Can a Kindle author text documents, spreadsheets, and presentations? Can a Kindle play media (not just music, but video, too). Can a Kindle map out your location? More fundamentally: is a Kindle a fully-interactive, touch-capable, full colour device? No.

Kindles are “dumb” devices, with strictly limited and linear functionality. iPhones, and the iPad, are practically a tabula rasa for any functionality that app developers want to impart on the device. Therein lies the genius of Apple’s app store strategy.

Even the things that the Kindle does do apart from reading a book in black and white: browse the web, listen to music—and, err, that’s it really—it does in a very, very mediocre fashion.

Granted, the Kindle SDK will open the device up to developers, but eInk’s atrocious refresh rate and the horrible UX of the current iteration of the Kindle OS will hobble any applications developed for the platform (as a matter of fact, I can’t see the Kindle in its current iteration being attractive to developers in the slightest).

Future iterations of the Kindle may very well be an improvement (I fully expect the next Kindle to be colour and touch-enabled, for example), and I suspect that Amazon is looking towards these future devices when opening up the Kindle platform, but for now, we’re talking apples and oranges (no pun intended).

The iPad is not “Apple’s way of testing the waters in the world of e-readers”. The iPad is a multi-purpose device that happens to include optional functionality (remember, the iBooks app isn’t pre-installed—you have to download it) which helps leverage a subset of media (eBooks) which Apple is making available in order to increase the selection of the iTunes store.

The Kindle is not a bad first iteration of a reading device (it’s not the best, either, and I have serious usability issues with it beyond the fact that it’s a closed system), but it’s hardly in the same category of products as an iPhone, let alone an iPad. Trying to pigeonhole a device like the iPad into the same category as the Kindle denotes a very myopic, publishing-centric attitude, one that seems prevalent within the publishing industry, and will prove to be very, very harmful to publishing.

As a side note, and as someone who’s been buying Macs for years, and whose first Mac was a dull, beige, not-shiny-at-all G3, I find your reduction of the attitudes behind why people buy Mac products woefully simplistic, to say the least. People buy Macs, and Apple products in general (an iPhone is not a ‘Mac product’, btw), for all sorts of reasons, same as they buy Windows boxen for all sorts of reasons. Again, simplistic reductions will get you nowhere around here.

consumers who buy mac products are people who either:

a) like shiny things

b) want usability beyond function

and/or c) want the label.

from a capitalist point of view, there’s nothing wrong with that but don’t mistake what this is. it isn’t a tablet. if you want a tablet mac, look up the modbook on google. this is just a bloated e-reader, something apple is good at doing: making something more than what it is.

(sent from my iPhone btw).

April @2
As I mention on my post, I’m wary of really delving into substantially reviewing the iPad (or any device, really) until I’ve actually had the chance to use one.
In general, I don’t think it’s fair to pull out seemingly well-formed opinions solely from secondhand reports. Specifically with regards to Apple products, I know from firsthand experience that actually *using* the device sometimes changes my opinion of it, usually for the better (sometimes, the inverse is true).
While I also have some misgivings about the iBooks application in particular, I’m not ready to chime in, nor am I interested in speculating until I’ve had a chance to play (and do some heavy-duty reading) with it firsthand.
I’ll be getting one as soon as it’s available, and you can certainly expect me to write about it here, especially with regards to how it performs as an ereader. But in the meantime, I’m willing to be patient.

I’ve anxiously awaited this device, thinking (as so many have) that it would be an ereader to leave Kindle and Sony Reader in the dust. As it turns out, however, as an ereader it leaves much to be desired. It seems that where I was anticipating a fantastic new ereader that might also happen to have additional computing multifunctionality, what Apple has produced is the exact opposite: a multifunctional computing device that also happens to serve as an ereader.

I could just cross the device off my ereader wish list and move on, were it not for the fact that the ‘agency model’ deals it has spawned between publishers and Apple’s upcoming iBook store are now driving prices of new-release and bestseller ebooks up across all platforms. So, even consumers who have no interest in buying an iPad must suffer the fallout of its arrival in the marketplace.

The iPad is a major distruptor, certainly. Just not in the way I’d expected or hoped.

My 72-year old mom was eyeballing my mac and my kindle recently and commented how ‘easy’ everything looked. Maybe the moniker was intentional – and not for the ‘har har’ reasons you’re thinking. iPad connotes simplicity – you jot something down on a notepad; utility – you cart your notepad around with you to access information you need for the day.

I’ll be right in back of you for my iPad purchase – we should test case our Moms and report back!