were granted the power to post Twitter and Facebook updates, with automatic links to Amazon sales pages. What, you don't think that's a core part of the reading experience?
It's a pretty significant software update that also included password protection, online annotation backups, and the ability to pan and zoom inside a PDF document. While a few of these updates make perfect sense, the general piling-on of features does not.
Having done it, I can safely say that tweeting from a Kindle is not relevant to the e-ink reader's mission: to preserve the simplicity and calm of the paper book in a digital form. When Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos introduced the Kindle in 2007, he insisted, again and again, that the technology has to fade away, "so you can enter the author's world."
This isn't some complaint in a vacuum about aesthetic purity and all that. No, as the Kindle and other e-ink-based e-book readers grow in functionality, they lose their sole defense against the iPad.
Newsweek's Dan Lyons wrote a piece today about how the Kindle has kept chugging along in the wake of the iPad's rather quicker take-off. According to a generally accepted but unconfirmed estimate, more than 3 million Kindles have been sold since its introduction, two and a half years ago. Apple reported that it had sold 3.3 million iPads — since April. But as Lyons said, Forrester Research estimates that the number of Kindles will double this year, attributed mostly to price drops — the standard Kindle is now $189, down from $259.
The point of Lyons' piece is to say that customers are looking for what one Amazon exec calls the "uncompromised reading experience" — something for which Kindle is way better suited than the iPad. It's true, the far less expensive Kindle is lighter, has an easier-on-the-eyes screen made of e-ink instead of glowing LCD, and can run for weeks, not hours.
But the iPad is a very functional e-book reader, despite the comparison. I don't mind the weight — sure, my 2-year-old frequently tells me I have "big muscles," but let's be honest, 1.5 pounds is roughly the weight of the average American cheeseburger. It's not that heavy. As for the other gripes: I love to dim the screen down and read without any other lights, after my wife goes to sleep. And I only charge that 10-hour battery once or twice per week — I hardly think about it.
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