Very disappointed with the way the tech is developing.

[harryE123]

I 've been following this site a few years now (four, maybe even five) and I have an irex reader.

I am very disappointed at the development of the tec. Compromises, a still not close to paper image quality, drm everywhere, standards and formats havoc and vapourware galore, small screens, crap interfaces, laggy software...

... and amidst all this vapourware, still after all that time no decent 9.7" or larger reader: A couple of years ago there was this bob guy here shilling the aztac for months only to (supposedly) let us know that they had run into technical issues with the 9.7" (funny thing is a lot of people here bought that crap and even called me out for calling it like it is), then the plastic logic vapourware, then irex going bust.

At the same time amazon has taken a stronghold stifling competition and innovation by undercutting in price, and not leading in any creative way (it took them for example four years to add a webkit browser there, wtf?)

Let's face it, amazon is no apple, it's not even microsoft to copy others in whatever they 've created. And then there's the decidedly underwhelming sony who won't even come out with a 9.7" reader and who's fallen victim first to amazon's dominance and secondly to their own (typical Japanese) way of over engineering in all the wrong ways and complete lack of vision for an intuitive product.

As someone who's followed e-readers for a really long time here and elsewhere I am disappointed with all that. And I think it will take a good 5-10 years before these devices become actually useable instead of the occasional reading gadgets that they are, when the formats are sorted out, large and better screens appear, the interfaces become intuitive and so on.

I am sure since most here are, as I used to be, ebook aficionados, and some have vested interests too, that they will disagree vocally, but I am sure some who 've waited for the tec to mature will echo my sentiments of disappointment on waiting for products for a long time that have failed to materialise.

Everybook reader out there at the moment is a big compromise of some sort, pdf reading is a mess still, no real functional large screen readers -other than amazon's wifi-less drm ladden one- are available.

No one would have expected five years ago that in five years time we'd still be in square one: same small screen devices as then with only marginally better monochrome screens, and most of the major players that seemed to make some leeway then (irex, plastic logic) going bust or producing merely vapourware.

[leebase]

I'm reading this post on a fantastic 9.7" ereading device. Just finished playing Angry Birds on it as well....oh, and I'm typing this post with it as well.

Nonny

[harryE123]

yeah, well, I love my fantastic 9.7" almost identical device too, and I think it's the next best thing to sliced bread, I queued for it on launch and expected it for the past five years.

But I was referring to e-ink as I can't read on my ipad. I don't have any problem with the way apple developed their product, which like I said I love too, and of course I can't blame them for not jumping yet on the slow e-ink horse. But I do have issues reading on my ipad for any extended time. My eyes just can't handle that, so unfortunately, I am looking for something to complement it.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I agree developement seems to be heading the wrong way. Little improvement has been made in displays and the firmware operating the readers. Instead of improving the displays and features such as zoom, ease of use, battery life, reliability, etc., the emphasis seems to have been on adding bells and whistles not really needed unless it assists a vendor in pushing their own e-books.

[ardeegee]

Also, you still aren't given free paper copies of every ebook you buy!

[Rob87]

I disagree improvements are being made. The displays are getting more paper like. Sony knows what its doing as touch screens are the future of user interaction in e-reading maybe they didnt get it quite right with the resistive touch screen last time but the 350/650 sounds like its going to hit the nail right on the head with a touch screen that doesn't impact clarity or cause glare.

Amazons got their own very good ideas with WiFI & 3G purchasing and cheap ereaders unfortunatly they are also trying to monopolize the ebook market with ebooks in a propriety format.

Theres a bit of a war going on between sony and amazon thats driving development and the innovations they are coming up with are great imo. I'm looking forward to buying a touch screen colour e-ink reader that will let me download new books wherever I am

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Originally Posted by Rob87

I disagree improvements are being made. The displays are getting more paper like. Sony knows what its doing as touch screens are the future of user interaction in e-reading maybe they didnt get it quite right with the resistive touch screen last time but the 350/650 sounds like its going to hit the nail right on the head with a touch screen that doesn't impact clarity or cause glare.

Amazons got their own very good ideas with WiFI & 3G purchasing and cheap ereaders unfortunatly they are also trying to monopolize the ebook market with ebooks in a propriety format.

Theres a bit of a war going on between sony and amazon thats driving development and the innovations they are coming up with are great imo. I'm looking forward to buying a touch screen colour e-ink reader that will let me download new books wherever I am

Not everyone likes touch screens. I dislike them mostly because they dislike me. I hated working register at my last job because the misbegotten touch screens spent almost as much time laughing at me as they did responding to my touch. On my computer, I do work that requires more precision that a touch screen would give me. It's also a longer reach to the screen than to the mouse, something this old, broken down carcass of mine is very much aware of. On an e-book reader, I just see no need for a touch screen. All I need to do is select a book to read and turn pages. A few buttons are all I need for that. I can see scratching the heck out of a touch screen over time (plus the screen will get dirty pretty quickly and I hate a dirty screen).

I also don't need to download books directly to my reader at anytime. It won't kill me to wait until I can get to one of my computers and download to one of them. Besides, the 3G and WiFi connections on a reader are unprotected. No one has come up with a virus for e-book readers yet, but that doesn't mean they won't. Even phones are starting to get them so it's just a matter of time. No WiFI or 3G, no viruses getting in (and no one getting in to snoop or remove stuff). Plus the reader is cheaper and the battery lasts longer.

[harryE123]

Originally Posted by Rob87

I disagree improvements are being made. The displays are getting more paper like. Sony knows what its doing as touch screens are the future of user interaction in e-reading maybe they didnt get it quite right with the resistive touch screen last time but the 350/650 sounds like its going to hit the nail right on the head with a touch screen that doesn't impact clarity or cause glare.

Amazons got their own very good ideas with WiFI & 3G purchasing and cheap ereaders unfortunatly they are also trying to monopolize the ebook market with ebooks in a propriety format.

Theres a bit of a war going on between sony and amazon thats driving development and the innovations they are coming up with are great imo. I'm looking forward to buying a touch screen colour e-ink reader that will let me download new books wherever I am

But that's really pretty much the only thing that's changed as I said, marginally better screens.

Sorry Rob, but what innovations? One can hardly call innovative finally putting in a touchscreen that doesn't ruin a product with glare, when almost all smartphones have had better capacitance touch screens since a few years. Just because they were (sorry but I got to say this) idiots enough to ruin their products' single selling point -e-ink's readability- with a crap touch screen doesn't mean they are innovators for coming to their senses now and finally putting one in (and we are going to see how well it works because I 've been told it's ir...) that doesn't impede reading, they way everyone and their brother have done in the smart phone arena.

That's precisely the crux of the problem with e-ink manufacturers, they are so behind incorporating even the simplest tecs that other gadgets have long ago had.

[cmdahler]

The problem with eInk development and the state of the tech is that the current marketing trends with the buying public leans heavily in the multipurpose device direction, and an eInk device is really only useful for one thing. That relegates eInk to a highly niche-style market, so there just isn't much money available for R&D, so the state of the tech proceeds slowly. Design and software for these devices is likewise limited to those few companies who decide to segment a little bit of resources to this market, and of those few companies, there is really only one that pays a significant amount of attention to the detail and nuance of quality design: Sony. In the electronics and computer design markets worldwide, there are really very few companies with the resources and artistic capabilities to design a high-quality device: Samsung, Sony, and Apple. Generally speaking, everything else just looks like a toy compared to what these companies put out. Unfortunately, the market for dedicated, single-purpose ereaders is so small that two of those three have no interest in eInk device development. If Apple would put some effort in this direction with this tech, they would almost certainly produce a device that would be the end-all ereader, something that would in very short order make every other device on the market completely irrelevant. Unfortunately, Apple seems to have no interest in such a small segment of the market. For the vast majority of readers, a multipurpose device like the iPad is what they want, and Apple is happy to give it to them.

This state of the market is not going to change anytime soon. Tablets and large-screen smartphones are where the electronics industry is heading. Within 5 to 10 years, there won't really be a "smartphone" per se, just a range of tablet computers ranging from an iPhone-sized screen up to a monster 13" tablet. Everyone is fascinated with the idea of combining all of their single-purpose devices into one or two that can do everything. Dedicated single-purpose eInk ereaders face the problem of trying to swim upstream against this trend, and will thus remain a niche product for small players in the market, and consequently development will continue to proceed slowly.

[ceebee_uk]

Originally Posted by Lady Fitzgerald

Not everyone likes touch screens. I dislike them mostly because they dislike me. I hated working register at my last job because the misbegotten touch screens spent almost as much time laughing at me as they did responding to my touch. On my computer, I do work that requires more precision that a touch screen would give me. It's also a longer reach to the screen than to the mouse, something this old, broken down carcass of mine is very much aware of. On an e-book reader, I just see no need for a touch screen. All I need to do is select a book to read and turn pages. A few buttons are all I need for that. I can see scratching the heck out of a touch screen over time (plus the screen will get dirty pretty quickly and I hate a dirty screen).

I also don't need to download books directly to my reader at anytime. It won't kill me to wait until I can get to one of my computers and download to one of them. Besides, the 3G and WiFi connections on a reader are unprotected. No one has come up with a virus for e-book readers yet, but that doesn't mean they won't. Even phones are starting to get them so it's just a matter of time. No WiFI or 3G, no viruses getting in (and no one getting in to snoop or remove stuff). Plus the reader is cheaper and the battery lasts longer.

All the above is a good mirror of my views. The launch of the sony 350 caused the cost of the 300 to go below £100 so I bought one and couldnt be happier !

[Tom Wood]

The main business is the estore/istore that the device connects to. A big store connected to a cheap device is a winning combination. If Amazon can offer a decent reading experience using dated tech at the lowest price, I think most people will buy their product. Maybe they start offering a range of products with the cheapest being much like the Kindle 3. If they can get it under $90, or even down to $50, then they will get a lot of people connected to their store. The multi-purpose devices with the latest tech will not be able to compete on price for a long time, if ever.

[cfrizz]

I agree with Tom. Some of you are getting all caught up in the reader & forgetting about actually reading.

Once I have a good peice of tech that allows me to get lost in the book, then that is all that really matters.

For me the most important drawback now is the prices of the books needs to come down. Once that starts to happen, this whole thing will really take off.

[harryE123]

that's exactly the problem and why irex and plastic logic have nearly gone under. And that's why amazon stifles competition. It has to be said however that had they marketed their products better both irex and plastic logic could show that a great tec product open to use your own documents in and able to use any title on any library is better than a closed, compromised, inferior product from a bookstore that forces you to buy, buy, buy.

@cm, great post, enjoyed reading it very much.

[fjtorres]

Actually, the OP is 100% right.
The industry is *not* moving in the way he likes.
It *is* moving away from the needs/interests of hobbyists/enthusiasts. It is, instead, movingtowards the interests of mainstream consumers; away from focusing on reader devices and focusing on the activity of reading and the people themselves.

Not going to even try to say it's good or bad.
It is simply what *is* happening.

For the near term, the focus of the industry has become to ramp up the installed base, to get big enough to be economically viable for the long haul.
Just putting out the best reader you can design and putting up a website is not going to get you very far, now. (Even Amazon sees that; hence their moves to get their readers into 3000+ B&M storefronts. And that's the US alone. Think they're stopping there?)

The game is now price and ubiquity. Price and visibility. Price and simplicity.

Gold-plating readers with (even desirable) features is not going to do the hardware guys much good if the platform they're committed to is marginalized.
Volume is key in this fall/winter of 2010. The platform that intents to survive to 2015 needs to build up installed base now. And fast, not gradually.

The (near) future of eink readers is small and cheap, not big and flexible.
The (near) future of eink readers is appliance-level stability, not drool-worthy betaware.
The (near) future is, for better or worse, determined by two existing products; Kindle and iPad. Anything with less *consumer* appeal than K3 WiFi had better be cheaper. Anything aiming to sell higher than Kindle had better be bulletproof, feature-rich, solidly marketed...and noticeably cheaper than iPad.

That is a hard, hard environment to deal with and the change came upon us practically overnight; 3 months from the Kobo to the K3 Wifi.

Building a competitive reader these days is a tough assignment simply because Kindle WiFi is such a solid competitor. It is a (fairly) feature-rich reader selling at stripper prices. It hits all the mainstream consumer buttons while ignoring all the pundits' conventional wisdom.

Yes, it's a walled garden. It is also easy to use.
Yes, it's built on DRM. It is also cheap to buy.
It ignores annointed standards. It is also available globally which none of the standard-supporting players can claim.
For each stone that the hobbyist/enthusiast/pundits throw at it, Kindle has an answer. They're simply playing a different game.

And, now, just to make things even harder, we have iPad and its followers; a flood of android webpads. If large-format eink has found it hard to compete against iPad at US$499 and up, how are they to compete with Archos' 10in Android tablets at US$300? Or the horde of 7inchers coming at US$200? Suddenly hardware and software can be judged independently. And Kindle is both. As I said, a different game, and their competitors face the choice of either playing by Amazon and Apple's rules or looking for a different playground.

Let's face it; eBook readers have been an immature business for the past three years. We, the readers, have put up with a lot of crap from the vendors and the publishers all in the name of early access to a new tech. It's the price of being pioneers and early adopters. Some of knew this and were waiting for the shoes to start falling. They have. And now we face the ultimate fate of pioneers, to be cast aside once the industry matures.

Yes, the industry is not going where we expected it to go or where we'd want it to go. So?
Tell it to the CPM, Apple II, Atari, Commodore, and BBC home computer pioneers who saw their home computing niche swamped by the economics of PC clones.
Tell it to Atari, Intelivision, and Coleco gaming fans who saw Nintendo and Sega and later Sony change the rues of the game underneath them. (Tell it to the Sony fans so mortally offended that Microsoft would have the unmitigated gall to dare to compete with Sony--and change the rules of what a console should be like.)
Tell it to supporters of wire recorders, 8tracks, Quadraphonic LPs, or Laservision. (I suspect a lot of googling will be required there.)
It's tough being a pioneer.
But this has happened before.
It will happen again.
That's how industries are born.

We can either whine about it or adapt to the new world that is emerging.
And, make no mistake, the game is just beginning.
The ebook industry is now becoming mainstream; wait til it actually *becomes* the mainstream. (About three more years, I'm thinking.)
Soon we'll be waxing nostalgic over the good old days of debating the merits of DRM. Or Epub vs Mobi. Hah! Wait til the rich-content format wars hit next year! Or the Academic Reader wars of 2012!

Even bigger changes are coming and they are coming in ways and from directions we can't even guess.

We're just seeing the end of the beginning; the fun is just starting.

[harryE123]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Actually, the OP is 100% right.
The industry is *not* moving in the way he likes.
It *is* moving away from the needs/interests of hobbyists/enthusiasts. It is, instead, movingtowards the interests of mainstream consumers; away from focusing on reader devices and focusing on the activity of reading and the people themselves.

I am sorry but this is marketing speak. "The activity of reading" and "the people themselves". I won't go into "people themselves" because this is imho a vapid comment. But how is the activity of reading fostered when people are tied to and confused by multiple closed formats, when they can't have larger screens to read with more ease, when people are tied to a particular bookstore and the screen tec is still nowhere near being identical to printed paper, etc., etc.?

Other than that I agree with most of what you wrote, but these again validate the fact that the technology hasn't evolved much.

I don't need a large flexible e-reader a la ipad which will be a converging device, I 'd like one, but I don't expect or demand one.

But the fact that after so long we still can't get a meagre 9.7 screen one that isn't tied to amazon to read an epub on that is a failure of the technology evolving to "focusing on the activity of reading and the people themselves.", not some wet fantasy a techie like myself might have of what they'd want a device to do.

p.s. sure one can get excited about future developments - tec history in the making is understandably exciting, but this excitement for me has been compromised by a lack of development in getting a modicum of current functional hardware. I really can't be too thrilled or excited when I can't get my hands on a fractionally larger screen and borrow some epubs from my library to read on, and 9.7" is just a moderately large screen.