If you ever tried to actually read on an iPad you would understand why. The glossy screen means you can't read in natural light, and the backlit screen causes eye strain. For long stretches of reading, iPad can't replace books the same way the Kindle can.
Although I'm personally not surprised that books aren't that popular on iPad, but I was curious if people would overcome the above deficiencies with the form factor. Early reports seem to indicate not yet.
I've been reading on the iPad since release. It's not difficult to read on at all and I have yet to suffer any eye strain. You can read just fine in natural light, direct sunlight is the only real issue...sit under a tree.
The idea that the iPad is difficult to read on has been spread mostly by.. surprise surprise... people that haven't actually read on it.
I'm sure some people may not be able to look at the screen for long. They're the same people that can't look at any computer screen for long.
Yes, you can have glare issues on rare occasion. They're usually solved by shifting the iPad slightly.
Most of us stare at screen over 8 hours a day. I can understand if you want to go home and look at something else but honestly, it has yet to bother me.
The reason so few eBooks have been sold is because the selection is weak. The books I want are almost always in the Kindle store and are rarely in iBooks. However I still use my iPad to read those Kindle books.
Additionally, that's 1.5 books a person via iBooks alone, over a 4 week period, that doesn't count the Kindle purchases. That number seems pretty good to me.
Having read more than two thousand screens (pages?) on an iPad in iBooks so far I don't think there is a major issue. It is highly unlikely that I would replace the iPad with a Kindle.
My camera is a lot better than my iPhone as a camera, but the best camera you have is the one you have with you. In the iPad I can carry enough of what I need with me without having to carry multiple devices.
I have not bought any books in the iBook store, as the store is not available in my region yet. But I got books from Baen Books, as well as O'Reilly, in ePUB format.
The attraction to me with the iPad is that I have a choice. An open format reader and a choice of books stores. I did buy a book from Amazon on the iPad Kindle app, but haven't started reading it yet, so time will tell.
I think it depends a lot of where you are reading. I'm sure the iPad would work fine for my commute on the subway. I'm sure I'd rather have a Kindle on the beach. (though I probably wouldn't bring either to the beach since they are going to get stolen or damaged)
I’ve read my iPad at the beach for hours, and I have no complaint whatsoever. It’s actually superior to a book, because the pages of a book reflect too much sunlight for me to look at it comfortably.
I don't have a Kindle for comparison however I've had no issues reading books on my iPad even in direct sun out on my deck. Sure if you angle it JUST wrong, it's useless, but I haven't had a problem finding a comfortable reading angle.
I've only bought one book on my iPad (just got the 3g on Friday), but the reason I haven't purchased more is that I'm still reading the first one. Once I finish that, I'll be another, etc... so I wouldn't count the iPad book sales just yet, I'd look at them over a longer time frame.
Exactly. Extrapolation from limited data is bound to be useless, give it 6 months and then let's look at it. By then there will probably be a lot more books available too, publishers will look at the number of ipads sold as a big factor in deciding whether or not to release their content on the medium.
The iPhone’s PDF viewer is pretty crappy, though. It’s pretty much the only thing on the iPhone that feels unbearably slow. I don’t know how much the iPad improves that but at least on the iPhone reading (long, i.e. ten or more pages) PDFs is no joy.
I have experienced the same frustration on my iPhone 3G. I can vouch that the speed is greatly improved on the iPad. The PDF viewer is now actually pleasant. (It's amazing what a little clock speed will do.)
By natural light do you mean direct sunlight on the screen? That is a problem but otherwise the iPad is usable outdoors in most situations I've found. I used it in a car the other day (no, not while driving) with lots of sunlight coming in the windows and it was usable. Definitely not up to par with an e-ink display but for someone like me who has no interest in a dedicated e-ink device it's certainly good enough. I don't think there's much doubt e-ink readers will be the choice for heavy readers. Of course we also don't know how many iPad owners bought the device with the intention to read books on it. We know about 99% of Kindle owners bought their device for one specific purpose.
The science:
- dilated pupils make focusing harder.
- Higher contrast makes reading easier.
So: Reading on a kindle with a bright light closes down your pupils and makes it easier for your eyes to focus on the words without using the muscles in your eyes for focusing. This is especially important for readers over 40 who are starting to get farsighted.
An iPad has a glossy screen, which limits the contrast. (comparing signal to noise, well the reflection is all noise)
An e-ink screen has very high brightness and contrast, even (epecially) in bright sunlight.
I'm not saying it's impossible to read with the iPad or iPhone or a computer. Just realize it may take more unconscious effort for some people.
This presupposes that people will be willing to buy (and carry) multiple devices or that they'll prefer a reader over a more general purpose device with a less pleasant reading experience. It's possible that they'll buy an iPad and stick to paperbacks. Another possibility is that they'll simply forego reading altogether.
Why read when I can just as easily kill the time playing Harbor Master HD on my shiny new toy?
Don't get me wrong, I love my Kindle and still use it for reading around the house or when I go out with that specific purpose in mind, but the iPad is what ends up in my bag on most days.
As a side note to those considering both a Kindle and an iPad, I'd go with just a Kindle 2 rather than a DX. The DX's larger screen is only really useful for reading PDFs, and the iPad is (for me anyway) better at this.
The numbers on iBooks are cooked. When you download the free app, there is a free download available, Winnie the Pooh, prominently featured. This means they can count 1 download of a book for every free download of iBooks. The fact that there are probably only 500,000 books sold so far does not bode well for the iBooks store.
In my anecdotal experience, the selection is very limited in the iBooks store. I found much wider selection using Kindle, and the Kindle app is pretty nice. The only drawback to using the Kindle app is that it uses Safari to do all of your purchasing, but you're still able to purchase a book in Safari and download it immediately in the Kindle App. Books that cost $9.99 in the iBooks store were $5.99-7.99 on Kindle.
For now, I'm a happy Kindle customer, since all of my library transferred over to my iPad, but if Apple does manage to increase the selection and lower the prices, I might consider shopping there.
You have no proof that this what they did, you are just making stuff up. Not sure how you got modded up. The press release said they have sold 1.5 million books, this would indicate the free book is not included.
Also, not everybody has the iBooks applicaiton, since as you say, it is a download, and does not come with the device.
It's worth noting that those are books DOWNLOADED, not sold.
In addition to all the freely available titles in the Book store, everyone who downloads iBooks is also prompted to download a free Winnie the Pooh title. I expect virtually nobody selects "No" for this.
I would be very interested to know how many titles that have actually sold. I expect it's a fraction of 1.5 million.
You might be right but that doesn't count the 50 or 60 books I've read on my iPod and I can transfer to the iPad without purchasing anything or downloading anything.
It is to early to estimate how much the iPad will be used for reading based on the number of downloads. Too short a period of time to gather meaningful data.
Apple does not have a big selection yet. And let's not forget there are other means to get books on iPad. I have Stanza, Classics, Eucalyptus and Kindle on my iPhone…
Try reading comics using the Marvel app - that certainly wouldn't translate well to a kindle. I wish there was a better selection (and other comic companies would jump on the bandwagon), but it's pretty fantastic. I ended up buying 40$ worth in the space of two hours.
Has Amazon ever talked about how many books they have sold? I wonder how many they sold the first month of the Kindle being on sale? I don't think that is necessarily a number to make Amazon feel safe.
I have an iPad but haven't bought any books, but I don't have a Kindle either. I imagine there are people who are buying iPads instead of Kindles, and they are responsible for a disproportionate number of the 1.5M books.
Also, I've read a lot of comments on how it is hard to read on an iPad (and some in the other direction) but for what it's worth, I'm in the latter camp. I've done a lot of reading (hurray Instapaper!) on my iPad and it has been a very good experience.
> Has Amazon ever talked about how many books they have sold? I wonder how many they sold the first month of the Kindle being on sale? I don't think that is necessarily a number to make Amazon feel safe.
Even if we had that number, I'm not sure it would tell us much because the two devices are very different. On the Kindle, buying books is the primary thing to do. On the iPad, it is just one of many.
So while many iPad might be sold to people who will never read e-books, these people probably aren't reading on Kindle or even on paper anyway.
The Kindly simply isn't bought by these non-readers, so the average number of books sold per device means something different.
Right, that's why I think that the total number of books sold, not the number per device, would be an interesting number to compare. Are there more books being bought for the Kindle or for the iPad? What does that graph look like?
Well, right now there better be more books selling for the Kindle then for the iPad. :-)
The Kindle is a single purpose device that has been on the market for a couple of years and every single one of them was sold to a person who is a regular reader, otherwise they would not have bothered buying a reading device.
That doesn't really say much about Amazon. Those same 1 million people may not have bought any more on the Kindle App than iBooks. We won't know unless Amazon releases the number of books bought from the iPad.
I like reading books, but I don't have a Kindle and I haven't purchased any books on my iPad.
imo you're making a mistake in looking at the "average" number across all iPad owners. Many of these people will probably never buy a Kindle anyway.
Before you use any "average" numbers to make conclusions about the iPad, you should be looking at the average number of books purchased on an iPad within a more narrow segment of the market - e.g. among iPad owners who have bought more than 3 e-books on any device.
I think it opens up a bunch of new doors for reading. Its perfect for interactive children's books with mixed media. I can see my future child learning how to read by using an iPad.
Everything is comparable once you own one or the other. The risk to the Kindle is not that people shopping for e-readers will choose the iPad over it for that purpose, but that people who buy iPads for any number of other reasons will be less likely to buy dedicated e-readers.
I have a Kindle and an iPad. The iPad isn't a reader.
iPad doesn't work worth a damn in the sun (the finger smudges show up, and the screen washes out), and even in the dark it's just not as nice as reading from paper or kindle.
I've found a bunch of use cases where the iPad excels, but there's little to no overlap with the Kindle.
> I've found a bunch of use cases where the iPad excels
What are those ?
edit: why would a genuine question out of curiosity be modded down? I'm really weirded out by that. The ipad is a reasonably new form factor and new form factors bring new use cases, and I'd like to know what those are.
In my opinion, the ipad excels when you're reading anything more complex than a linear novel.
I used to own a DX, & I'm sure you can find posts of me praising it... until I got an ipad. The DX is just barely big enough to read arxiv pdfs, so I'm sure the kindle2 is much too small. More importantly, e-ink refresh rate is so slow it's a pain just switching books, or even flipping around a reference book. Then the kindle has a very bad music player & browser, & can't play video. I keep trying to tell people the ipad backlight is a complete non-issue because you can darken it http://imgur.com/h5NEi.jpg . The reflection is a bit of an issue, but you can definately work around it given the other advantages.
Don't worry, I'm sure the downvotes you saw were from a reading of your comment as snarky. There are a lot of Apple haters out there and "what are those?", can easily become "oh yeah? well, what are those use cases smart guy? paper-weight?" in some people's mind.
Your question is totally relevant. The iPad has been presented as being great as many things, but I'd also be curious to know the opinion of people who've used it extensively. During a brief test with one, I just didn't what to do with it. It's the kind of device that you need to really use to see the benefit I think.
The one use case that I've seen so far that I really didn't anticipate was the 'toddlers computers', that was totally original.
There must be countless others. I'm still in 'wait and see' mode about the ipad, especially with the way Apple has been behaving lately but there is bound to be competition and form factor related applications are likely going to be portable from one platform to another.
I've found that most of the things I do for fun and to "waste" time on the internet are easier and more fun on the iPad. Twitterrific, Instapaper, Net News Wire, checking HN, and several different games are what I have used it for the most so far. I mostly find myself turning to using my traditional computer for coding and watching hulu.
I spend part of last week at a conference (TNW), and it's the first time I really loved my iPad: It's the perfect conference device for some browsing, tweeting, quick emails, etc. Way lighter to carry than a laptop, faster to 'start', and using it for a full day only took some 30% off the battery. It's quite easy to use without a table as well.
Last year I brought my laptop, which was way heavier, and lasted only for a few hours.
Use case where the iPad truly excels: Multi-touch control surface for digital music creation. A Lemur multi-touch control surface from JazzMutant - http://www.jazzmutant.com/lemur_overview.php
Cost: $1,999 Euros.
For that price I can buy 4 iPads and hook them up through Wifi to control any MIDI devices or DAW.
Sure, you could do all that with iPads and Wifi, but have you actually tried it? I suspect the usability will not match up, due to a slew of technical issues and lag.
With summer coming up soon (for those of us in the northern temperate zone), I'm especially looking forward to trying the iPad out as a 'vacation computer'.
- read my RSS feeds and Bloomberg News with my coffee and breakfast, just like I read the newspaper. I never did this with a laptop (too large, too vulnerable) and it's nice to start the day with all my news in one spot. (I also make my scrabble moves during breakfast now.)
- taking notes while in meetings / at a conference. Again, I never liked using laptops for notes because they create a physical barrier between me and the other people in the room. I didn't love paper because I didn't get a digital copy of it, unless I used my logitech pen and special paper, and it was annoying to write with and had mediocre battery life.
- auxiliary information. I now use it in lieu of printing recipes, and I use it constantly while watching sports (there's a great F1 timing and scoring app, and I love having some basic live sports data available while watching sports.)
- 'just in case' laptop. I've taken to bringing it with me in situations where I don't think I need a laptop, but where I could conceivably need better electronic communication / internet / etc than is provided by a blackberry / iphone / etc.
- 'keep the kid occupied' pad. my daughter has some quasi-educational games installed on it, and I have a few videos on it for her. Good for emergency entertainment.
Things it sucks at:
- being a full laptop. It's too small. I haven't tried using a keyboard with it, but I'm also not tempted to do so.
This is the kind of use I've envisioned having an iPad for, sort of a digital newspaper with the possibility to extend the information base with apps. Looking forward to the iPad landing in SA. Better take a bib to the iStore so I don't mess up the demo unit...
I saw a Kindle 2 for the first time last week, and I was seriously underwhelmed. I can’t imagine how it has gained any traction. The screen is slightly larger than a post-it note, and the best comparison I can come up with is of reading a book on an Etch-a-Sketch.
I have read a ton of Project Gutenberg books on the iPad already, and it is fabulous. The screen does wash out in direct sunlight, but it’s still very readable—I took it to the beach in Hawaii last week a ton and read it for hours. Beyond the beach I can’t imagine anywhere I would ever read something in direct sunlight during the course of my normal life—it’s an enormous edge case for me. Ironically, I’m unable to read a real book at the beach in direct sunlight, because too much light reflects off the page and I can’t stare at it.
And I don’t agree that it’s not as nice as reading off paper or e-ink. Everyone mentions eyestrain but my eyes have never felt ‘strained’, even after reading for six hours. I guess different strokes for different folks, but I don’t think the Kindle and iPad are any comparison. It’s like comparing a calculator and a laptop.
Having used both the Sony Reader and the Kindle and finally the iPad to read books, I'd have to say that the iPad is superior to both. I can't speak for those who have their own experiences so I'm just relating mine like Cody.
I also think it will only be a matter of time before a company comes up with a screen protector that will address the 'glare' and and reflection issues. I've personally never had to deal with them and I've used the iPad both in direct sunlight and under a bright lightsource. Just a matter of angling it another way.
But at that point, you’re spending as much as an iPad for something that has a fiftieth the functionality, and not to mention no color screen. I still just don’t get it.
A BMW is 3x the price of a Toyota but has the same number of wheels and pedals. It doesn't go too much faster either.
When you look at a spec sheet or list of bullet-point features, and can't seem to see the attractiveness of a good-selling product, you are probably missing the forest for the trees.
[edit] Also, a futon is a bed and a couch - two use cases for the price of one! Yet it hasn't exactly taken over beds altogether. There's something to be said for devices that excel at a single primary task.
Your example of a BMW vs. a Toyota only emphasizes my original point. A BMW is fundamentally the same thing as a Toyota, but worth 3× as much. An iPad is not the same thing as a Kindle—for my purposes, the iPad does what the Kindle does except way better, plus it does a million things that the Kindle can’t do. And I wasn’t looking at a list of features, I used one.
If the iPad is a BMW, then the Kindle isn’t a Toyota that costs ⅓ as much—it’s a golf cart that costs exactly as much as the BMW. If they made a futon that is better than both a stand-alone mattress and a stand-alone couch, then, yes—it would take over beds altogether.
I have a DX. If you leave the radio on, it does not have a 2 week battery life.
If you meticulously remember to turn the kindle off _and_ you don't use it, you might limp to two weeks. But then you actually start reading a lot and maybe playing just a smidge of music to drone out crowd noise and you're at maybe 2 days of medium use.
Better than an iPad, but it's not some magical perpetual motion reader.
Yes, the radio messes things up, which is why I leave it off 99% of the time. It's mostly useless when I'm just reading.
2 weeks if you don't use the Kindle? I'm confused as to how you came up with that. Some quarters I will go months without a chance to read. I turn off the wireless, my Kindle 2 auto-sleeps, and it still has a mostly-full charge months later.
If you don't use the wireless and don't play music (I find music distracting, and prefer my iPod or my stereo anyway) the battery life is truly epic. Though, this may be different for the DX.
I think the exception to this (and not yet realized) is when color is an integral part of the book. I.e. copiously illustrated books. I would love to see an e-book version of Tufte's books.
I wonder if there's more money in making apps ipad enabled now since that market isn't nearly as saturated as the iphone market. So if there's 80 million iPhone/Ipod touches out there, but 200K apps, and only 2K ipad enabled apps, it may be worth it.
And yes, I'm aware that iphone apps work on the ipad, but my friends who have ipads won't install iphone apps on their ipad because they come out looking so pixelated.
Really? I absolutely hate it :( It doesn't slide well at all on any surface I've tried, so it's so uncomfortable to use. And to make matters worse, it detects right vs left clicks quite poorly. Apple makes fantastic hardware, but in my opinion they have never once made a good mouse (and I've used every single mouse they've ever released).
And not an actual knock against the magic mouse as this is not its intended purpose, but: worst gaming mouse of all time :)
Download and install better touch tool (http://blog.boastr.net/) and you will quickly change your opinion about the Magic Mouse. It has made the Magic Mouse hands-down THE best mouse I have ever used. Combining multi-touch with a mouse surface is an incredible innovation, and I'm surprised more people haven't recognized this.
I agree about Google maps, but that is Google's defect to fix. I doubt they will.
The flatness doesn't bother me. I hold it in my fingers, thumb,ring,pinky on the edges, two fingers for driving.
The mighty mouse always annoyed me for the randomly sensitive side squeeze clicker. Of the various units I had some required a great effort to click and some would click if you looked at them sternly. I just disabled the functions for that clicker. Oh, and don't get me started on the eventual failure of the little top balls. Nothing quite so irritating as a top ball that will scroll down but not up.
Unfortunately I have to buy a new keyboard. They moved the control key and I can't keep my brain straight so I have to make my keyboards match.
Yes, it is flat but that does not matter. Your entire hand does not rest on the mouse just you fingertips. I really like the action of the accelerated scrolling with the touch interface - it hardly takes any motion at all. Right click works perfectly as you would expect and the battery lasts forever. It is really nice to be able to get multi-touch on my older macs. I think there is a way to get it working with windows but I have not tried. I bring mine everywhere with me since I generally prefer a mouse to the touchpad (even on my 15" MacPro)
If your left-click finger is resting on the left side of the mouse when right clicking it registers as a left click. Back and Forward are achievable with two-finger dragging to the left and right, but what about middle clicking?
I agree that it seems pretty magic, but at the end of the day different physical buttons are preferable to a single flat surface that affords everything; The mouse gives you no physical hints on how to use it.
I thought it was too flat to be comfortable. I'd love to be able to use gestures, but with my limited demo, I found my hand was cramping up.
Maybe I'm just use to those nicely contoured Logitech mice, though? Now that I think of it, the Magic Mouse is probably less "resting" and more "pushing" when compared to other mice...
I bought one for my wife, and ended up stealing it because of the momentum scrolling.
It's not as nice of an input device as Apple's trackpad, but it's my favorite mouse to date. (and the first Apple mouse that I actually enjoyed using.)
Agreed. I wish they would make a USB version though, it seems to really suck down batteries. I have 2 Magic Mice and except for the occasional lag and batteries, it's the best mouse I have used.
Instead, I'd love to see Apple release a bluetooth keyboard that includes a multitouch trackpad for use with Mac Minis, Mac Pros, iPads, and other devices that support multitouch.
I'd gladly use such a keyboard with my MacBook Pro, when it's sitting on my desk. Right now I'm typing on a standard Mac keyboard in my lap, and have to reach up to use the MBP trackpad.
I think if they added curvatures it would make the multi-touch gestures hard to use. Hard to do a 3-finger swipe on a curved surface because your fingers would still need to be at an angle to the surface causing you to unnaturally bend your hand upward.
Try to use a touch pad that is at a 45 degree angle away from you, you'll find your wrist straining over. I'm sure they tried a curved mouse, but then realized the touch gestures would be too painful on the wrist.
I bet you're right. With Google's Android TV project pending it wouldn't surprise me to see this at WWDC. Between games and media it seems like the obvious next step.
I think they will use as much of it as possible so that app developers will be able to easily move to the AppleTV platform.
I would suspect you'll see a new remote that uses Magic Mouse like touch tech and the new development tools will make it easy separate out the visual representation from the control interface.
I would also assume that you'll be able to use an iPad/iPod/iPhone as a remote, or multiple devices for multi-player gaming.
They could port from a touch interface to something like a cross between the Magic Mouse and the Wii controller and/or use your iPhone to interact with the screen.
I imagine whatever they do next will have to do with fixing their users' biggest problem at the moment: AT&T's horrendous network service. An interesting (possibly related?) observation is that Apple has saved up about ~$40B in cash.
I can understand why they won't, but it seems like it would be a good investment for them if they were going to stick with AT&T long-term to invest a couple bil in AT&T's network. Unfortunately since this would benefit other non-Apple devices as well, it will never happen. One can dream though.
My bet is AppleTV+Console combo, though they have burned themselves on Pippin. But then again, they burned themselves on Newton also and they brought it back as an iPhone and iPad. I guess they are determined to bring their ideas/products to light, no matter how much they wait!
The big numbers will be the ongoing revenue stream of apps and content delivered via those million devices. I think everyone will be surprised at the average monthly spend through the app store/content stores.
Apple is primarily a hardware company. The present AppStore isn't a big money maker for Apple for the iPhone/iPad (look at their financial reports), I don't see why it would be that different for iPad.
On the iPad, for the first time with an Apple device, I can easily see myself spending more than the HW purchase cost on apps/content over the next 12 months. Obviously Apple only gets a % of that, but still it's not insignificant and it's a relatively high margin revenue stream. I think we'll see some surprising numbers in next years financials or the year after that.
Agreed. I also have to wonder if the report showing the app store only broke even was because of initial investments which they will not have to repeat in the future.
