“Second guessing Steve Jobs — or actually first guessing — is Silicon Valley’s most popular spectator sport. Dozens of Web rumor sites pour over every one of his pronouncements as if he were the Pope, looking for product and strategy hints,” John Markoff blogs for The New York Times.
“At Macworld Mr. Jobs told me he was skeptical about the Amazon Kindle book reader because most American’s don’t read. That touched off a firestorm of criticism and speculation. My favorite bit of analysis was that this must mean he is readying his own book reader. A familiar Jobsian strategy is to denigrate an entire category — he did this with cell phones, for example — before reinventing it with Apple panache,” Markoff reports.
“At Macworld, when I asked Mr. Jobs about the idea of an iTouch in a larger ‘Safari Pad’ format, he snapped at me, ‘I can’t talk about unannounced products,” Markoff reports. “On Wednesday, at a financial conference, Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook, confirmed that the iTouch was a platform, not a single product.”
“Without a doubt the Apple industrial design department could do a better job than Amazon in conceptualizing a digital book,” Markoff reports.
MacDailyNews Take: Gee, ya think? Amazon’s Kindle looks like something John Dykstra superglued together back in 1975; with a ColecoVision UI, no less.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “qka” for the heads up.]
I say go for it!
Doesn’t something need to be a success before there are competing products to kill it?
Yeah right! Because we all know what a firestorm the Kindle started as e-book readers burned the midnight oil waiting in line to get a chance to fire one up.
“It’s so hot, we have to kill it now before it’s raging out of control” said a melting Jobs.
…. sure.
Blog popularity shows that people do read. Hit counts show that many do not even bother to go to the second page, let alone read all of the comments before adding their own comment.
So people read but their attention span has dropped dramatically. The iPod Reader Touch must have a color screen so there are a few pictures to look at to keep the reader attentive. The monochrome Kindle just doesn’t cut it.
I read (lots!), I just prefer the look, feel, heft and smell of a real paper book.
AI:
A blog is not a book. Steve Jobs was talking about books.
Steve Jobs comment was controversial, but statistically correct.
the kindle is already dead. Stillborn by the epidemic gripping america, stupidity. It will become our largest export in no time. Paris Hilton is on the cutting edge of this new market.
Hmmm…where have I read something like this before?
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Steve Jobs Announces the iBook eBook Reader
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,2255932,00.asp
I also prefer to read a real book but as I student forced to carry many large, heavy text books, I love the fact that I can carry books on my Palm Tungsten. However, if Apple were to come out with some kind of larger screen version of the iPod Touch with the ability to use a bluetooth keyboard so that I could use it to take notes at school, I would drop my palm in a heartbeat.
Yeah, does the Kindle really need killing?
I can’t wait to buy books through iTunes and play on the five and a half inch screen.
Kindles’s dead its Apple’s turn to take a part in the industry of digital books.
I think the title gives Kindle a little too much credit.
Heh, John Dykstra back in ’75…. Great reference–and the Kindle really does look something like that!
“Amazon’s Kindle looks like something John Dykstra superglued together back in 1975”
Or, like something that Lenny Dykstra beat the living $#!T out of with his baseball bat.
Apple will not release a separate device for this purpose. They will integrate it into the iPhone and iTouch.
I’d love a 10″ iPod Touch. Thing would be a Kindle-killer, a tablet computer, the full wide-screen ipod we’ve been waiting for, etc. etc.
“Doesn’t something need to be a success before there are competing products to kill it?”
looking at the kindle i would say this would be a mercy killing…
“Without a doubt the Apple industrial design department could do a better job than Amazon in conceptualizing a digital book,”
Apple’s Janitorial staff could do a better job than Amazon in conceptualizing a digital book. The kindle is an okay idea… but it’s uglier than a crack whore’s teeth, too limited in functionality and with such lousy design and limited applications, it is just plain absurdly overpriced.
“John Markoff blogs for The New York Times”
As a blogger for the NYT, he should know that “iTouch” should read “iPod Touch.”
C’mon MDN, where’s the [sic] in the article?
I think Jobs doesn’t know where to stand yet, no long ago he said “AMERICANS DO NOT READ ANYMORE, NOBODY READ BOOKS IN AMERICA”, and now he might be working on some kind of kindle killer…..c’mon Jobs give me a break….all this sucks
“looking at the kindle i would say this would be a mercy killing…”
It has a certain… naive charm. But no *muscle*.
@ antisteve
The point is, if Apple creates a Kindle killer, it won’t just read books.
“Amazon’s Kindle looks like something John Dykstra superglued together back in 1975”
Maybe, but the Kindle has free, cellular, ubiquitous internet access which the MBA should have had included.