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Barnes & Noble's Nook HD+ Is Clever

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Barnes & Noble just sent an email out announcing their two new tablets: The Nook HD and Nook HD+.

Previously to this release I was discussing with my partner, who works for Barnes & Noble ways that B&N could compete with Amazon and Apple in the tablet space. There was a concern that B&N had lost traction and that the company was going to spiral out of control and crash, eventually. These tablets have just eliminated a good portion of that worry.

For full disclosure, I came across a rather pleasant and unexpected windfall in regards to money and I’ve been kvetching about the poor performance of my 1st edition iPad and in a way, Apple has sent a clear message that they regard the device as dead because they are no longer writing software updates for it. I went ahead and purchased an iPad 3 and I’ve been enjoying it quite a lot.

This news from B&N is very interesting to me as this new device has several key areas that put up more bang-for-less-money. The first surprise is the processing speed of the Nook HD+ in comparison with the iPad 3. 1.5GHz dual-core versus 1GHz dual-core. Ever since 2003 when the world pretty much stopped worrying and loved the bomb that is processor speed ratings this distinction isn’t as compelling as it appears on paper. The two units have different core technologies, the iPad has an A5X processor and the Nook HD+ has an OMAP 4470 processor. We have seen from manufacturers like HTC and Samsung that even when you pour huge muscular processors into devices to compete, that if the experience of the user isn’t done correctly then all the computing horsepower in the world means very little. It’s not about the muscles, it’s about the refinement of the motor cortex. It isn’t how strong you are, it’s your dexterity – at least in the phone and tablet space. I do hand it to B&N when it comes to pumping numbers and keeping costs suppressed - that’s a win in their column.

The second surprise, and I’ve been half expecting someone to notice this glaring deficit in tablet OS design comes down to what I believe to be Barnes & Noble’s knife-held-confidently-behind-its-back killer feature. Barnes & Noble is going to bring profile control to the tablet space. This casts a huge pall over both Amazon and Apple devices and redefines a tablet to be a multiuser device. It is exceptionally clever for Barnes & Noble to do this because it draws a clear bead of connection from everyone’s computer experience (where you have an account and profile) off to your device. When it comes to Apple, they rejected this model and regard a device to be a one-person-only deal, which has been a weakness in the iOS OS design. Apple may be too far along to make such a fundamental change to iOS so we may see the creation of a new track of tablet technology. Is a tablet multiuser or single-user? By being multi-user, and if B&N does it elegantly, it can cast B&N in a family friendly light, more than an Amazon or Apple product because one relatively inexpensive device can serve an entire family. Instead of the onerous cost of a Kindle or iPad for each person, because each device is single-user, one Nook HD+ can be used by different members of a family without having to worry about security, privacy, preference or profile leakages between people. It’s a failure of the Apple iOS OS and here is why: When I come across another persons iOS device, I am utterly lost – I don’t know their preferences, their security settings, where they have placed icons, and I find myself having to relegate to the search screen to even find where they put the ubiquitous “Settings” icon. If B&N does profiles elegantly, this will be a non-issue. Rendered moot because each person has their own settings that they are used to, making the confusion evaporate.

I think that B&N will pursue a marketing strategy that elevates the personal touch and the family friendliness of their Nook HD and Nook HD+ devices. That will be key, with profiles, the ability to use LendMe to share books, and their admittedly well-done “Parent recording storybooks for their children” technology they will position themselves to be “The Booksellers who care about you and your family” and they will occupy a third niche in this space. The first niche is the deep-discount one, that’s occupied by Amazon. The second niche is the elegance-at-all-costs one, which is occupied by Apple – and then last but certainly not least, the third niche which is the Friends-Family-Kids one, which is going to be Barnes & Noble Booksellers.

This niche may be the best hope for Barnes & Noble to retain their 21st century relevance.  They should maintain their “Brick and Mortar” presence and cater their stores to being a place where you feel welcome, with friendly staff and a coffeehouse/library atmosphere. The elevator sales-pitch is that B&N is more personable and immediate than Amazon could ever hope of being – you don’t know Jack at Amazon, but you know Jack at B&N. B&N’s approach to kids and family with their very deep roots set throughout America means they have already beat Apple to the market in terms of the personal touch. Yes, Apple has the Genius Bar and yes they are friendly geeks, but you don’t go to a Genius Bar to find out about Apps and Woodworking! You can only do that at a Barnes & Noble!

The real competition isn’t between B&N and Apple anyhow, since Apple touches B&N only in this one market-space. The real competition here is between Amazon and B&N. It’ll be an interesting evolution to say the least – which do people prefer more? The cold, impersonal, sterile deep-discount algorithms of Amazon or the instant-gratification, warm, personal, and direct approach of Barnes & Noble Booksellers? It may simply come down to how people refer to these two competitors. You USE Amazon and you VISIT Barnes & Noble Booksellers. That right there is something that Jeff Bezos can never buy himself into, but B&N already exists to cater to. Which do you value, the impersonal or the personal?

Barnes & Noble Booksellers may have just secured their direct relevancy in the market for the next decade with these two new devices. The proof is in the pudding of course, these devices, once in the stores, will be the final arbiter on the survivability of B&N in the tablet market space.

 

Thoughts on Nook

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I have noticed that the Barnes & Noble Nook Cloud service seems rather half-baked. I’ve been comparing different cloud services to each other and I’ve noticed that there is a distinct functionality deficit between many services on one side and the B&N service on the other.

It comes to user-added content. Every cloud service maintains a file storage area online and then establishes a sync using client software to tie it all together. In certain cases this difference has never actually been present, such as with Dropbox. Anything you store there are your own files and the sync client can display them (or play them sometimes) on any device that is attached to the Internet. Some of the more interesting examples are actually more contemporary than Dropbox, as it’s rather well-tread and venerable.

Specific services such as Apple’s iCloud are definitely centered in my sights for comparison sakes. With Apple’s provisions you could opt-in for iTunes Match which will assay your iTunes library and match the files with standardized files on their service. In an effective way if not in a literal way, Apple allows user submitted content to be stored on their service and then spread across the network amongst your connected devices. In Apple’s case you have to buy in to iTunes Match as a service, but I don’t see this as being a barrier to adoption and it fits squarely in the “Fair Dealing” camp as I would expect such a service to be paid and I applaud Apple for their letting users do such a thing.

Google was next on the scene with Google Music. It is a direct competitor to iTunes Match and is actually a more compelling service than what Apple provides as you upload your own music to Google’s storage system and then you can stream that information across the network to any of your devices. This service is free and Google is, along with Dropbox, embracing the true sense of cloud storage as far as I’m concerned. This service that Google provides (and arguably along with Dropbox) is the most stinging rebuke against what Barnes & Noble provides.

Now to the core of it, the Nook cloud infrastructure is half-baked because it is split in half. The division is visible on the Nook devices and Nook Apps that sync with the service. The Nook is all about books, so instead of music types like MP3 or AAC we’re instead talking about PDF and EPUB types of files. The fully baked Nook experience comes when you buy an eBook from Barnes & Noble. B&N stores the ePub on their cloud infrastructure and all your attached devices and apps can see everything in this storage area and enjoy the secret sauce of being able to track reading position between devices. Each device (or app) that you work with watches how far you’ve progressed in an eBook and synchronizes that back to the B&N cloud infrastructure. This is the core of the magic as far as I’m concerned with B&N’s entire Nook experience. It doesn’t seem like a very compelling feature, but to be able to escape from the tyranny of the bookmark or the dog-eared page is very valuable to a reader like me who reads in short little fits and spurts. Now where this goes from fully baked to not baked at all comes when the user approaches the B&N cloud infrastructure with their own eBook collection. The visible division I wrote of earlier on the devices is actually a kind of lame fairness conceit by B&N. You can certainly add extra storage to all the B&N devices and then store your own files on that add-on component, and for most people this would be an acceptable compromise. It is not for people like me. It denies my user data the access to the secret sauce of bookmark synchronization. I wouldn’t be so prickly about it if B&N wasn’t so pricky about how they assemble their devices. Every Nook has an amazing amount of storage on the device, but in the fine print you discover that the storage space for user data is pitiful. This forces end users like me to buy extra parts, specifically microSD cards to beef up storage on our Nook devices to compensate for B&N being an arguable dick about how their devices are designed. It is not pro-consumer, it is pro-company. So here it is, B&N only will allow you to store ePUB and PDF data on their service if you buy it from them. They even put the lie to the argument: “They do this because you should pay for the storage” because you can “purchase” free eBooks and they end up on that side of the cloud divide just fine and can take advantage of the bookmark sync functionality. What then for end users like me who come to Nook with gigabytes of ePub content? What is it that I’m after? I want to upload my ePub content to B&N so I can sync it amongst all my B&N cloud connected devices. Specifically I want to be able to read-anywhere all my books, not just the ones I purchase or “purchase” through B&N! I have to start asking “Why does B&N do it this way?” when it’s obvious that other cloud companies go about it in a much more pro-consumer approach?

There are ways to address this from the B&N mothership. They could offer a “My Library” service for $20 a year which would then provide customers with 5GB of complimentary data storage on the B&N cloud infrastructure. This product would not be compatible with B&N’s LendMe service, and I’m fine with that, as it is fair, but it would allow end users like me to upload our ePub content onto our B&N cloud accounts and then read that content anywhere. I think that would really address the concern I have and maybe others do too of the Nook being a pro-company and anti-consumer device. This would help even out the field, and its fair dealing because the value of the data storage and the bookmark sync functionality I would peg at $20 per year. It’s a lot like iTunes Match in that regard.

While Barnes & Noble keeps their cloud infrastructure closed in this odd fashion I will be dissuaded from using it. By allowing user data on their devices, and then the conceit of adding microSD to make the device honestly equitable between company and consumer they create a kind of leper colony for books. I don’t want to use it because I can’t use it the way I want to use it. It used to be that companies dictated to consumers what they could and could not do with the products that the company sold, but in this age of service competition and device jailbreaking the consumer really is empowered to demand and expect that the devices we purchase will do what we want first, and whatever the company suggests to us can be acceptable or skipped altogether. I have six books in the leper colony in my Nook and a great deal more on my microSD card. On one side of the Berlin Wall in my Nook are all the free books in the west, and all the jailed books in the east.

So what of it? What if B&N ignores what people like me have to say about their cloud service? They’ll miss out on a new subscription model of service and a steady flow of $20 per user per year for what amounts to being a button-press. The real danger will come when someone creates a new Android firmware set for the Nook devices allowing customers like me to buy a Nook from Barnes & Noble and then eliminate all traces of Barnes & Noble from that device and go with a competitor who offers what I want. What if a company starts up, offers a truly equitable cloud infrastructure system and provides a download link for their own Android firmware that will work on any Android device? Just because Barnes & Noble put their marks on the Nook doesn’t mean that the device isn’t an Android device. So end users can just download the file, use the Android SDK tools to jailbreak the Nook devices and eventually get what they want.

What does it all come down to? Liberty, for our data. Being able to buy eBooks in ePub format wherever we like, such as Barnes & Noble and put them on our devices and sync them amongst all our devices… OR we can download books for free from Project Gutenberg and read those on our devices and sync them amongst all our devices.

Either B&N can benefit by liberating their service or consumers will do it for them.

Nook Tablet Review

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Nook Tablet Review

Unboxing

The box for the Nook Tablet strongly resembles the boxing for all the other Nook devices. Two compartments, the top compartment for the device and a bottom compartment for the charging/data cable and the charging block. The device still uses microUSB as a connector type, which is just like home if you already have a nook or a more-recent release Blackberry. The Nook Tablet is couched in high-density shipping foam.

First Look

The Nook Tablet weighs in at an even 400 grams. My first-generation iPad with Apple slipcover comes in at 865 grams. Already this device has the iPad beaten on mass. The device is wrapped in a matte or brushed aluminum finish and the texture of the case is not slippery but rather grippy. The power button is on the top left corner, the volume buttons are on the top right corner and the microSD slot is cleverly established under the “nook” flap underneath the carabiner-clip part of the case. In the upper right corner, along the top is a standard headphone jack. The rear of the device is wrapped in a dull metalic finish darker than the edging and equally textured. Not slippery, but grippy.

Power On

The power on sequence brings you to the same screen that the Nook Color has, although I can’t recall if the Nook Color had sound effects like this device has upon power up and unlocking. The first thing I noticed in the Library was a video called “New Years Eve” after playing it I noticed that the video was bright and the sound good, except when I turned the display the video was paused and the screen rotated. I had to manually restart playback. Not a showstopper, but worthy to note. The included Spiderman Graphic Novel showed off the Nook Tablet’s color and excellent resolution and the display responded to both my pinch-open and pinch-close finger gestures. The glass surface has some friction to it, nothing upsetting, but worth noting. Through the library feature at least, comic books on the Nook Tablet have the same convenience as reading them on the iPad using Comic Zeal, there isn’t any guided panel-by-panel view that you’d expect with a Comixology app.

Networking

Accessing Wifi is not a problem, at least with plain-jane WEP. Once connected to the network the device can be used to browse the web, and the browser is very fast and actually more responsive than the iPad. The only issue I ran into was a run-away inertial bug in the flick gesture for websites. If you flick too forcefully the Nook Tablet web browser will advance the page faster than you can read and faster than you want. You have to have a very gentle way of gesturing for the built-in web app.

Apps

App downloading is quick and tidy. The update command to check for updated apps is plainly visible on the App Screen. The device comes with a series of standard apps which include:

  • Angry Birds (lead-in to download)
  • Chess
  • Contacts
  • Crossword
  • Email
  • Grooveshark
  • Hulu Plus
  • Music Player
  • My Media
  • Netflix
  • NOOK Friends
  • Pandora
  • Showtime (lead-in)
  • Solitaire (lead-in)
  • Sudoku

The App Store access is easy to find and the app store itself has many apps that I recognize from the Apple App Store, so I didn’t feel like a stranger in a strange land. One notable absence which I did notice was that there was no Comixology app for the Nook Tablet. I suppose it will take just a little bit of time for this app to make it to the Nook App Store.

NetFlix

NetFlix loaded very quickly and I was able to browse my instant queue immediately. Starting a movie was problem free. The display is very bright and the colors are gorgeous. While I watched the movie I decided to test the device with my Apple iPhone earbuds. These have play controls in-line with the wire and I attempted to control volume and playback using them and the Nook ignored this attempt at control. I would hazard that the Nook Tablet cannot understand in-line headphone wire controls. Listening to the movie had only one mild issue and that is as you hold the device in the landscape orientation you can accidentally occlude the devices primary speakers. While these are acceptable for general purpose use, when you have your hand covering the grille to these speakers the sound is muted and muddy. Keeping your hands clear is obviously the answer, but it makes holding the device a little tricky.

Reading

Reading on this device is similar to reading on the iPad. The weight savings alone make it more pleasant to use than the iPad for long-duration reading, and the spoiled-rotten brightness of the display makes reading in any indoor environment very pleasant. The font selection for reading contains:

  • Century Schoolbook
  • Dutch
  • Georgia
  • Ascender Sans
  • Trebuchet MS
  • Gill Sans

Looking up a word brings up the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition with the usual high quality dictionary detail you come to expect. There are two other controls along the bottom in the Lookup Feature, a icon for Google Searching and an icon for Wikipedia Searching.

Accessing new books via the Nook store is a given. However accessing new books via Project Gutenberg is something that I’ve found to be hit-or-miss on these devices. Accessing the web on the Nook Tablet is easy enough, browsing to Project Gutenberg is likewise not an issue. I downloaded Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” as an ePub with images. The file downloaded to the Nook Tablet just fine and the Nook Tablet had no qualms displaying this freshly downloaded ePub, including it’s images. The only thing that I have a qualm about is that the downloaded Books only appear in My Files, under “My Downloads” and can’t be integrated with the primary device library. Because of this limitation you cannot add your downloaded ePub file to a Nook Shelf or browse it in the Nook Library, you have to go out of your way to find what you just downloaded.

Directly importing ePub files to the Nook Tablet however does provide a way to “have your cake and eat it too”. You have to use your computer to download an ePub book and then plug the Nook Tablet into the computer. You can then move whatever ePub files you wish to the Books folder and they will appear in your Library. With this, you can view the book in your Library and add it to Nook Shelves without a problem. One oddity I did uncover was trying to open the new ePub file the first time lead to an error from the Nook Tablet that it could not open the book. Subsequent loads of the book did not display this error. I am unsure whether this was a glitch or a bug. Subsequent loading of ePub material shows this to be a one-off glitch and therefore shouldn’t appear again, I hope.

Reading with Kids

The Nook Tablet has a portion of the library devoted just to kids books. I explored this feature, along with the “Play Along” mode and the “Record Along” mode for the sample book, which is a Winnie the Pooh story. While the “Play Along” feature was pleasant enough, a cross between a childs book and an audiobook with cute little animations peppered in, the “Record Along” feature is really quite something. A parent can record the entire book in their own voice and their child can play it back whenever they like, and read along with their parents voice. There is a certain power in your parents voice, especially for kids and people who never let their inner child fade away. After I recorded a page or two of the Winnie the Pooh story I thought about how this would work in a home with actual children. The Nook Tablet would either have to be the childs device or a home device. I imagine this feature would have the most poignant effect if a parent recorded the book, and then when the parent is on a work trip or otherwise unavailable the child can open the story and hear their parents recorded voice read-along with them. This is the extreme of niche features but the way it’s arranged and the way the interface is constructed to facilitate such a thing is absolutely breathtaking. If you are a parent who has a young child just starting to read, the Nook Tablet, for this one feature, is worth every penny that you’ll spend on it. I am impressed, and that takes a lot.

Opinion

The Nook Tablet is a very compelling device and at the price point of $249 dollars, when compared to the iPad at $499 it does pose a certain competition to the Apple device. There are some really outstanding features which already make the Nook Tablet a great device:

  • Reading is easy, not as easy as a Nook Simple Touch, but more pleasant than an iPad, mostly due to the weight and size.
  • Access to both the built-in Dictionary, Google, and Wikipedia deserves an standing ovation.
  • Ability to import your own ePub files, and I presume if you insert a large microSD card, putting your books that you already own on the Nook Tablet is a non-issue.
  • Access on-the-fly to Project Gutenberg is a delight to see. There is a certain freedom in not being tied to the Barnes & Noble Bookstore with this device and you cannot quibble with free books.
  • The audio is clear, and the sound effects for both turning on and off the device replicate very well the sound a dusty tome would make if you opened it and closed it quickly. It’s these little touches that you appreciate as you reflect on your experience.
  • The “Record Along” feature is absolutely outstanding. Parents with young children just starting to read really should look at this device for this feature.

Some of the problems with the Nook Tablet:

  • Immature App Store – Comixology has an app for Android, but it is not in the Barnes & Noble App Store yet. Barnes & Noble should pour resources into their App Store and corral developers to bring more meat to the party.
  • Speaker Placement – The speakers placed where they are makes watching a Netflix movie on the device a little bit irritating as you really can’t hold the device like you really want to without occluding the speakers and either muting or muddying the sound.
  • Headphone Insensitivity – Headphones with in-line controls should be respected and honored. People are going to attach these accessories to this device and expect it to work, and so far, it won’t. I don’t know if it’s a firmware adjustment or if the device lacks the controller to process such an accessory. The Nook Tablet also does not stop playback when the headphones are plugged in or removed. If the headphones are accidentally removed during playback, at least with the NetFlix app, the speakers resume playing sound.
  • Font Problems – My favorite font is not present. Helvetica Neue. It is present on the Nook Simple Touch but not on the Nook Tablet. I hope this is an oversight by the developers at Barnes & Noble Booksellers and that an upgraded firmware update to the Nook Tablet will eventually fix the issue. The Nook Tablet has a similar set of fonts to iBooks on iOS. This should be on B&N’s list of things to fix soon.
  • No satellite charging – The Nook Tablet refuses to charge when plugged into a USB port. I am unsure as to why, since the device was plugged into a MacBook and I know for a fact that this particular computer supports low-current USB and high-current USB, enough to charge an iPad – so why can’t it charge a Nook Tablet?
  • Gesture bugs – There are a few places where gestures with your fingers produce unwanted results. Specifically browsing the web, if you flick-gesture too strongly you end up in a warp-speed scroll to the end of the document. On really long documents this can become annoying quickly. While not really a design fault, it will require some experience to master, especially if you have grown used to flick-gesture-with-inertia that Apple has mastered in their iOS run devices.

All in all, the Nook Tablet is well worth the $249.00 pricetag. The device is solid and constructed well and I think it will withstand the kind of use that kids can throw at it. I couldn’t test this demo unit to destruction however I can’t imagine that something this solidly built can be harmed easily. If you are in the market for a tablet, but don’t have the cash on hand for an iPad, this is the next natural option. This device will get better with time, with firmware updates and the later refinements that come with customer feedback to the developers. This device will truly shine when the Nook App Store bulks up. Right now, I would advise anyone looking for a tablet, or parents looking for a device like this to buy it as quickly as you can.

Nook vs. Kindle vs. iPad

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I’ve been watching a lot of the press surrounding the brewing three-party war between Apple, Barnes & Noble Booksellers, and Amazon over the tablet space for the past few months. I was one of the first people to be in line two Aprils ago when the first generation iPad was released by Apple. I bought it without hesitation, knowing that it was exactly what I had wanted and dreamed of all this time – a much larger version of my beloved iPod Touch. As I’ve had some opportunity to use different devices I’ve discovered that at least for me, each device that I own serves a particular purpose. Here’s a handy list of the device and what I use it for:

  • 24” iMac – General computing, work and writing.
  • 13” MacBook Laptop – General computing, work and writing.
  • First-Generation iPad – Convenience browsing, game playing, reading comic books, cookbooks
  • iPhone 4 carried by Verizon – Telephone and 3G data access with the HotSpot feature. I use it for mobile data access, taking pictures, scanning prices and comparing retailers and writing down notes and ideas for my writing. Sometimes inspiration strikes when you least expect it. Also enables me to play Foursquare, as well as many other location-aware games and activities that my family has come to enjoy.
  • iPod Nano 6th Generation – Contains my entire music library and is the device I use when I want to play music. Also has a very useful pedometer that I use to track my steps and calories burned while I work.
  • Nook SImple Touch – Contains a giant book library and is the device I use when I want to read.

I have to be very clear here, I am an Apple fanboy. If Apple makes it, I’ll use it. Over the years all the Apple devices have worked exceptionally well and over time they have gotten better. I still love using my iPad and my iPhone. There are four devices that I simply cannot go without whenever I travel, my iPad, my iPhone, my iPod, and my Nook. The iMac is a work-only machine and I leave it at work all the time. My MacBook I use from time to time, but I actually prefer to work on my iPad to my MacBook unless I’m writing something very long. The iPod Nano fits in my pocket so easily, or clips to my shirt so well that carrying it everywhere I go is a non-issue. My phone keeps me in touch, mostly over SMS and iMessage, and secondarily by the voice service itself. The majority of this post isn’t about these other items that I find indispensable, but rather about the tablets.

I can speak for the iPad and the Nook Simple Touch. I was absolutely sold over the iPad, especially when it comes to reading comic books. As for reading “regular” books, the glossy display and backlit nature of the iPad does start to wear down the eyes plus the native book app in the iPad, which is iBooks, doesn’t support the font I like the most, which is Helvetica Neue. I was a little dubious about the Nook Simple Touch at first, but the device won me over with it’s eInk display and it’s expandability via a microSD card port on the upper right corner of the device. The Nook Simple Touch has a lot of really compelling features going for it which made it’s purchase a sure thing. Here’s a list of what I like about my Nook Simple Touch:

  • Size – It’s perfectly sized. It feels a lot like a paperback book, this size really is a sweet-spot for me because this device can fit in my front and rear pants pockets when I want to carry it without having it in my hands and it can be easily stowed anyplace a book can go.
  • Weight – It’s surprisingly lightweight. Even with the microSD card, which only adds maybe a gram or two to it’s total weight, the whole package is very light.
  • Textured and Contoured Back – The rear of the Nook Simple Touch is contoured to fit my hands and rubberized so that I can keep a nice grip on it without having to strain.
  • Interface – Ever since the 1.1.0 Nook Firmware upgrade the device has been surprisingly quick on display updates and the touch sensitivity has also been tuned and I notice it. You can either use the side navigation buttons or a tap or swipe on the display to advance pages. It has a built in dictionary and wifi, with some social features but so far I haven’t explored those enough to report on them.
  • Compatibility – The Nook Simple Touch (as well as the iPad) both can open and display ePub format books. There is a special place in my heart for the ePub format. it’s open, it’s well understood, and there are tools like Calibre which I can use to convert PDF or DOC or MOBI format (actually there are a huge number of formats that Calibre understands) and convert them all to ePub. I bought a 4GB microSD card and was able to store thousands of free eBooks on my Nook without even a second glance. I know the books will work, I know they are configurable, it’s perfect for me.

So now I’m witnessing this war brewing between Apple, B&N and Amazon. I’ve never really used a Kindle, but I assume it’s most like the Nook devices. The latest device to be released, and is shipping now is the Amazon Fire. I’ve heard a lot of people going on about how the Fire may be Amazon’s answer to Barnes & Nobles Nook Tablet and may compete with the iPad. Out of curiosity I went to Amazon’s site where they describe the new Kindle Fire and as I was reading along several alarm bells went off in my head all at the same time. Here’s a list of issues I have with the Kindle Fire, even before laying my hands on it:

  • Eight hours of battery life – Even my iPad can beat this rating. I will hand it to the Kindle Fire that they were able to squeeze such a battery lifetime out of a device that was smaller than the iPad, but when you are watching video I will bet real money that end users never see these eight hours of battery life, let alone their hedged-bet of seven and a half for video playback.
  • Incompatible with ePub format! – This one took my breath away! Any device should at least be compatible with the ePub format, but Amazon has elected to support their own format called AZW instead. There are other formats supported, but ePub is not on that list and my library is configured to support ePub and I prefer it that way.
  • Prime Membership – If you want the most bang for your Kindle Fire buck, you’ll have to spring for an $80 a year Prime Membership. This could be useful if you do a lot of Amazon.com purchases but I don’t. It’s a little creepy that Amazon sells you a device and then charges you over and over again to use it fully. Feels more like a cash-grab and/or a gyp to me.

I don’t really believe the Kindle Fire will pose much of a risk to the iPad and iPad 2 class devices. I haven’t gotten a chance to hold either of the more relevant competitors devices in my hands to give it a right and thorough review. Based on just the description from the manufacturers alone, and even considering the Nook Tablet costs $50 more than the Amazon offering I can say just from the start that the B&N device is the one to get. Better battery life, better storage, better hardware, ePub format, that’s the one that I would get if I didn’t already have an iPad.

Keep your eyes peeled on this blog. I doubt I’ll ever get my hands on a Kindle Fire, but I’m pretty sure I’ll eventually be able to review the Nook Tablet.

Nook Simple Touch Firmware Update 1.1.0 Review

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Barnes & Nobel Nook Firmware 1.1.0 Update

I just got an email from B&N regarding my nook, that there was a firmware update available for my device. I couldn’t help but download this update immediately and see what it was all about. The download clocks in at 110MB and takes just a few moments to copy to the Nook drive on the device once you plug it in. I was waiting in vain for the display to go to sleep so I hit the sleep button on my nook and it dutifully went to sleep. I pressed it again and the nook software update boot loader appeared. The nook took about three minutes to load the firmware update and once it was complete it went back to sleep using the default “authors” screensaver.

I woke up my device and started to poke around the edges looking for what was updated. Of course I glanced at what B&N1 was pushing:

  1. Breakthrough E Ink® display – best just-like paper reading, even in bright sun
  2. 25% faster than any other eReader ” Best-Text™ Technology for sharper, ultra-crisp fonts
  3. Longer battery life -read for over 2 months on a single charge*
  4. Ongoing enhancements and other performance improvements

As I was playing around with the device it struck me just how fast everything was responding to my touch. In previous firmware iterations I would have to tap several times for the interface to respond to my touch. Now it is much more crisp and fast. Another thing that has markedly improved is the speed with which pages are painted on the eInk display.

From the points above, some of them are new features, some aren’t. #1 is just what the device has already, so the firmware didn’t deliver anything for that. #2 is very subjective, I wasn’t expecting the update to the nook firmware so I didn’t spend any time eyeballing the fonts. On my nook the only font I use is Helvetica Neue, after falling in love with it from my exposure to people who were mad about typography here at work. The speed of the text, which is the other part of #2 was patently obvious. The speedup is very noticeable and very welcome. Point #3 is generally true, my nook simple touch has a kick ass battery life, perhaps the update will lengthen the battery performance but I haven’t been using it long enough to judge that point yet. And of course, there is #4, which apparently hides a whole host of interesting mystery items. I have to imagine that somewhere there is a technical document that details all of these updates that were glossed over in point #4. Perhaps if someone from B&N reads this, they could comment. That would be nice.

In the end I think that B&N should apply this patch to all the nook simple touch devices they have on display in their stores and they have done a really great job addressing things that at first you didn’t think you had a problem with, but once addressed you find you really appreciate. I’m looking forward to getting my hands on a review unit of the new nook tablet and then I can write up a review of that. It should be a lot of fun, as I can compare it to the iPad and the original nook color tablet. I’m looking forward to it! :)

  1. http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/Software-Updates-NOOK-Simple-Touch/379003175 ↩

Using the Nook Simple Touch

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Last week I was pretty much 50-50 on whether or not I should get another device, in this particular case, a Barnes & Noble Nook Simple Touch e-ink Reader. I was hemming and hawing because I already enjoy my iPad so much, I didn’t know if the Nook would be just something to have to have it versus something I’d really use. Thanks to Scott, I got a chance to sit down and really look at a Nook before I had to buy one for myself. Even the test period didn’t really help much, it did shift me 60-40, in favor of the Nook, but I was still quite firmly sitting on that fence.

Later on that week I decided that I was going to get the Nook after all, and to hop off the fence. I did post a question to my blog and social networking groups, but only one or two people commented so that avenue wasn’t as useful as I had hoped. Thanks a a lot people! ;) So I went to Scott’s store and Scott and I went through the dance, I asked to buy, he gave me his corporate-mandated pitch, and because I’m cheeky, I decided to add a B&N Membership to the entire thing, which did get me $10 off the Nook. Truth to be told, getting the membership (a renewal after it lapsed so long ago) was partly to boost Scott’s membership-card levels and partly for a treat that B&N now has in their cafe, a Key Lime Tart that is probably very bad for me, but tastes oh-so-good. Now I can get a discount on my guilty pleasure and from time to time get a Starbucks drink from people who I trust and who I know LISTEN. So, I got my Nook and we hit the road, heading somewhere in Scott’s new Juke. I sat there pawing at the new device and wanting to set it up. I wondered just how much of a charge might be on the device and if I could indeed set it up while in the car on a road trip. I turned the Personal Hotspot on my iPhone on and started my new Nook. It came with a 69% full battery. More than enough to get it up and running! So I had my Nook set up but no books on it. That came later. By the time I was really starting to explore the Nook we had reached our destination and it was time to put the gadget away.

The Nook is much like the iPad, in so far that Apple and Barnes & Noble both produce a semi-open/semi-locked device. Both devices can accept ePub file formatted e-Books. I copied all the ePub’s that I had over to my Nook and was very self-satisfied that none of them had a problem loading. The Nook doesn’t really have a way to get eBooks onto the device without buying them and pumping them through B&N’s infrastructure, but you can plug the device in and copy over your own ePub files, as many as you like. The Nook does have a little cheekiness to itself as it is. It’s billed as having a respectable storage amount, but you only get 250MB of user-accessible storage. This is kind of a gyp, but the Nook does provide a handy port for MicroSD on the side. After a while I noticed that my eBook collection would be bigger than the standard storage that came with the Nook itself and I (later on) got a 4GB MicroSD card from OfficeMax for just $17. Quite a deal. I set it all up and pushed my big library of ePub books over to the new Nook. It worked like a charm.

As I was browsing through Barnes & Noble’s store I saw a book that caught my eye. It was a Penguin Classic (those “classics” books with the plain covers and cheap prices) and it was Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. The book was very old, published in 1922. I scanned Project Gutenberg, which is a repository for public domain books and everything they have comes in ePub format. I found this book in PG, so I could skip buying it from B&N. No point in wasting money. I downloaded it on my laptop, copied it to my Nook, and I’ve been reading it as the first book on my Nook. I just finished it today and the experience was quite nice. Reading on the Nook is fast, the Nook ST is light as a feather and I really love it’s textured back. You can either tap/swipe the screen or use the dual edge button controls to advance the pages. The display is matte, it’s eInk, so it’s very easy on the eyes, and the fonts and sizes are of course configurable, which I really appreciate. The Nook doesn’t repaint the screen after each page, but only after 5 or 6 of them. This leaves little bits of eInk debris behind, but frankly I didn’t even notice it. The one thing I was bummed about was that I couldn’t find the dictionary feature on the test Nook. Turns out I didn’t read the manual, but once I accidentally tapped-and-held on a word I saw the way of it and that really worked for me. As I said, reading on the Nook is quite pleasurable and reading fast is easier than having to futz around with a physical book. It’s lighter than my iPad and doesn’t have the battery burn that the iPad does.

The Nook is not all rainbows and butterflies however. This past weekend I took my Nook to South Haven’s Beach for some light reading while everyone played around in Lake Michigan. In order to keep my device clean and safe I put it in a ziplock quart-size baggie. This worked well until I got out in to the bright sunshine. As the plastic would touch the screen the Nook would register it as an actual touch, since the Nooks system uses Infrared sensors to register touches on the display surface. I discovered I could avoid all of that by pulling the baggie tight against the Nook device, and that worked acceptably well. Beyond this little oddity, which really isn’t a problem, just something to watch out for and cope with, I am VERY HAPPY with my Nook Simple Touch. For the pricetag, only $139 bucks, you really can’t go wrong! The Nook does need some add-ons, but they aren’t too expensive. The little Nook light is nice to have, as well as that MicroSD card. Add it up and you still come up to about $150-160 bucks. Not bad for being able to haul around 1400 books in my pocket, on demand, able to read anytime and anyplace I like.

The only unanswered question is how will airlines consider the Nook? Even when it’s “Off” it displays an image. Do airlines regard the Nook as a device that needs to be turned off, or a book that doesn’t matter because you can’t turn it off? That’s something that I’ll have to find out once I fly again.

 

Barnes & Noble's Nook Color Review

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Today I got a chance to sit down in private with a Nook Color from Barnes & Noble Booksellers and give it a thorough try. After I’ve used the device for about half an hour, I have many good things and some not-so-good things to say about the device.

The Good

  • The device is small, but not too small. It most resembles a paperback book and that’s both a pleasing shape and comfortable in the hands.
  • The resolution of the display is sharp and crisp, there was very little eye strain.
  • The charger is a standard wall-wart and the plug is a universal mini-flat USB cable. I give B&N mad props for not reinventing some awkward or fragile interface and going with an industry standard.
  • Touch sensitivity is a welcome feature from the original Nook device. The entire screen is touch-sensitive and that goes very far in making the device very person friendly
  • Buttons are where I expect them and function well, except for one which ends up being in the bad column.
  • Apps allowed to work in the background was a nice surprise, also the notification system was pleasant after I noticed how it worked, being in the lower left corner of the display.
  • The keyboard click is surprisingly clean and very crisp. That was a very nice surprise and very good feedback.
  • You can download ePub books from the Internet. I visited Project Gutenberg and downloaded the Brother’s Grimm Fairy Tales. The device opened the ePub book competently and all the features of reading a book worked as I expected them to.
  • Being able to add extended storage via the SD card was a pleasant surprise.

The Bad

  • The Volume Buttons on the right side appear to be too close together. This presents a volume control issue. When I pressed the + Volume button the volume went up, but if I pressed it again, the volume went down. I think it’s because the two buttons, for volume up and for volume down are too close together or the rocker has been damaged by too much use.
  • The keyboard is both too laggy and too sensitive. When I get to entering web addresses I find myself typing in wwww accidentally. Also, related to this problem is the Search bar. When I touch on Search to look for something I notice the Nook volunteers the last searched item, this is fine, but when I go to tap on the X on the right to clear the field, the keyboard expands and pushes the X up and out of the way. Unless you are very watchful and expect this keyboard behavior, you end up searching for whatever was searched before over and over again, or at least until you master the knack.
  • While playing Pandora in the background I couldn’t help but notice that whenever I did something that taxed the processor, the music would stutter. Perhaps Pandora needs a bigger cache, perhaps there is something else afoot. It wasn’t an awful flaw, but it was noticeable.
  • The lack of Bluetooth Technology precludes wireless keyboards which would render the Nook Color a poor blogging tool.
  • Despite the device being run by an Android Operating System it cannot run Android Apps. It will only use Barnes & Noble’s App Store and not the Android Marketplace. This fragmentation may prove to be an Achilles Heel for this class of device and most certainly will detract from someone comparing the Nook Color to an iPad.
  • The device comes with 8GB of storage, 3 of those are reserved for Android itself, so that leaves the user with 5GB of storage. This pales in comparison with the 16GB iPad, and doesn’t even show up on the field when compared to the 32GB or 64GB model of iPad, however, the presence of the SD cards does mitigate this failure somewhat
  • The Nook series of readers can only consume content from the Nook store, there is no way to get iBooks or Kindle content on a Nook.

The Ugly

  • The device is HEAVY. It’s about as heavy as my iPad, or at least it feels like it is. It’s surprisingly heavy for it’s size and I did have a little trouble holding it like I would a paperback book, in the way it’s design most clearly points that it should be held. It wasn’t enough to upset me, but it was enough to comment on.
  • The built-in speaker system is rather tinny and dinky. I suppose if I tried it with headphones the audio experience would have come out better. There is a part of me that really likes to listen to classical music as I read on a device. This was minimally acceptable.
  • The way the Nook Color scrolls with a touch is disconcerting at first, there is almost no scroll inertia and when you scroll quickly the display stutters and you get the sensation that you’ve missed something in the list as it has gone by. After a while of use you get used to this little idiosyncrasy and it wasn’t a show-stopper.
  • While the Nook Color can download and display ePub book files, I didn’t find a way to move those books into the Books section of the Nook. For these files you are relegated to mucking about in the file system explorer in the Nook to get your books and it does shatter the “All My Books In One Place” theme. I would be far happier if the ePub books that I downloaded off of the Web were immediately shunted off the File System itself and off to the Books function where I could see everything I have in one convenient place.

Final Verdict

The Nook Color is certainly a capable and useful device now that it has a more complete and up-to-date Operating System. The ability to access email, calendars, iCal, Exchange, and use of ePub books are all quite nice to see. I assume that if you copied MP3 files over the Nook Color could be an acceptable music player as well. What it really comes down to here is price. The Nook Color retails at $249.00, and with an Employee discount it hovers around $200 flat. This is in comparison to it’s nearest rival, the Apple iPad which hails at $499.00 for the base model. For half the price of an iPad you can get yourself a very good tablet that can do a majority of the things most people would do with tablets. If you are looking for a “Desktop Replacement Tablet” you won’t find that with the B&N Nook Color, for that you’d be better off going with the Apple iPad. For avid readers who aren’t interested in the Apple App Store or doing Desktop tasks with your device, the Barnes & Noble Nook Color is a fantastic device.

SONY, Apple, and Open Formats

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Watching the scuffle going on between SONY and Apple over SONY’s eBook reader has started me thinking not about the actual conflict here, but a more general and overarching issue which runs along the top of all of this. A few days ago Scott brought up this issue to me and had shared with me that if Apple does what they are going to do to SONY, that it could invalidate the Kindle store, the nook store, and the Comixology store from the iPad and that without those, he’d sell his iPad the first chance he got.

That piqued my interest and I read more about the entire argument online. Apple wants to channel all content through iTunes, that makes a lot of sense, it keeps the user experience very streamlined and is incredibly profitable for Apple. In many ways, Apple has created a lever and all these other companies have happily stabbed themselves with the pointy-end of the lever and now Apple has grabbed the other end and is starting to apply pressure. Is it unfair? Perhaps to Barnes & Noble, perhaps to Amazon, perhaps also to DC and Marvel too, through Comixology, but let’s be clear here, all these companies walked into Apple’s Den, they had to know that eventually Apple would smell the blood money and eventually key off a feeding frenzy which ends up in a policy change. It’s Apple’s device, it’s Apple’s playground. Yes, it’s rather a vicious thing to do, to trap your enemies in your spider web and then feed off them, but that’s the mean side of capitalism. It’s not very pretty, but it is expected.

Above all of this petty capitalistic bullshit there is an overarching issue which isn’t being discussed. Every single player in this drama has one central pillar that holds up the big tent that they are all fighting under. This pillar is that of DRM and “Closed Format” data. It’s this that keeps people interested in iBooks, nook, Kindle, or Comixology. None of these companies are really doing anything altogether great for their customers, basically selling them monolithic black boxes that you need the companies help to open and enjoy. This is the darker side of eBook publishing. When you publish a physical book you can go anywhere to get it and then read it anywhere you like, you can give it away, you can tear the binding off and copy it and give it to a friend, or you can recite it to a blind person for their entertainment if you so wish. With these closed formats, you can’t do anything like that without the express permission of the company that originally sold you that product. This chafes and irritates me.

If eBooks were sold in truly open formats, such as ePub or plain-PDF then people have the liberty to do as they wish, to have true freedom and every issue above simply vanishes. If Apple refuses to let companies sell without taking a cut, then the companies can just sell ePub/PDF files from their own websites and then email the file to the customer. Then the customer can use whatever app they like to read the file on the device they like. For me that’s iBooks on my iPad, for some of my friends, that could be their nook or even their Kindle. Open Formats break the central pillar of control that these companies use to skewer us as customers and rake us over the coals of use-restrictions. You want to give your book to a friend? Send the file to them. Done. Simple. No silly 14-day lending rules, no “can’t print this file” DRM bullshit, and these eBooks, in their open state become valuable even to people such as the blind who need TTS services to enjoy the product.

When I see this argument and see these companies whining about how bad Apple is to them, I see these companies with their own sharpened-pointy levers shoved into their customers. Apple pushes the companies, the companies push the consumer. Who gets it in the end? The consumer. You know full well that if Apple takes a 30% cut, the companies will just hike their prices by 30% and call it a “mean Apple tax” and pass the pain on to the consumer. Open formats would eliminate all of  this, it would encourage true competition and take the teeth out of this entire batch of bullshit.

Consumers should vote with their dollars. They should only buy ePub, PDF, CBR, or CBZ files and reject every other format for eBook data. To do anything else would be to “Invite the Vampires” into your home and once they are inside, it’s all over. None of these companies truly care about how they treat the customer, the customer is just this anonymous schmuck who is designed to get it, and get it hard, in the end.

As a sideline, we’ve seen this sense more and more often, that customers are enemies. It’s an odd relationship. Without customers these companies would die, without these companies we might not see as much innovation and product. Both sides desperately want to screw the other side and both sides dream of a world where the other side is properly punished and they both can’t live the same without the other! I see evidence of this all the time in the things I hear:

  • Fucking Amazon, I swear to god I will never buy from them again! They are so fucking disorganized it’s amazing they make any money at all! I hope they go bankrupt!
  • Oh god no, it’s another customer with a problem. Maybe she’ll swallow her tongue before she gets up here with her stupid meaningless complaint. God I wish they would just all go away.

Not that open formats would solve these extended problems, but at least for us consumers it would go very far in removing our pawns from the chessboard of bullshit that these companies are trying to get us trapped in. The best way to win at Tic-Tac-Toe is not to play.

Apple iPad

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Apple has unveiled their latest technological offering, the Apple iPad. It fills a niche between their iPhone and their Macintosh line of computers (MacBooks cause everyones hot for mobility). I was on pins and needles for the entire event, which I enjoyed in fits and starts from the Engadget Liveblog page. Watching Apple demonstrate the device, chat up some of it’s features, and then at the end pull the pin and lob a hand-grenade of aggressive pricing at everyone, I was stunned!

What gets me is a bit of geek lore, at least at first. iPad, I’m sure Apple’s inspiration was a ‘notepad’ since the device is arguably most like a conveniently-beefy sized notepad. The word iPad though does have deep connections for many Sci-Fi Geeks who also happen to be gadgetophiles. In Star Trek TNG a common device that was handed from crewmember to crewmember was a PADD. A roughly 10 inch rectangular piece of metal and plastic that was touch sensitive and displayed information. Oh eat your heart out! iPad – PADD. For geeks like me, this is a blossoming of authentic science-fiction that has been turned into a real thing and offered to us. The act of handing our iPad to someone else to look at something makes that whole experience valuable – we saw that in Star Trek, we’re doing it in real life. It’s one thing out of a multitude, but it’s very much like heroin for geeks. If not for every geek, at least this one.

The iPad is not only chock full of sci-fi technoromanticism (portmanteau bitches!) but it has the capacity to change the world. The iPad, like the iPhone and the iPod is a device that does something and from the track record of Apple, it will do the tasks very well. Whether you get it chock full of storage or not, wireless up the wazoo or not, the device itself means something. A full color illuminated display for books with authentic graphical representations of the behavior of real books will enhance literacy and impact the printed page. It won’t demolish the print industry, but it will liberate books from the tyranny of limited printings. If you want a book and it’s in a digital format, the idea that “We’re all out, we are waiting for a second printing” simply goes away. This will ensure that books can be spread, retained, and even published without the usual prohibitive costs related to acquiring an editor, a publishing house, signing book deals. The iPad (et al) will do for books what the iPod did for music – ie release creativity. People who couldn’t necessarily get their music out into the world via a record contract could suddenly record and put their music on MySpace or thru a Podcast and then the record companies didn’t matter so much, the consumers could approach the artists directly. Same goes for books. Before if you wanted to write the great American novel you’d have to pound it out, submit it to publishers and they controlled whether it spread or not. The iPad (et al) can release literature from control, bypass the gatekeepers. Everyone can publish.

When I say (et al) what do I mean? iPad isn’t the only device out there that can render literature, so can the Nook and the Kindle. The iPad presents an overwhelming challenge to it’s competitor devices, not so much for the principal context of literature, but because the iPad can do much much more than the Kindle or Nook could possibly muster. Playing Music, Movies, Extensibility through the App Store, these are things that the Nook and Kindle just can’t accomplish (save music, which I know the Nook can…) and it’s this extensibility, full color, and full touch sensitivity across the entire device. The iPad is a killer device for many forms of literature, but the form I’m personally most driven by is that of comic books. These books  are bright, graphical, textual, and often times have callouts where hypertextual links would offer incredible convenience. One thing people have to understand, and this is true of the iPad as well as the Nook, is that you do not have to wait for some DRM’ed eBook to be published to read literature, whether it be a classic like The Iliad or Green Lantern Volume 2. You can do the legwork yourself, these two devices have open extensibility, in the Nook it’s the ability to dispaly PDF files and open eBook formats – while for the iPad it’s the foundation of the iPhone OS and the sure extensibility of the App Store.

Waiting for eBook publishing to catch up is not as compelling a reason to hesitate as may be feared. Routes to getting what you want will always exist as long as there is an analog hole. For print matter, the analog hole is the print itself. You buy a book, disassemble it, feed it to a sheetfed color scanner and in an afternoon you’ve converted a physical book to it’s digital counterpart. You can then spread that digital representation to whomever you wish, it is definitely not legal, but it is something you can do, thanks to the analog hole. This is most paramount to content providers, publishers and the like. Your lesson is this: Change your business model when the technology changes and you will succeed – Fail and you will be buried. If XYZ Publisher refuses to heed this warning and refuses to publish their product in a digital format then the customers will be forced to cope and create the knockoff digital content on their own, they know what they want and if it’s possible for them to obtain it, they will. XYZ Publisher will find their sales drying up because nobody wants dead trees anymore, they want digitial content, and if that has leaked into the network, all those potential sales are gone and XYZ might as well board up and close shop. It is better for XYZ, and their customers if they immediately produce digital content, leave DRM by the wayside, treat their customers with respect and they’ll make profits like gangbusters. A perfect example of this is Marvel and DC Comics. For years people have been disassembling these comic books and scanning them and making the entire archive available on the network free of charge. By not leaping on the bandwagon immediately, they’ve missed a golden opportunity to extend their product into a entirely new economic ecosystem. The drop-dead-date has not passed yet, but it is coming, around March when the iPad starts to sell. For example, if DC wanted to jump on top of this immediately they’d need to get a DC Comic Book App set up in the App Store, set up a channel for paying for content (which you can now do through an App) and then deliver digital editions of their entire line available through their iPad App. Charge the cover price, skip out on the cost of printing, happy customers. Win win and win.

What then for the Kindle and Nook? They will always have a place at the table. I don’t see iPad annihilating them, however I do see Nook leading Kindle to the MC Escher Staircase and pushing it. Kindle’s living nightmare, an Apple competitor, is now here. Nook will push Kindle and iPad will shoot it once it lands at the bottom of the MC Escher Staircase. It won’t be pretty.

And just so everyone is aware, I am saving money so I can buy myself an iPad. I couldn’t imagine not having a PADD. :)