michael said:
Simple answer Mr. Bowerbird
those _are_ the best kind. :+)
I didn't HAVE a Kindle until just recently, any only got it registered a week ago. . . as I said when asking about passwords. . . .
ok, well, like i said, i'm glad you are awake now. was that a coma you were in, or just a deep sleep? because, just to update you with what has been happening out here in the real world of e-books, kindle has had apps for all the major platforms for some time now, so you don't need an actual _kindle_machine_ itself to get kindle experience. many of the users buying kindle books these days -- or downloading them from the various sites -- do _not_ own a kindle machine. amazon would sell a whole lot fewer k-books if it could only sell them to people who owned a hardware kindle, for sure... heck, even people who _do_ own a hardware kindle report that they use other machines to read k-books. the average usage is that 3 devices are typically used, presumably the phone (when the person didn't bring their kindle along) and their home computer as well. (although an ipad is another possibility, and tablets will increasingly become an extremely popular tool.) that's why the huge number of iphones/ipods/ipads in comparison to kindles is no threat to mr. bezos, because he can still sell books to those customers... indeed, this is why amazon built its "sync" function, which puts your e-book on any number of devices, which "saves your place" in the book automatically and opens up to that spot when you switch devices. your annotations are also saved in the amazon cloud, so you have access to them regardless of device used. if you don't _know_ all of this -- heck, if you are not _deeply_and_intimately_experienced_ with its import, you are _seriously_ lagging in your e-book knowledge. even (especially!) if you're the man who invented them. and -- just to fill you in on another curious matter -- amazon has proven that a vendor does not need to buckle under to the pressure for a "standard format" _if_ that vendor is willing to support its own format across the wide variety of various machinery out there. indeed, more k-books are now sold than .epub books precisely because people know the kindle-books _will_ work uniformly across the different hardware stages, whereas .epub display is maddeningly _inconsistent_... _that_ is why p.g. is getting all the .mobi downloads... it was supposed to be the main benefit of "a standard" that .epub books would work across different platforms, but amazon has stolen that thunder. and -- with the addition of all of its sync functionality -- it has even gone on to offer benefits that .epub will never match, given all of those disparate voices in its parent, i.d.p.f. and you could (and should) have learned all this, michael, without ever having laid your hands on a hardware kindle. but why bemoan the past? i'm glad you're finally awake. *** michael said:
Am I still to expect your old iPhone?
you bet. as soon as i get my photos and songs and apps offloaded to all these new toys, i'll send you the old one. (but, as i told you, the screen has a strange blemish on it; i have been thinking that apple might be curious about it, and even trade me a refurb so they can send it to their lab, and if they do trade, i'll happily send you the refurb, friend.)
Then perhaps I can learn more about that. . . .
that would be a good thing too... :+)
***
michael said;
I'd like to hear more about Stanza!
yet another history lesson for the recently reawakened!
this one is quite short... stanza was a new company which was on its way to greatness, so to avoid competing against the upstart, amazon bought it and more-or-less shelved it. the end.
i made the first post on the stanza forum, in june of 2008:
six months later, i first noticed some emerging problems:
and by six months after that, they had sold out to amazon:
last i checked, stanza still didn't work on my laptop mac. and its converter routines -- which were a big reason why it was hyped in its early days -- were smoke-and-mirrors that didn't work well (or sometimes, at all) if you checked.
stanza has fans, because it works well on some machines, and it has always had an ambitious outlook (meaning that it gives users control over a large number of preferences), so if it works _for_you_, be happy. it doesn't work for me. i need a viewer-app that works _across_ all of my machines.
i still pull out stanza on occasion, whenever i get frustrated by the dreadful quality of the other viewer-apps out there, because stanza at least _hints_ at the greatness that could be. it's just too bad that stanza never actually _attains_ greatness. so it, too, ends up being unsatisfying, at times even more so.
again, though, if it works for you, be happy! :+)
***
but michael, don't feel bad about your coma...
because hey, at least now you _are_ awake again!
many of the other people on this list are demonstrating that they haven't learned _one_thing_ in the last 5 years, as they were in a coma in the hospital bed next to yours.
they're still having the exact same kind of unproductive exchange which characterized this place back in 2005...
indeed, i am vaguely suspicious that some of them are re-submitting posts they sent in february of _that_ year, as some kind of silly trick to see if anybody will notice...
-bowerbird
On Mon, 28 Feb 2011, Bowerbird@aol.com wrote:
michael said:
Simple answer Mr. Bowerbird
those _are_ the best kind. :+)
I didn't HAVE a Kindle until just recently, any only got it registered a week ago. . . as I said when asking about passwords. . . .
ok, well, like i said, i'm glad you are awake now.
So, you equate not having the money to buy one as being not awake. How quaint. . . . You probably also equate ignorance with stupdity. . . .
was that a coma you were in, or just a deep sleep?
because, just to update you with what has been happening out here in the real world of e-books, kindle has had apps for all the major platforms for some time now, so you don't need an actual _kindle_machine_ itself to get kindle experience.
Somehow I never beleived in simulators being real. Any evidence people are downloading with those?
many of the users buying kindle books these days -- or downloading them from the various sites -- do _not_ own a kindle machine. amazon would sell a whole lot fewer k-books if it could only sell them to people who owned a hardware kindle, for sure...
Just how SURE are you?
heck, even people who _do_ own a hardware kindle report that they use other machines to read k-books. the average usage is that 3 devices are typically used,
Ah. . .back to the money syndrome. . . .
presumably the phone (when the person didn't bring their kindle along) and their home computer as well. (although an ipad is another possibility, and tablets will increasingly become an extremely popular tool.)
that's why the huge number of iphones/ipods/ipads in comparison to kindles is no threat to mr. bezos, because he can still sell books to those customers...
indeed, this is why amazon built its "sync" function, which puts your e-book on any number of devices, which "saves your place" in the book automatically and opens up to that spot when you switch devices. your annotations are also saved in the amazon cloud, so you have access to them regardless of device used.
if you don't _know_ all of this -- heck, if you are not _deeply_and_intimately_experienced_ with its import, you are _seriously_ lagging in your e-book knowledge. even (especially!) if you're the man who invented them.
and -- just to fill you in on another curious matter -- amazon has proven that a vendor does not need to buckle under to the pressure for a "standard format" _if_ that vendor is willing to support its own format across the wide variety of various machinery out there.
indeed, more k-books are now sold than .epub books precisely because people know the kindle-books _will_ work uniformly across the different hardware stages, whereas .epub display is maddeningly _inconsistent_...
_that_ is why p.g. is getting all the .mobi downloads...
it was supposed to be the main benefit of "a standard" that .epub books would work across different platforms, but amazon has stolen that thunder. and -- with the addition of all of its sync functionality -- it has even gone on to offer benefits that .epub will never match, given all of those disparate voices in its parent, i.d.p.f.
and you could (and should) have learned all this, michael, without ever having laid your hands on a hardware kindle.
but why bemoan the past? i'm glad you're finally awake.
***
michael said:
Am I still to expect your old iPhone?
you bet. as soon as i get my photos and songs and apps offloaded to all these new toys, i'll send you the old one.
(but, as i told you, the screen has a strange blemish on it; i have been thinking that apple might be curious about it, and even trade me a refurb so they can send it to their lab, and if they do trade, i'll happily send you the refurb, friend.)
Then perhaps I can learn more about that. . . .
that would be a good thing too... :+)
***
michael said; > I'd like to hear more about Stanza!
yet another history lesson for the recently reawakened!
this one is quite short... stanza was a new company which was on its way to greatness, so to avoid competing against the upstart, amazon bought it and more-or-less shelved it. the end.
i made the first post on the stanza forum, in june of 2008: > http://www.lexcycle.com/forums/stanza/welcome
six months later, i first noticed some emerging problems: > http://www.lexcycle.com/node/591
and by six months after that, they had sold out to amazon: > http://www.lexcycle.com/node/1356
last i checked, stanza still didn't work on my laptop mac. and its converter routines -- which were a big reason why it was hyped in its early days -- were smoke-and-mirrors that didn't work well (or sometimes, at all) if you checked.
stanza has fans, because it works well on some machines, and it has always had an ambitious outlook (meaning that it gives users control over a large number of preferences), so if it works _for_you_, be happy. it doesn't work for me. i need a viewer-app that works _across_ all of my machines.
i still pull out stanza on occasion, whenever i get frustrated by the dreadful quality of the other viewer-apps out there, because stanza at least _hints_ at the greatness that could be. it's just too bad that stanza never actually _attains_ greatness. so it, too, ends up being unsatisfying, at times even more so.
again, though, if it works for you, be happy! :+)
***
but michael, don't feel bad about your coma...
because hey, at least now you _are_ awake again!
many of the other people on this list are demonstrating that they haven't learned _one_thing_ in the last 5 years, as they were in a coma in the hospital bed next to yours.
they're still having the exact same kind of unproductive exchange which characterized this place back in 2005...
indeed, i am vaguely suspicious that some of them are re-submitting posts they sent in february of _that_ year, as some kind of silly trick to see if anybody will notice...
-bowerbird
On 02/28/2011 09:01 PM, Michael S. Hart wrote:
Somehow I never beleived in simulators being real.
The "Kindle for PC" renderer is completely different from the Kindle device renderer. You have to test everything on the device. -- Marcello Perathoner webmaster@gutenberg.org
On Mon, 28 Feb 2011, Marcello Perathoner wrote:
On 02/28/2011 09:01 PM, Michael S. Hart wrote:
Somehow I never beleived in simulators being real.
The "Kindle for PC" renderer is completely different from the Kindle device renderer. You have to test everything on the device.
There you have it BB. Make 7-Up your next soft drink. . . .
Somehow I never beleived in simulators being real.
They aren't -- not from an e-book developers point of view. The "Kindle for PC" for example doesn't work much at all like a real hardware Kindle. And even the "Kindle Emulator" called the "Kindle Previewer" doesn't do a good job at emulating a hardware device. To do that they would need to write an actual emulator: a virtual CPU that would run the actual code of a Kindle hardware device on a PC, say. But clearly what they have done so far is not an emulator. So, to see what customers are really going to experience one has to get the hardware. Conversely, ADE is much more representative of the Sony Devices -- because the Sony Devices *are* running a mobile version of ADE. But the Sonys vs. Desktop ADE have different available font sets and font restrictions.
indeed, more k-books are now sold than .epub books precisely because people know the kindle-books _will_ work uniformly across the different hardware stages, whereas .epub display is maddeningly _inconsistent_...
I would think more k-books are sold than e-books because by now most people shopping for an e-book reader know that Amazon is the leading vendor in terms of sales. I doubt the average would-be purchasers understands the differences in file formats, and the incompatible variations of DRM between the various epub vendors. Some people *do* understand that epub has the advantage of allowing them to borrow e-books from their local library. Beyond that, I suspect most buyers are strongly sensitive to price, and functionality. Amazon has done very well with their $139 price which includes wifi. Strangely, the support of epub by several vendors does not necessary come across as a plus: Apple implemented their own incompatible version, Bordors (Kobo) is imploding, B&N (Nook) isn't that financially strong either, and the Sony Ereaders, while interesting devices, have been percolating along as "also rans" for many years, without Sony ever managing to "hit one out of the ballpark." The ADE-based devices such as the Sonys run into the same problem as Adobe PDF: Long on technology, and short on just plain readability and usability. When push comes to shove, what one wants from an e-book reader is the ability to *actually* read books on it, which means it better be really good in the readability and usability department, because when reading a book, unlike using a browser, one doesn't just walk away from it after five minutes if your eyes are getting tired.
participants (4)
-
Bowerbird＠aol.com -
Jim Adcock -
Marcello Perathoner -
Michael S. Hart