OK, so Amazon has fulfilled its promise and made Kindle books available on at least one smartphone, the iPhone. And the WSJ’s tech uber-reviewer Walt Mossberg think the iPhone app beats the Kindle book reader in a couple ways:
In two key respects, using the iPhone app seems superior to using a Kindle. First, the iPhone’s screen is brighter, and supports color, so book covers and illustrations in my test books looked much better on the iPhone than they did on the Kindle. Second, the iPhone is smaller and thus much more portable.
Exactly. And if we can get more openness, more ways to meld, move, cut, paste, markup and so on, the app or the Kindle or anything else will do even better, methinks. Where, for example, is the ability to read library books that CEO Jeff Bezos said he was open to? If someone else can get there first, offering true portability and allow us the things digital should allow us — why can’t I tumblog from an e-reader, for example, to post a quote quickly, and thereby benefit me, those who read me and also book sales. (Hearst’s e-reader, perhaps? Nah, doubt we’ll see openness there).) But if someone could do that, Kindle could face a real threat. Scribe’s Michael Cervieri likes the Stanza for reading public domain books on his iPhone. The application also offers transferring among devices.
Here’s Mossberg’s, from Mossblog: First impressions of Kindle on iPhone
Previously: Kindle as Less of a Closed System
