However, the current trade offs are interactivity/color/etc and battery life. To have the interactivity you describe would require an LCD or some other display technology that at the size of the Kindle would drain the battery too fast.

Instead, they have focused on improving the current experience of reading books by offering the following additions: a single device capable of displaying / storing a number of books (great for trips), immediate access to 250K+ books (saves the trip to the store or wait for a new books) and size. (And I’m sure there are other reasons)

I’ve had my v1 Kindle for over a year and I could never go back to paper books for novels, the Kindle experience is that much better.

I do with that the interactivity was better (something the article did get right). I’d love access to a O’Reily-type Safari service for tech books on the Kindle, but it’s still too sluggish for that type of use.

That beautifully sums up what I find so odd about the Kindle, and why it’s so extremely far off from being the “iPod of books.”

Amazon’s concept is completely flawed – they’re attempting to duplicate the experience of reading physical books with an electronic device. But the problem with that approach is that you simply *can’t* match a physical book in certain areas (like with battery life).

I think they should forget about physical books entirely and just try to *make reading itself better*. For example, “typing” is not a core aspect of “reading,” so why have a physical keyboard taking up 30% of the device at all times? Dump it for an on-screen one that you can call up when needed (like to search – something you can’t do with physical books), then make the display larger.

How about support for animated images and 3D interactive graphs and diagrams? Things a physical book can’t do that could actually aid your comprehension of what you’re reading. Etc.

In short, they should emphasize and exploit the benefits of an electronic device, and ignore the limitations of physical books rather than trying to copy them. Imagine if Apple restricted the iPod to holding 70 minutes of audio just because that’s how CDs work! That’s kind of what Amazon’s approach with the Kindle is like.

And what if iPhone (and eventually other mobile) users acquire Text-to-Speech capability by means of (other 3rd-party) software? Surely this will overcome the “readability” obstacle of the small screen factor of mobile phones, won’t it?

How will the Kindle fare in that situation, given its own “portability” problems?

Just a thought.