Linked List: March 4, 2009

Wednesday, 4 March 2009

Did Amazon Intentionally Cripple the Kindle iPhone App? 

Ed Burnette:

Kindle for iPhone is nice for people who already have a Kindle or Kindle 2 who might find themselves away from their device with a little time to kill. However, Amazon seems to have taken steps to make sure the iKindle does not cannibalize sales of their $359 money maker. If, as Amazon claims, the big-screen Kindle e-ink reading experience is so much better than reading books on a phone, then why bother crippling the phone reader?

His complaints are that the Kindle iPhone app doesn’t have a search feature and doesn’t connect directly to the Kindle store, both valid complaints. But it’s possible Amazon simply hasn’t implemented them yet. (It’s also possible that Apple, not Amazon, objected to direct integration to the Kindle store.) And how sure are we that the $359 Kindle hardware is a “money maker” for Amazon? Especially given that it offers free-for-life EVDO networking, I strongly suspect it’s a loss-leader for selling books.

Stimulus Logos 

Saw these new logos yesterday and thought they were terrific. Well, no wonder: they were designed by Aaron Draplin and Chris Glass. More like this, please.

Regarding Kindle for iPhone 

Glenn Fleishman:

Overnight, 240,000 books are suddenly available for the iPhone through a free application’s conduit. This might also signal that Apple has no plans to enter the electronic book reader market — otherwise, why allow Amazon to set up a beachhead?

And it also strongly suggests that Amazon is more interested in the business of selling the blades, not the razors.

Amazon Releases Kindle Application for iPhone 

The app is a free download, and lets you read Amazon’s proprietary Kindle e-books on your iPhone. The Kindle app doesn’t have an interface to the Kindle Store; instead, you buy books (or add free samples) to your account on Amazon’s Kindle web store, then when you next launch the Kindle iPhone app, it downloads any new content in your account. You can get free sample chapters of books, so it’s easy to try without spending a dime.

Kicking it around for a few minutes, it’s not bad. Pagination is a bit tiresome, though — you have to slide your finger or thumb across the screen to turn the page. Magnetism’s iPhone edition of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button has a far better pagination UI — you just tap the side of the page. Makes a big difference for an action you have to repeat hundreds of times.