I have been thinking for at least 10 years that e-books' time has come but the technology world has either not gotten it or I'm too optimistic about the costs. Basically I advocate that we need electronic reading devices that can duplicate all the good features of paper books (ruggedness, ease of reading, little power requirement). Yes, there are things that technology can do to improve on the 500 year old paper book but the enhancements must not come at the cost of simplicity. People do not want and will not use a reader that is anything more than marginally more complex than current paperbacks. That means you can't have buttons all over the place and it can't be big and heavy and it can't be hard to read in daylight. People just don't care enough about "power features" to give up the convenience of reading an old fashioned book.
It also needs to be cheap.
Amazon today released Kindle, a machine that satisfies some of the requirements of a hit product but not others. It is allegedly light, has a long lasting battery and is easy to read in daylight. It even improves on traditional books by having built-in wireless for purchasing new books over the airwaves.
Unfortunately it's too clunky. What's with all those buttons? Didn't Amazon get the memo from Apple? Touch screens and software-based keyboards that appear when you need them are where it's at. And the price is outrageous. I'm not saying that it doesn't cost that much to build—it very well may—but we're trying to supplant paperbacks here! Who wants to pay US$400 for for a machine to read books when you can buy actual books for $10 or for less than a buck if they're used?
The price needs to come down, the screen needs to be bigger (and colour would be nice), and they need to get rid of all those ridiculous hardware-based buttons. If only Apple would bring their brilliant design skills to this market.
Yes, I know this has nothing to do with law. I'm a philomath. Sue me.
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