81 North Blog

Last week I cancelled my Kindle eBook reader order at Amazon. It felt a bit strange doing this. And I knew that if I should change my mind, the delivery wait would begin all over again.

Why did I cancel? Lack of books that I required. These are books that are work-related and hobby related. Books on xHTML, CSS and standards. The current ones. Books on Apple’s OS X Leopard - the latest operating system for my Mac computer. In searching through the Kindle eBook offerings, I find only OS X Tiger.

As of today, Amazon lists 5,065 ebooks in the Computers And Internet category. Of those, 138 titles are listed in Operating Systems and a mere 7 for Mac OS. When you drill down, you find two titles that are specifically about the OS. The remaing titles are more concerned with programmng in Cocoa and learning about XCode. There are no current ebook titles that cover Leopard (OS X 10.5.x)

For one week, I searched for books that I wanted to read - mostly computer or hobby related (I like to make soap in my spare time). I found none for the Kindle. It was not a good sign. I read so little fiction - and this seems to be the area where Kindle shines.

So it was with much regret that I logged in to my Amazon account and began the cancellation process. I know that I will probably order one again, but only after the publishing houses and authors are able to come to terms with this option and release their current titles right along with their print editions. And perhaps also when generation 2is released.

Amazon’s new Kindle eBook reader sold out after just 5-1/2 hours. Wow! is all I can say.

One well-known technical reviewer trashed it, because he couldn’t "gift" a kindle book to someone while he was reading his own version of it. He also couldn’t browse the web.

Well WTF? A Kindle eBook reader is a meant to be an electronic book. The fact that it has keyboard which allows you to search your own library as well as Amazon’s is simply allowing you to read more books. If you want to start sending gifts, emails or other social things go get on your computer and let the rest of us read in peace. Or at least your iPhone. Let’s use the KISS principal here. Amazon has given us the ability to take our books with us, where ever we go, and get new books, no matter where we are. Let’s not complicate things and try to do more. Let’s just perfect this one concept of finding and reading books.

Alas, I was not one of the early purchasers of the Kindle. In fact, I had to wait until this week to place my order. Right now, it appears that shipments are going out to those who ordered during the first week of December. So I am estimating that I have 6 weeks to wait.