle surprises me and, in actual looks, is a beautiful swan. Dear Amazon, you had ample opportunity to show Publishers Weekly other pictures. Instead, like the Bush White House or most any other White House, you played favorites in an imperial way to favorite the Steve Levy types over the rest of the cosmos. It’ll be interesting when the actual Kindle appears, so we can judge for ourselves whether your pampering of Steve influenced his perception of the gadget’s aesthetics. If Steve’s right, I’ll happily give him credit since I’d love for the Kindle to be a roaring success and help e-bookdom in general, and meanwhile I hope that both you and he will care more about e-book standards for the Kindle (including DRM-related ones if the publishers keep insisting on "protection").
Related: Techmeme and Google roundups.
|
Previous
SUBSCRIBE TO RSS
Comments:
[...] Levy says no on his blog, but David Rothman of TeleRead says yes. And will it be open or full of awkward proprietary formats and [...]
But it looks like a picture of it on the cover of Newsweek, and it looks just as ugly in the cover. OTOH, if it does have a touchscreen….that might really help it overcome the DRM nonsense. But I have a hard time believing they can deliver a touchscreen at that pricepoint when Bokeen and Sony can’t, unless they’re taking a loss hoping to make money on the service end which would seem to be a very stupid gamble.
The Levy article was nothing but an uncritical paean to Amazon.
What we get from it is a mismash of every technical buzzword and concept in the book. Words like “milestone” and “revolution” are mentioned. There’s the obligatory iPod analogy. The device is possessed of a “disruptive” nature (well, what isn’t these days?) and there’s even talk of “Book 2.0″.
From there, the author gets totally lost in a discussion of paper vs. electronic and the joys of hypertext (the “always-on book”) that could have been written by Vannevar Bush.
The joke is getting people to believe that these limited devices that simply reek of lock-in are preferable to more versatile alternatives like laptops and cellphones.
That white (beige?) color sure won’t look pretty after a while. The original beige/white Macs had a tendency to turn a ghastly yellow over time.
It could look better in person. Some gadgets don’t look good in photos. Aside from the new iPod nano, there was another recent intro that had bad photos but looked good in person. But it is too early for my brain to function, retrieval-wise (and maybe sentence-wise too!).
I still can’t figure out how someone can comfortably hold it. And while that keyboard sounds all nifty, I wonder how eInk will perform attempting that? (Then again, my jaw dipped somewhat over Bookeen’s smooth pop-up dialogs and menus…)
That electronic gadget cream color is the equivalence of “appliance white”. It so retro and unappealing as a baby drooling cream of wheat. What really concerns me is the probable torque exerted by the 80% of the device when one types on the what has been described as a thumb board. It would seem extensive use would require laying down the device on a supporting surface and typing on it like a standard keyboard (but with a poor layout).
I’ve been looking – hard! – at the Kindle on and off all day. I checked out all the videos on Amazon. I read most of the “reviews”. I’m putting that word in scare quotes, because most reviewers have never seen one.
And I’m pretty tired of all the ‘Your Kindle’s so ugly …’ hating that’s going on. First, David, you’re right: the patent photo made it look bad and no one seems to be able to get that out of their heads. The main video shows a person walking, sitting, using the Kindle, setting it on the counter … and suddenly it looks fine. Looks good, even! Second, when the hell did ‘fashion accessory’ become one of the required traits of a p-book replacement? I think people are putting far too much emphasis on the way this thing looks. I’m beginning to wonder if they aren’t working hard to dredge up every possible excuse to hate any ebook device with a passion. Third, if you’re afraid of being seen in public with it – it comes with a leather case that (on the outside) looks like a book.
Sadly, I see this trend in the ebook communities too. And this has gotten me thinking – are we schizophrenic about ebooks? We claim to want one badly, yet each new e-reader to hit the market seems to evoke even more scorn than the last one. We nitpick them to death, use disparaging and snide language in talking about them. We gleefully condemn the Kindle to failure when it addresses some of our loudest and most recent complaints – Amazon just put 90,000+ ebooks on sale, at prices often much better than the equivalent p-book.
Seriously, I wonder if our love of books is creating an unconsciously high bar for e-reader devices. Honestly, I’ve caught myself doing it too; and I’m still doing it – I still have not pressed the order button @ Amazon. Even though I already know that I can move my existing books to it (yes it reads .mobi and .prc) and that there’s now an acceptable choice of ebooks for it. The hardware price is high, but at the rate Amazon is discounting Kindle content, I could see recouping that high cost in a year or two.
Maybe it’s time to just bite the bullet and dive in! From what I see, Amazon has just moved the ebook ball pretty far downfield. Maybe it’s time to go to the stadium and root for the team.
Bryan: I certainly agree that looks are just one detail. More troublesome is the proprietary approach and various gotcha charges. THAT is why old-time e-book people are bashing the Kindle. They remember the Gemstar fiasco. I think the Kindle will do better since Amazon controls so much content, but something is still terribly, terribly wrong when we think the world is moving to raze the Tower of eBabel and then Amazon pops up with yet another proprietary format. – David
One of the bloggers at ZDNet has had a Kindle for a few weeks to play with — he also claims the thing “looks a lot better in person than it does in the photos.”
As far as the looks go, for most users I would expect that they would soon not notice the device at all, and see only what is displayed in the screen. But looks do matter when other people, non-users, see you with your Kindle. “Hey dude, what’s with the funny-looking thing?” as opposed to “Hey man that thing looks so cool — where can I get one?”
And of course most of us will only get to preview a Kindle via these same photographs. Amazon would be well-advised to get some pretty-catalog photographers to shoot really beautiful product shots of the thing to send out.
As for the touch-screen, Kindle no got: instead using the ‘Select Wheel’ you navigate up and down by line, or from link to link, then press the wheel to click. This is the impression I got from reading the Kindle User’s Guide.
More troublesome is the proprietary approach and various gotcha charges.
I’m not quite sure I understand why you hawk the IDPF so much; maybe it would be good to do an article about the advantages it brings to the reader. A universal standard is far from appearing, and mobi/plucker/azw/etc could become that well-used standard just as easily as IDPF could. Who (if anyone) is publishing content or reader hardware/software for this “industry standard” today?
And what gotcha charges are you talking about? There’s the 10-cent translation charge, which can be avoided by not wirelessly emailing the translated content to the Kindle. There’s the 99-cent blog subscription charge (I haven’t figured out whether it is monthly or eternal), which can be avoided by using the builtin web browser. Both of these are basically ‘pay for the convenience of having it pushed to my Kindle’, and I don’t perceive this as a gotcha. What other gotchas did you have in mind?
The Zundle is most obviously not ugly; except it is not brown.
[...] Huh? The Kindle e-reader ISN’T ugly? So says Steve Levy, author of Newsweek puff piece—in respon… by David Rothman at Teleread [...]
[...] at PaidContent.org The Future of Reading by Steven Levy at Newsweek (November 26th edition) Huh? The Kindle e-reader ISN’T ugly? So says Steve Levy, author of Newsweek puff piece—in respon… by David Rothman at Teleread Kindle eBook Pricing by Joe Wikert at Publishing 2020 Blog Kindle [...]
I’ve never thought it was ugly and never understood what people thought was so hideous. It almost seems like everyone is just echoing some early adopter reviews. This is coming from someone who has only seen the photos, which are supposed to be worse than seeing the kindle in person. To each her own!