Yesterday, John Gruber pointed me to Bill Hill’s post on iPads and Kindles. Gruber sums up Hill’s position nicely: “He much prefers the iPad as a device, but his favorite reading app is the Kindle app.”I love my iPad, and use it for dozens of purposes, including devouring books and novels. In fact, once my iPad arrived, I sold my Kindle 2, and haven’t missed it at all.
Then, of course, Clyde upgraded to the Kindle 3.
The Kindle 3 is wafer-thin and weighs next to nothing. The e-ink display is crisp and clear, and pages look printed, not displayed. Like the iPad, the Kindle 3 is a little magical — in this case, because it looks too thin and insubstantial to do everything it does.
For 90% of what I do, the iPad cannot be beaten by any device. But when I’m walking to work (and unable to read, because of the iPad’s reflective screen), highlighting text (which is still awkward on the iPad, since the light touch associated with highlighting is easily confused with the tap that summons the Home button and progress bar), and reading in bed (where the iPad’s weight and interface require the use of more than one hand), I find myself envious of Clyde’s Kindle 3.
The Kindle *can* check email. The Kindle *can* be used to surf the web. The Kindle *can* play a game or two. But the Kindle was, in the end, built to do one thing very well: become a book … and it fulfills that purpose, I think, better than any other device out there.
By the same token, the iPad *can* display a book … but, in the end, it was build to do a variety of other things (check email, surf the web, display movies, play games, capture content on the go) very well … and it does all of these better than it can become a book.
Given the magic of WhisperSync — which allows any device (your iPhone, your Kindle, your iPad) to open to the exact page where you last left off reading — and the Kindle 3’s surprisingly small and inexpensive form factor, I’m reaching the conclusion that there may be room in my life for both devices.
Add comment