The biggest advantage is the Kindle’s lack of any...

Thursday, January 28, 2010

“The biggest advantage is the Kindle’s lack of any good use other than reading. When I pick up a Kindle, I read.”

This is a quote by Roberto Mateu in this post (via Marco).

This is a big deal in hardware design that applies to more than just the Kindle. Computers overtime have become commodity hardware with endlessly flexible software that allows it to be anything and everything to each developer’s desires.

But, the more amorpheous the hardware becomes, the more we lose the pieces of specialization. For example, a Blackberry is an email machine. No one does mobile email better than Blackberry, and, in the post-iPhone market, that’s all Blackberry does well now. In my transition from a Blackberry to an iPhone I now write less email, and the email I do write is shorter and often more superficial.

The same is becoming true of televisions. It used to be that televisions were dedicated “lean back” devices optimized for the 10-foot viewing experience. But, television manufacturers now have enough Apple-envy that they’re building computers into every TV. Slowly, the hardware will become more flexible, a rich applications layer of the stack will emerge, and we will all have Yet_Another_Computer sitting in our living room. I’m sure in the process, we will watch less traditional, lean-back style TV, as we no longer have a dedicated device that can only afford lean-back consumption.

In short, the lack of features is a feature in and of itself.