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Why dedicated e-book readers may go the way of dedicated word processors: By Travis Butler
January 30, 2010 | 3:41 am
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By a TeleRead Contributor
Dedicated e-readers won’t die, Ficbot posted. But Lee Fyock compared them to dedicated word processors, now dead. Then Travis Butler posted the following, which merits a pickup in the main TeleBlog. Photo shows a dedicated word processor. – Chris Meadows.
I think Lee was talking about dedicated word processing computers; systems from companies like Wang Laboratories or IBM that could only run built-in word processing software. Which are indeed dead, dead, dead, to the best of my knowledge.
And I believe that was Lee’s point; dedicated word processing computers were popular in the 70s and early 80s, but died when word-processing software on ordinary personal computers got good enough to do most of what dedicated word-processing equipment could do—even if personal computers weren’t quite as good, they were good enough.
And not too long after that, Word-processors on PCs far surpassed dedicated word-processing hardware; the keyboards were just as good if not better, they ran faster even with the overhead of a full general purpose OS, software could be tweaked and customized to a far greater extent, bitmap displays allowed WYSIWYG formatting, and laser printers reproduced that formatting well enough to put the daisy-wheel printers of dedicated systems to shame.
I can easily see the same thing happening with dedicated e-book readers, over the next few years:
Software will never be an advantage; the new generation of tablet hardware already has the performance to run everything mentioned in this article, and software on a general purpose device will be even more open to tweaking by and alternatives for the end-user than a dedicated device will be—just as PCs give users far more WP options than IBM ever produced for the DisplayWriter. Don’t like your current reader app’s interface? Use a different one. Want a different format? Get a reader app that supports it. There is nothing a dedicated reader can do in software that can’t be duplicated, possibly better, on a general-purpose tablet – and a general-purpose tablet lets you replace the software, which a dedicated reader won’t.
Form factor is another area where I don’t see any serious advantage from a dedicated reader; every specialized form-factor cited above would be just as advantageous for a general purpose tablet. The hypothetical “kid’s reader: would be just as useful for educational software as it would be for books, to cite just one example.
Wireless connectivity goes here as well; the advantages and disadvantages are not appreciably different for general purpose tablets than for e-readers, and any market differentiation for e-readers would be just as likely to happen for GP tablets.
Screen technology is one area a dedicated reader can have an advantage—at least for the people who have eyestrain issues with high-quality LCD displays (I don’t, and have trouble experiencing the problem, but I acknowledge it)—but I see this as an advantage for a few years only. Current e-ink tech has enough disadvantages, even for e-readers, that I can’t see it sticking around any longer than it takes to come up with a better solution; just as monochrome active-matrix displays were initially superior to color passive-matrix displays on laptops and PDAs, but eventually got replaced with active-matrix color when the tech evolved enough, I expect screen tech to improve enough in the next decade to produce a screen that’s equally good for an e-reader or a GP tablet.
The ergonomics of dedicated hardware controls are the only place I can see any long-term advantage for dedicated readers; you can build dedicated navigation controls into an e-reader that might not make sense on a GP tablet. OTOH, this is not a guaranteed advantage; I’ve spent a fair amount of time using a Sony PRS-505 and a Kindle 2, and neither impressed me as being ergonomically head-and-shoulders above the Nokia 770 I used for e-reading for a couple of years. And Sony itself has moved away from physical controls on the PRS-700 and Touch models.
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Comments:
Thank you, Capt’n Obvious, for this announcement
Of course, current eInk is a bridge technology. As soon as we have fast color-displays with otherwise similar properties as eInk, the dedicated eReaders are going away. Which is going to happen in a few years from now. Until then, eInk is unsurpassed for reading and its redraw lag enforces an own device category.
On the other hand, it will be interesting to see if the iPad heralds a new category of “media consumption devices”: simplified home computers without multitasking and hierarchical file systems. Somewhat unsuited for productivity, but much easier to understand and use. Or how long it takes until someone in Cupertino or Redmond (or Japan or China?) will come up with some solution that is both simple and powerful.
Screen technology is the main issue for me. If e-ink readers go away and the only way to read ebooks is on a backlit screen (which I can’t see happening, seeing as there are so many people who feel the same way about it), I doubt I’d read ebooks anymore – even though as it stands now I vastly prefer them to paper. I’d be willing to read on a tablet that had a screen as comfortable to read from as an e-ink screen, though.
I do think form matters in one way you didn’t mention: screen size. I don’t like reading big bulky hardcovers, and I don’t want a reader that’s the same size (obviously a tablet would be a lot thinner than a hardcover, but there’s still the width and height to contend with). To read comfortably, I need a screen that’s bigger than a cell phone but smaller than, say, a 10″ tablet. But a tablet with a 6″ or 7″ screen, that has the comfortable display I mentioned? I would definitely consider using that as a reader.
I’m a little confused by all the comparisons to dedicated word processors, though, when ebook readers could just as easily be compared to dedicated MP3 players – more easily, actually, since both readers and MP3 players are designed for media consumption, while there’s not much similar about reading and word processing. Smartphones can play MP3s, but dedicated MP3 players are still alive and well.
Quote: “I’m a little confused by all the comparisons to dedicated word processors, though, when ebook readers could just as easily be compared to dedicated MP3 players – more easily, actually, since both readers and MP3 players are designed for media consumption, while there’s not much similar about reading and word processing. Smartphones can play MP3s, but dedicated MP3 players are still alive and well.”
Your suggestion is a good one. Analogy is alway a tricky business. Why choose one analogy over another? But in this case, I’ll have to disagree with you.
Alive, yes, but perhaps MP3 players are not as well as they once were. Only Apple has done well in the market and its results are revealing. Even with its built-in movie camera, sales of Apple’s Nano are apparently below projections while those of the iPod touch are well above. For just a little more, the touch gives you a lot, lot more. That’s why I bought a touch, even though I wanted one with a camera.
The broader comparison to smart phones other than than the iPhone has another factor. Until very recently most were so clumsy to use that a smart user didn’t want to further complicate his life by using one as a MP3 player. I had that experience with a Windows Mobile phone. I hated the beast. Ditto with a digital recorder that made using it far more complicated than necessary by adding FM radio and MP3 player functions. Recording with my touch is infinitely easier. The reason: a far better UI.
In short, when the design is bad, people prefer separate devices to reduce the complexity. When the design is good, they opt for more integration to reduce the clutter they have to carry about.
By all accounts, the iPad should be excellent for consuming media. The real issue is whether it’ll also be ‘good enough’ to replace heavier and more costly laptops for productivity uses. A lot of us hope it will, but that’s likely to depend on how much Apple opens it up for laptop uses.
If the iPad can do light duty as a laptop, then Kindle-like products will probably be relegated to a niche, particularly if they cannot price themselves below $100. All you have to do is compare what the top-end Kindle can do with what the low-end iPad can do for a mere $10 more. It’s not even close.
Actually, this post started out as a comment responding to Lee’s use of dedicated word processors as an analogy, and the responses that thought he was talking about dedicated word processing software, not word processing equipment. Then I kept thinking of things to expand on with the comparison, and Chris unexpectedly promoted it to the main page. <sheepish look> So I’m not sure how well a couple of bits work without the context.
I’m not sure how apt the comparison to dedicated MP3 players is, though. Music is something that pretty much everyone listens to, at any and all hours of the day, often in conjunction with other activities, and potentially any setting; there’s a fair amount of pressure to differentiate and produce devices usable in circumstances where a convergence device might not be. (I’m thinking specifically of exercise/workout, where size/weight is at a premium, though I’m sure there are others.)
E-readers, however, pretty much share their use circumstances with general purpose tablets; in any circumstances where an e-reader can be pulled out and used, a GP tablet can be pulled out and used, thus driving similar physical designs. Which is what I was trying to get at when I talked about form factors above; if the size of a 5″-7″ screen is advantageous for an e-reader, for weight and portability reasons, the same reasons make it advantageous for a GP tablet. If there’s a tradeoff between size and working area for a GP tablet, there’s also a tradeoff between size and reading area for e-readers.
And as Mike Perry pointed out, the non-Touch mp3 player line has been contracting. When was the last time a change to the Classic line was more than just a footnote in a presentation about the Touch? In just a couple more iterations, flash memory will be cheap enough that the latest and greatest Touch can hold more than the current models of Classic. When that happens, the biggest reasons to have a Classic over a Touch will pretty much vanish.
Thing is, reading a book is a solitary pleasure, best enjoyed while shutting out the rest of the world. For that reason, there may still be a niche for a device that lets you carry your whole library with you, but doesn’t let you tweet, blog, surf, etc. I own both standalone ebook readers and multipurpose devices, and I like having both.
I like Robert’s comment that dedicated readers could offer the unconnected Amtrak experience. Some times constraints toggle into attributes. Constraints of print are like that.
I think the ultimate fate of dedicated ereaders might well rest on the general fate of general purpose tablets. Its a niche that has not yet proved itself. Tablet computers have been around for years… but have never taken off. Sure there is renewed interest in them now that Apple has released their take on the tablet, but that interest has not yet translated into sales.
Tablets are generally too big to be easily carried everywhere, and too small to take the place of a general purpose computer. If you need a special bag to carry it, then what advantage does it have over an ultra portable laptop? If its small enough to be carried in a pocket (say 5″ screen or smaller) does it really offer enough of a functionality bump over a smart phone to justify carrying both devices?
Now, if I am wrong, (and I might well be) and tablets take off, then I suspect that dedicated readers will probably become at best a niche product and more likely will fade away… but we will see.
Long term, we all have computers embedded in our brain with displays directly onto our optical nerve. Shorter term, it’s a horse-race. If you were in the market for a word processor in the days of Wang and your choice was a Wang or an Apple II, would the Apple II really have been the better choice because eventually a general purpose PC would win?
Sure, ten years from now, nobody will buy dedicated eReading hardware. But someone will make a lot of money on them during the next three years.
I think Kindle/Nook’s lower price point, lower weight, smaller size (portability) and superior display (for reading) means they compete effectively over the next 12-24 months. After that, Kindle/Nook had better have either dramatically lower prices or a more general-purpose utility.
Rob Preece
Publisher
I’m with Zoe, above. Reflective displays go away? Then I’m back in the print world, library treks and all.
Could it be *that’s* what’s going on?
E-books went exactly *nowhere* from the mid-70′s until Sony and Amazon produced the first E-Ink readers. But now we have iPad — a nearly miraculous re-packaging of that technology that actual reading people *still* don’t really want to use for their long-form reading. Maybe iPad *isn’t* a Kindle killer. Maybe it’s an E-Ink, and ultimately, e-book killer. I can see it now. People jump on the iPad bandwagon, by the millions in a spectacular mass backlash against Amazon, Sony and Barnes & Noble. E-book sales for iPad do ok at first, as people try them out on the new gadget; then things begin to shake out. Some iPad owners look into their hearts and realize that they really just use their iPad to watch movies and play video games; and those iPad owners who *actually read books* realize that print is better than that glowy screen in every way, with the possible exception of weight — and one can really live with the weight if means one still has right of first sale.
And there we are. Without those pesky reflective displays, e-reader prices will not continue to drop because there will be no more e-readers. And we’re back in the print world, with publishers on their crusty thrones, the same old tails wagging a still-shrinking dog — but one that will do their precise bidding.
Ah well. E-Ink was good while it lasted.
I was indeed referring to e-reading hardware, and Travis explained my point very eloquently.
asphalt said “E-books went exactly *nowhere* from the mid-70’s until Sony and Amazon produced the first E-Ink readers”. As someone who helped turn peanutpress.com from a garage business to a >$3M/year business by 2003, my belief is that it wasn’t e-ink that was the turning point, but merely that Amazon decided that it was time to seriously push ebooks. The financial savings and economies of scale for Amazon are compelling.
In part driving Amazon’s decision, I believe that the convenience, availability and awareness of ebooks finally reached the tipping point this past year or two. It’s an idea whose Time Has Come.
I have yet to do any serious reading on an e-ink device, so my point of view is biased, I suppose. I have been reading on reflective old-school Palm screens (dark grey on green), transflective displays (Palm Tungsten T), backlit displays (laptops, desktop displays, iPhone, etc.) I have no problem with it, and I read a lot.
While I admit the possibility that some people may not be able to read on a backlit device for whatever reason, my belief is that the downsides to e-ink are such that they’ll be out of the consumer market within a few years, despite their benefits.
Alphasmart devices, which are pretty much word processors with a few extra bells and whistles, are still widely used in schools. They are inexpensive, durable and easily stored – all qualities that would appeal to school staff. This is an example of a dedicated device that is successful in a highly specialized market. I agree that dedicated readers will not be mainstream, but they may fit into a specialized market like this.
http://www.neo-direct.com/intro.aspx
The Ipod is not the be-all end-all of the MP3 market. There are many other brands that offer superior quality and sound, more features, and a better price. The Touch is a nice mini-tablet. It is not the best MP3 player and you pay a price for the extra features in terms of battery life. The field of dedicated MP3 players may have contracted, but there is no sign of it disappearing, any more than dedicated cameras of disappeared.