I just read an interesting New York Times article on “social reading” (Yes, People Still Read, but Now It’s Social), and it got me thinking about the future of reading, and the e-reader battle that’s currently going on, particularly between the iPad and Amazon’s Kindle. And then I upgraded my Kindle software to v2.5 this morning, and it made it clear to me why I think the Kindle is a far superior reader to the iPad.
No one will deny that the iPad’s iBooks app has a nicer user experience than the Kindle. It’s colorful and pretty, it has a nice bookshelf, you can turn the pages with your fingers, and, uh… Well, that’s where it stops. The two major issues with iBooks are:
- Since it’s a back lit display, it starts hurting your eyes when you read for too long.
- The battery life is, you know, not ideal…
Now consider the Kindle. Though not as pretty to look at, you can tell that Amazon decided to focus on the reading experience. You don’t have to plug it in all the time, and you can read it for hours without hurting your eyes. But it is v2.5’s forays into social reading that really starts to set the device apart. There are two features in particular that I think are brilliant:
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