- Lots of news for November.
- Kindle is out. I predict flop.
- AMD Quad Core announced.
- Sony cut dev kit price.
- Zune outselling the iPod? Seems unlikely.
- AT&T does Napster phone.
- HP booming and buying back shares.
- Vista SP1 not better.
- Philly Wi-Fi having issues.
- Talk to a blonde and you act stoopidy.
- Yahoo and 415 dailies trying to beat Craigslist. Hilarious.
- Seattle Times has crackpot editorial.
Click to listen:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Um, “stoopidy”? Has John bleached his hair?
the kindle is ugly as sin (white plastic? chicklet keyboard? how about a touch screen – a natural for an e-book reader), overpriced and riddled with unreasonable restrictions (like no viewing your own docs unless you email them to Amazon for conversion for a fee).
the only interesting thing about it is the a la carte EVDO. connectivity built into the price of downloaded media – no subscription or cell-phone contract required.
anyone doing a PMP with wireless connectivity should take a close look at that. the iTunes wi-fi music store, unchained from the hot spot. and a new revenue stream for wireless companies, without all that pesky bill-collection that goes with having consumer subscribers.
Hey John!
I just love your blog sooo much! Just keep it going dude!
Cheers :o)))
San
very interesting about the IPOD being outsold. The one thing I cant stand about APPLE Brand is a lack of competition for their computer prices, no clones. Ipods have been far from perfect, batteries impossible to replace, extremley poor battery life.
Mr. Dvorak, have you seen E-Ink?
I don’t think reading a book is possible on an LCD screen device. E-Ink is the only way that works. That is, if you care about not hurting your eyes starring at an LCD screen of a PDA or an iPhone.
E-Ink is 100 times better for text, especially if you are going to read for hours and hours. Even reading blog entries from Dvorak.org/blog on LCD screens hurts the eyes. It will be so much better to read this blog on an E-Ink device.
So if you want to have a convergence device that does video, music, pictures, IP communications, web browsing and text, I think you will need the device to have two screens. Both LCD and E-Ink in one device. I think that is possible with a clamshell design where the E-Ink screen doubles as a LCD screen protector.
I think the Kindle looks awesome, awesome design (interface is best on a non-touchscreen E-Ink based ebook yet). Though I hope the european version will have HSDPA, WiFi and some way to connect a larger keyboard to enter longer texts. I also wish it had an open RSS aggregator (why not with Amazon powered personalised RSS feed recommendations, micro-payments per blog post and ebook customized add-supported blog posts) and native open formats support. Also I wish this had a wacom stylus touch-screen interface also like the iRex Iliad. I hope Amazon can add all that to it before releasing it in Europe in a couple of months.
@doug
Yeah, because a touch screen will really keep costs down, not to mention the weight.
Figger it out!
-Mike
the zune is a great device, more importantly the software is many times better than the itunes software. My ipod is ok but itunes has always sucked. Neither the zune nor the ipod sound as good as my old iriver h320.
Hmm. The Zune that’s been outselling the iPod is the closeout 30 GB model (1st generation) that’s being sold at a huge discount (and possibly at big loss). It wouldn’t be in the list otherwise.
It’s actually humiliating for Microsoft that the $80 Brown Zune (with 30 GB, mind you) is immediately followed in Amazon’s top sellers list by Apple’s 4 GB iPod nano, which costs 50 dollars more.
The new 80 GB Zune model is out of stock. I think Microsoft prefers to not sell anything rather than look like they’re not selling many (the old trick of reducing the offer to make demand look better by comparison).
I hate Steve Jobs, but the man is a frigging genius. I love my iPod. I don’t want to, but I just do. Apple may not invent much, but they always know how to make something easy to use so you don’t have to pore over an instruction manual to learn how to use it.
I briefly had an iRiver H120 and it was the worst piece of monkey turd ever, and it was expensive, ugly, blocky and worthless. Did I mention it sucked? Oh yeah I did already.
Maybe brown was holding things back? 😉