Thoughts on "e-readers"
Amazon's Kindle felt right. When it was announced I thought "finally!". Seth Godin (a popular marketing author) predicted back in '98 that Amazon was building what he called a "permission asset" that would later be leveraged to disrupt the entire book publishing industry when Amazon would supplant the publisher by allowing authors to publish directly via Amazon's platform... ala what is now the Kindle and it's open "Digital Text Platform".

Kindle also felt right because if felt like an iPod. Apple had already shown the world a great model for building a system capable of replacing atoms with bits: iPod + iTunes. iPod success was in the design not only of it's digital music player but of the entire music delivery/experience system; from the simplicity of the clickwheel to the immense library that would become the iTunes Music Store. Every music retail store you've stepped into at the mall, every music section at walmart or best buy... all displaced by Apple (once thought of as a mere technology company) as the iTunes store is now the #1 music retailer on or off line. It's clear if there is a model to follow for taking a analog system to a digital system one should study iPod + Itunes.

That's just what Jeff Bezos (CEO of Amazon) did when he hired ex Apple employees to help design the Kindle system (from frog design and ammunition group). No wonder a Kindle "feels like an iPod".

but

it's too easy

this is all too easy, I mean after all I was anticipating Amazon to "ipod-ize" the book.

This unease came to me when I played with the Barnes & Noble Nook (currently Kindle's only real competition other than physical books or ignorant people who think reading is a waste of time ;)

You see the Nook is good, real good... maybe a better overall design than the Kindle. Ammunition Group (a kick ass design firm started by an ex-Apple employee, the same firm that designed the Dre Beats headphones) was hired by Barnes & Noble to design not just the product but the entire system, so Robert Brunner (the ex Apple employee) "ipod-ized" the book and called it... a nook. I think B&N knows they must transition to digital and so the nook was taken seriously (unlike Sony who proved they are complete idiots to actual put advertising money behind their half-baked e-reader). The nook is just as good as the Kindle if not better.

So why do I feel uneasy? Because two companies who are in the business of pushing books have come up with nearly identical solutions... feels like the mp3 player market before Apple introduced the iPod... feels like the smart phone market before Apple introduced the iPhone. The companies who thought they were "in the business of _______" developed digital means to push their content or solve problems. Then Apple showed those companies that they had wasted a lot of money to come up with a solution to the wrong problem, that they had designed (or not designed) a solution to a problem that either didn't exists or only existed because they created it. Apple rethought the "problem" to render a completely different solution.

So Kindles cool but obvious (with muscle behind it), Nook is even cooler and just as obvious a solution, and Sony's e-reader is just that, a generic e-reader that I don't even know the name of (probably because it's something like EF-485n).

Maybe my unease is just me being too sensitive to the elements at play, looking for something that isn't there...

or

and here's my prediction

Apple will try to solve a better problem. (re-read that line... not "Apple will introduce a better solution, but they will solve a better problem")

The problem?

Personal computers come in many forms, but none have been accommodating enough to serve as adequate alternatives to the physical forms that manifest of print media: book, magazine and newspapers. Paper for all it's "oldness" has unmatched display resolution, convenience and cultural characteristics. Paper has been one of man's best friends.

It's possible Amazon and B&N asked "how can I make a better reading experience?". But I wonder how exploratory they were in finding an answer since they both ended up with "let's put e-ink in their hands with 3g and long battery life".

If there is a "better problem" that can be identified maybe it's this: taking audio/video from atoms to bits was invisible to the average person and was only experienced as a increase in convenience or capability (think digital music, digital television, tivo, voip, etc). But how to approach the content normally manifested unto print media? The answer is not easy. You see by all futurists accounts the Internet should have already done away with print media, but we just can't let go of our paper.

There will be a form of technology that will serve as a lever by which many people will let go of paper. The company that invents that lever will inherit much power and responsibility to continue paper's many missions and uses.

Here we have a problem far more pervasive than what an "e-book" could attempt to solve.

So either the e-book is a technology that is part of a larger evolutionary trend towards a technological means capable of ultimately supplanting paper or the e-book is technology designed using a fallacious visual metaphor (we use a graphical user interface modeled after what researchers saw in their office environment: a desktop, files and folders... why we call the main screen a "desktop" with "files" on it).

If the latter is true, that the e-book is like artists 1950's rendering of what flying cars would look like (usually a sexy car with wings stuck on it), that it IS "too easy" (this whole idea of an e-book)... well then Apple needs to come to our savior! (of course Apple, who else?...Microsoft? Sony? Hah!)

What if you took the design elements inherent in paper (which are completely taken for granted, therefore invisible to almost anyone without a trained eye) and attempted not to emulate their characteristics but instead to render the same EXPERIENCE that they render (think insanely high resolution, high visual bandwidth, easy navigation, convenience, etc).

Maybe you'd end up with a tablet with the entire top surface being multi-touch. The screen would feature Mary Lou Jepsen's hybrid e-ink capable of color multimedia AND high resolution "virtual paper". The device would have 3g connectivity and long battery life. But MOST importantly the way the user interacts with the interface would re-create the ease of use rendered by our interaction with print media. This last part, about the user interface, is why I believe Apple is best positioned to tackle this problem.

In one year's time we'll see. 2010 should be the year paper learns of it's destiny, the year we reach a tipping point on our way towards bits from the momentum of atoms.

So there's my thoughts, "ipod-izing" seems to easy, sony's dumb, paper's smart, Mary Lou Jepsen left OLPC for a reason, Dr. Carlin Vieri being on Pixel Qi's board can't be coincidence, Nicholas Negroponte is the father of "atoms to bits" and probably told Mary Lou Jepsen she has something big with her hybrid screen magic, and lastly I strongly believe the success of iPod+iTunes rests in the designers knowing in exactly what forms to manifest exactly what interactions (you can't delete songs on the iPod from the iPod, seems counterintuitive right? but it's actually a side-effect of brilliant design).

Navigating to find content on the Kindle or Nook is poor, which would be ok if we would be happy with just having ebooks in our hands versus also having emagazines and enewspapers. Once you add the rest of the paper world of content navigation would become lackluster at best.

So Apple might solve the problem of manifesting the interaction of navigating content better by melding multi-touch+Pixel Qi Screen+apples always kick ass interface design.

And those are my thoughts on "e-ink media".

comment if you think our kids will one day be rummaging through the attic and stumble upon a kindle/nook and think "lol, they thought the book's form was necessary to render the experience of the book when in fact the books form was an evolutionary design revolving around the paper's dimensions and people adapted to it's form in order to extract their ideal experiences."

oh and one more thing, the picture is of OLPC's vision for the second version of it's "childrens machine". Often when you "design for the extremes" you end up bring newfound value to the mainstream users. The XO is designed for the extreme purpose of getting a laptop in the hands of every child in the world, and therefore it's design has already invented what we now call the "netbook" and will probably bring to life another design paradigm with the XO2. The XO2 would use less than 1watt of power (your laptop uses 60-100watts) and cost less than $100 (your laptop was overpriced).