News Apple making smaller iPad?

No e-reader can beat the feeling of having an actual book in your hands. At least for me.
I don't care if it's 9.x inch or 5-7 inch of useless-ness (for me).

 

Don't kid yourself. The only reason apple is releasing 'updated' versions is to milk more money out of the public. i.e artificially increase revenue and sales figures

 

My girlfriend reads a LOT. We're talking 2-3 bookshelves stacked two wide + multiple banana boxes of books and thats just what we have here. There's probs a similar amount of older books she has at her parents too...

Got her an e-reader and it does get a fair amount of use, where possible though she does prefer actual books as others have mentioned previously. It she can take a load of books on holiday, to the park, to work or to bed and not have to cart massive weight around with her. A touch screen reader with double pages and a touch screen (so the use becomes more like a real book) might help things along a little as well....

The market for e-books isn't quite there at the moment, prices are often as high (or higher) for new releases compared to hard copies. Maybe the iPad/Kindles popularity will help improve this a little? Who knows.

The one major advantage of the dedicated ebook readers is the screen. They're simply amazing to use, very easy on the eye and no worse to read than a real book. That's probably one of the biggest issues with the iPad, the screen really isn't suited to peroids of long term reading. That's why I'm not quite sure why the iPad/iPad Mini and being pushed so much for the portable reading market??

 

If they make a bigger ipad I might actually be interested. Perfect for a coffee table pc. A 15" 3g version would be great for a holiday house just to do quick Internet things. Anyone know of anything like that? Especially with windows 7. Also why do we need something in between a iPhone and an ipad?

 

Don't believe the iRumours. Apple is not going to make a smaller iPad. There is absolutely no strategic commercial sense to doing that, and if we know anything at all it is that Apple knows a bit about long-term strategic planning. Apple may in the long run release a beefed-up iPod Touch but I suspect not before the iPad has had time to settle in.

People like books because nothing better has come along: nothing that is as cheap, as easy to use, as easy on the eyes, as versatile and won't moan about low battery every few hours.

e-book readers are not doing well at the moment because they are not very intuitive (and they are riddled with reliability issues, incidentally. Several Kindle and Sony eBook users I have spoken to have returned their purchase --or in the case of Sony, tried to). I mean, if you want to turn a page you have to press one of an array of buttons put in the weirdest places. If you want to look up a chapter you have to navigate menus. There is no colour; not even good grey-scale images.

iPad is a serious improvement: a good, reactive colour screen; turning a page by an intuitive swipe; good battery life. It may not replace paper, but for those of us that don't want to haul stacks of books around with us, it is very handy. A large number of interactive books and self-updating magazines/newspapers in a compact and light device that you can also use to browse the internet, send e-mails, watch videos and play games? Seems a no-brainer, really.

Yeah. 50 million iPhones sold; 35 million iPod Touch's; 50 million of all the other iPods. Nearly half a million iPads sold in the first week of its release. You are right. It is astonishing that Apple even manages to survive because they obviously sell crap.

Do you also believe in Creationism and that the moon landings were faked? Just wondering. Because seriously, I haven't seen such blind belief contrary to the obvious facts since I spoke to a Jehova's Witness.

 

I'm not sure I agree about the screen Nexxo. Ereaders are fantastic to read on and I've never found the need for colour. I've found the slow page turning on some file formats can be irritating, but re-encode them and it's fine. The eInk screens are 10x nicer to read than an LED/LCD screen and very similar to a normal book. The buttons are on the edge of the device, which is where I find I hold it most often. Perhaps refreshing and navigation should be made a lot faster (agreeing with you here ). Nowhere near as slick as the iPhone touch interface.

Agree about Apple though: how anyone can say they're not successful is beyond me. I wish I'd have dropped a grand on their shares when I was going to (about 2000), I'd have been quids in

 

Have to agree as well.

I do a lot of ebook reading on my winmobile phone (similar screen technology to the ipad, essentially a miniature ipad in regards to pure ebook functionality)

My friend has one of the newer Sony readers and simply is orders of magnitude better for ebooks (i borrowed it for a few days ). The E-Ink displays are so much nicer to the eye than active backlit screens, theres really no contest.

Admittedly the display lag is a little annoying, but i found you get used to that very quickly and it becomes a non issue.

As for the tablet PC as an ebook reader concept goes, devices with this new hybrid e-ink/lcd display tech should be amazing: best of both worlds

 

15 years from now...

You will see the next big thing presentation: "We have made something new, its called ink, put it on a paper and you have what we called a book! It's amazingly cheap, does not require power, and you can buy it in a store or get it from libraries in every city on earth! Better yet you can get hundreds of so called 'pages' in a book. And it can have ink on both sides of the page! If you have done reading the book you can sell it on e-bay or put it into a bookshelf for decorative purposes. We are now working on color ink but it takes another 5 years to present it to the public, its still in research."

 

The sole reason for the so far lacklustre success of e-books is pricing. You drop £200+ on a reader and they then have the audacity to expect you to shell out more for a digital copy of a book than for a printed copy. The marginal profit on an e-book must be astronomical. If they came down in price so that a decent catalogue was available at a price consistently lower than hard copies (which, let's remember, can be freely lent, sold on, given away, and have real world overheads in materials, printing and distribution), e-books would really start to take off. If I could get recent releases for around £3, I'd be all over it. As it is, it makes far more sense to buy paperbacks from Amazon, even if you were to bin them after reading!

The iPad has lots to recommend it as an e-book reader, principally Apple's trademark intuitive interface, but I couldn't deal with reading a novel from that screen, vibrant and sharp though it may be. Reading from a page is a far more relaxing experience than reading from even the best backlit LCD screen, and the screens of existing e-book readers like the Kindle far more closely replicate that experience. And let's not go into battery life - a few hours may be great for a media player, but a Kindle should easily last a fortnight's holiday with some fairly heavy reading without a charge, and there is no way the iPad can match that.

 

Completely agree with you on ebook pricing. They're trying to do the same thing the music industry did and charge the same for a digital copy as they do for a hard copy even though the cost of replication and distribution once the material is created is virtually non-existent. I can pick up second-hand paperbacks for a couple of quid in places, I'm not going to pay hardback prices for an ebook. Greed will be the end of us all.

 

Midpoint?

First, who are all these people who spend their holidays reading? Go and DO something! You can read in Birmingham. Unless that's where you go on holiday.

Anyway, ereaders are useful to some extent but the selection available limits the readership to pretty tawdry stuff (kids' books in my view). Good factual books are rarely released in this format. I would be able to see the value for students if the reader itself didn't cost so much, but as it is, over the length of a degree it still seems cheaper to buy the physical books.

As for the MP3 claim, they're poor quality of a kind that only suits music that can suffer degradation of bits - such as most current youth music. Classical and jazz sound abysmal on them. Even for rock, unless you spend all day roaming the streets, there is no competition between CDs and MP3s.

I suspect that those who think books will be replaced entirely are those who have very few books in their collection or only buy the latest J K Rowling or similar pap.

 

Oh dear.

The publishing industry now works on such small margins in everything except the trash market that it has become impossible for smaller businesses to break into it. Ebooks are the one chance there is of decent returns being made to publishers and authors, without the large distribution warehouses taking it all (up to 60% of what you pay on a paperback goes to Gardeners distribution, which has an effective monopoly in the UK).

Of course, the publishers and authors of popular fiction don't have to worry about this, since they have the necessary turnover. But as for the rest of the bookworld, which is far more important, ebooks offer a good chance of publishing at more than the break-even point.

So, no, greed will not be the end of us all in this situation, but ignorance might be.

 

This is a topic pretty close to me heart - hence dusting off this nearly unused account

I've had two e-ink devices so far (had to buy a second after a mate sat on the first - Grrr), and it has been an absolute god-send for me. I know I am not representative member of the public when it comes to reading (I average around a book a day), so take that into account

As with many posters above, I do prefer the tactile experience of a paper book. However, for ease of transport, convenience, etc, I tend to only carry the ebook these days. Currently, it is loaded with around 500 books, of which I have read* around 350 - not too bad given I have had this one about a year.

The current price of ebooks is nasty, but what makes it worse is that the electronic copies are usually (in my experience - but i've not bought too many of them) worse quality than the paperbacks, because they are OCR'd with no proof-reading. Why, I have no idea, but paying 10 quid for a book, and finding pages of random characters is nearly criminal (note: this applied to a couple of Terry Pratchett books I paid for - at least I got a refund from the publisher)

Fortunately, there is so much legit content that is outside copyright (ie several centuries of classics, etc) that I very rarely find myself in a position of wanting to buy a book. If there is something that I have to buy, then I buy it in paperback.

As for the comfort of reading from an e-ink device, it is pretty much the same as from paper. Current e-ink screens have near enough the same dpi as an office printer (300dpi), and they work on the same principle (ink molecules over a matte white backbround). This means that there is no backlight to strain the eyes, the device works even in the brightest of sunlight, and it only draws power when changing the page - once rendered, the screen requires no power to maintain the image.

Compared to this, the iPad is a complete non-starter. Battery life is limited to 10 hours - less than a full day reading for me, and it will (probably) be hard to read in direct sunlight - so no reading in the park during summer. As such, it will be fairly useless for reading ebooks (compared to a dedicated e-ink device) - but the other capabilities of the iPad may make up for it.

I just hope that 'joe public' doesn't get confused between e-ink readers and the iPad - because if they think that the iPad is a 'proper' ebook reader, it will be harder for ebooks to gain traction once the 'its crap for reading on' reviews start coming out...

*by 'read', I don't mean skimmed - I mean read to the point of being able to discuss plot lines, characters, details, etc several weeks later.

 

I always take books on holiday, its good to read when you are waiting in airports for hours, it good to read when you are on a 9 hour flight, and its nice to read late at night when the kids are in bed and you cant leave them *Cough* Mrs McCann *Cough*

 

I'm sorry, I should have been clearer in my post. I was referring to mass-appeal pop-fiction, rather than the more 'niche' market. However, using your own figure of 60% of the cost being distribution-related, even if they sold an ebook for half the price of the paperback, they would still make more profit than on the paper copy. What I object to is making 60% savings on distribution and having virtually free replication and still charging exactly the same. Oh, and, they should include the e-book free when you buy the real book.

 

Lmao with that one xD

 

No. People like books because they enjoy the tactile experience, the smell, feel, and even ritual involved.

I love the way you make these statements on behalf of "people" Nexxo. It makes me laugh.

May I remind you that I am a person, and I love reading books, and I will not be buying an e-reader despite being an avid early adopter of most things hi-tech. Why? Like I said: I like books.

I think you'll find the majority of people agree with me, which is why e-reader sales have always been woeful, despite being sold for quite a few years now. It's not due to the technical limitations you mention either. Since when has THAT stopped people buying "cool" gadgets?

They don't sell well because people like books. The same way they like a newspaper at breakfast, or on the tube.

Just accept it Nexxo, despite it causing you pain... there are certain things technology just has no place meddling with.. because there's no need. Books be one of 'em

You're wrong. End of.

[EDIT]

Oh, and just to pre-empt the inevitable responses: I'm NOT saying they don't have a place, as taking an e-reader on holiday can be useful (although I still maintain the majority would prefer a real book). My initial comments were in response to the person who stated that they would REPLACE books in 3 years, which is patently nonsense. They have their uses... but replacing books is not one of them.

 

Well said, Pookey.

But you know Nexxo... he always knows best.

 

Well.. at least when I say "people" like books, there's some evidence to back it up: The fact that e-readers have never enjoyed good sales despite being around for ages. Saying "people" only read books because there's no alternative is sheer conjecture. E-readers have been around for over a decade now. If they were the holy grail readers have been waiting for, they'd be selling in larger numbers by now.

Nothing against e-readers either. I've toyed with buying one many times, and may well yet do so, but it will be for specific uses, and not to replace books. It's main use will be to replace older books I no longer wish to have taking up space, but am not ready to be without yet.

Incidentally: Last night, my cat was scratching my blinds. I threw a book at the wall next to her to scare her (I wasn't aiming AT the cat.. worry not). I couldn't have done THAT with a e-reader.

To me, e-readers are to books, what Microwave ovens are to conventional ovens. Despite the mid 70s hype, they have NOT replaced the former, or transformed the way we cook and eat. Nor will the e-reader. It will settle down into it's own little niche, and sell steadily to those that require it.