May 06, 2009, 5:10 PM — I admit: I may be the wrong person to be writing about the Kindle (the latest version of which was unleashed today), or the mythical Apple tablet, because I fundamentally Don't Get the appeal of them. My brother-in-law loves his Kindle; he works as a grip on movie and TV sets, a job that involves being in different places every day and occasional irregular downtime, and he finds it useful for reading on the train and in stolen moments during the day. I spend my day in front of a full-size monitor and keyboard, have an iPhone that I carry with me in just about any situation when I'm not at the computer, and I can't imagine what I'd do with something in between the two. Read books, I suppose, but I kind of like reading actual books. And while one of the great things about the iPod is that you don't have to decide before leaving the house which album you want to take with you, I don't necessarily feel like I need a selection of books or periodicals to choose from everywhere I go.
The thing about the rumored Apple tablet is that, without a real keyboard or basic productivity software, it's basically a souped up version of the Kindle. "Souped up" obviously implies a higher cost, but the Kindle DX was released at a head-scratching $489. This is at the top of the netbook price point, and certainly strikes me as a lot for what you get. I suppose one feature wrapped into that cost is free 3G Internet service forever from Amazon; perhaps Apple's tablet will be subsidized and come with a wireless Internet plan. But this too is a problem: my guess is a significant portion of the target market for this Apple tablet already has an iPhone, and how much money can you really expect a person to shell out to AT&T (or Verizon, whatever) every month?
It may be that the Kindle is just one of those things that I'll never get, because I'm nearly 35 and once you hit your mid-30s all new inventions are of the devil and should be stopped. Numbers on Kindle sales are hard to come by, but they're supposed to be pretty good. But I'll believe in the wide success of tablet devices when I see it.
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