Comments on: Re-ranting: Let me try again, real slowly: the Apple iPad is neither a “tablet” nor merely an e-publication reader

By: mattmullen

mattmullen — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 19:51:25 +0000

“People replace old media with new — they don’t replicate old media with new.”
Things like Kindle store and itunes win because they are “drop-dead simple for non-technical people to understand and use.”
Points like that are why I've been reading your blog for years. They seem so obvious, but obviously they're not, so I'm glad you are ranting on them.

By: mattmullen

mattmullen — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 14:51:25 +0000

By: John Bethune

John Bethune — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:24:44 +0000

Except for the small screen, I actually prefer my iPod Touch to my Kindle for reading. Even with all the other benefits the rumored iPad would offer, what excites me most are the expanded possibilities for reading. Magazine producers are right to be actively preparing for pad publishing. I've had mixed feelings about the appeal of reading digital magazines on desktop or laptop computers, but on a device with a Kindle-like form factor and iPod Touch-like performance, it could be a much more satisfying experience.

By: ampressman

ampressman — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:58:17 +0000

My gosh that NY Times article reads like a dispatch from Brain Dead Central. Substitute newspapers for magazines and web sites for iPhone apps and it's the same old, same old -- that tone deaf anthem that media publishers have been marching to for more than a decade.

I think the bit you highlighted about "promised for years" got garbled either by the writer or some editor. It's more like tablet manufacturers (Microsoft, HP, Dell) have been promising for years that tablets would CATCH ON WITH consumers. And, of course, the prior article that's linked to doesn't mention anything about promises of manufacturers but more riffs on your tablet ideas ("Nonetheless, the new batch of devices has gripped the imagination of tech executives, bloggers and gadget hounds, who are projecting their wildest dreams onto these literal blank slates.")

It must be almost impossible for mega-sized content creators to recognize that the more options available, the less valuable their content becomes (both to readers and/or to advertisers). Look at politics or sports or any other area of wide interest. The amount of excellent material on the web is expanding every day. This highly original material is produced at a far lower cost than the stories in ESPN Magazine or Sports Illustrated, two publications I subscribed to in the past but would never even get to any more.

And that's just head-to-head competition. I wrote a post a few years ago at Businessweek (http://www.businessweek.com/investing/insights/...) about the problems of the music publishing industry looking at the rise of time (and money) spent on newer kinds of activities like video games, Internet surfing and home theater. The niche-ification and popularity of cable TV is also widely overlooked.

You analysis of the Kindle is right on. It continues to amaze me even now that so many pundits and analysts and reporters can't grasp why the product succeeded. You can see them falling into the same old traps in writing about the Nook. Hey it has a COLOR screen. Wow. The ebook store, the ebook prices, the wireless experience -- the CUSTOMER experience overall -- almost never got much real focus. I could go on and on but I'll stop there...

By: willard lavonne

willard lavonne — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:30:00 +0000

You nailed it completely. (And succinctly.) Enjoyed reading this. Thanks.