Kindle 2 is fun, but it would never have been made by Apple. Here are four reasons. There are many more!
1. The screen still isn't bright like paper. It looks dull and waxy, like multiply-recycled paper, or unbleached paper that can be found in some Indian and third-world books.
2. The screen savers cannot be removed. This seems to be a small point here on KindleBoard, but Apple would never let it happen. There will be people, like me, who find them generic and childish. Someone said, on another post, that they are reminiscent of the posters in Barnes and Noble. That is not praise! They are Eurocentric, clichéd, unimaginative, and above all they are not mine! Apple would have made it easier, not harder, to get rid of the screensavers.
3. Apple would have made it easy to make the top and bottom of the screen blank. That extra information can be very annoying. Why not just show it when the user presses a button? Kindle 2 is reminiscent of Microsoft Word 2008, which also forces an extra bar on users (just above the page), which cannot be removed.
4. The design is intermittently silly. The packaging reminds me of shallow trays that are sometimes used by Chinese and Thai takeways. The spills of letters that ornament the packaging, and also the manual, look like 1970s student graphic designs.
5. Apple would have had a touch screen, like the iPhone, instead of the keyboard, which is not needed all the time -- so why show it all the time?
I'm not sad I bought the Kindle 2, but I can clearly see it will be superseded by Apple, or Google, unless it radically improves in its next incarnation.
1. The screen still isn't bright like paper. It looks dull and waxy, like multiply-recycled paper, or unbleached paper that can be found in some Indian and third-world books.
2. The screen savers cannot be removed. This seems to be a small point here on KindleBoard, but Apple would never let it happen. There will be people, like me, who find them generic and childish. Someone said, on another post, that they are reminiscent of the posters in Barnes and Noble. That is not praise! They are Eurocentric, clichéd, unimaginative, and above all they are not mine! Apple would have made it easier, not harder, to get rid of the screensavers.
3. Apple would have made it easy to make the top and bottom of the screen blank. That extra information can be very annoying. Why not just show it when the user presses a button? Kindle 2 is reminiscent of Microsoft Word 2008, which also forces an extra bar on users (just above the page), which cannot be removed.
4. The design is intermittently silly. The packaging reminds me of shallow trays that are sometimes used by Chinese and Thai takeways. The spills of letters that ornament the packaging, and also the manual, look like 1970s student graphic designs.
5. Apple would have had a touch screen, like the iPhone, instead of the keyboard, which is not needed all the time -- so why show it all the time?
I'm not sad I bought the Kindle 2, but I can clearly see it will be superseded by Apple, or Google, unless it radically improves in its next incarnation.
