Should e-book readers really become multi-purpose devices? @leolaporte

in the latest episode of This Week in Tech (link) Leo Laporte and co-hosts talked about e-book readers like the Kindle and the Barnes & Noble device. For most of the hosts the devices were not powerful and full featured enough, and for instance email and web browsing was lacking. The discussion went on towards the desire for multi purpose devices or single task devices. I guess indeed it is depending on your situation where you are, when you are there. I can see myself carrying an iPhone for most of the stuff I do but using an e-book reader for reading since the iPhone screen is just too small and the backlight is very annoying for actual long duration reading.

Let's focus on e-book readers for a moment. People are looking for an ebook reader that can do more than just be used as an electronic book library. They would also like it to play mp3s (audiobooks, music) or maybe even videos (movies, streaming video episodes of TV series, etc). I can see the appeal for that. But apart from mp3 and video storage, should an e-book reader be able to check email and browse the web? I am not so sure, and here's why:

Reading a book is probably the best single example of a single-tasking, focussed action a person can do. You read a book, you get into the story, you lose track of time and nothing else matters. We all hate it when you are right in the middle of an exciting book and the phone or doorbell rings.. What the hell, who disturbs my moment of alternate reality!?

Imagine an e-book reader that checks for email and goes PING if there is an email. Or even worse, shows a notification right across the screen. Yes, you can probably disable this, but the nagging "maybe there is new email" may stay with you throughout the book, ruining the experience, pulling you away from that wonderful virtual world only a book can create. And we know how distracting Twitter can be. Say your e-book reader supports browsing. I bet you want to check on your friends' tweets once in a while. Stop reading, check the web or twitter. Another disturbance.

So, maybe e-book readers should remain just that. For reading electronic books. Undisturbed by other features. Okay, apart from an empty battery once in a while...

Vodafone Netherlands going to offer the iPhone in 2010?

First a disclaimer: this is my own opinion and no official Vodafone statement:

According to this posterous post and this (dutch) newsbit

Jens Schult-Bockum (JSB), CEO of Vodafone Netherlands has said that "Vodafone made a huge mistake by not winning the iPhone deal" two years ago. At that time, JSB was Global Director of Terminals at Vodafone Group. Fast forward to 2009. JSB is now CEO of Vodafone Netherlands. In the UK the exclusive iPhone deal with O2 has ended and at the (very) last moment, Vodafone UK joined Orange in carrying the iPhone for 2010.

I'm assuming that the T-Mobile exclusivity deal in the Netherlands (and Germany) is going to end in 2010 as well. Add to that the JSB statement and it's not that difficult to figure out that it is very possible that Vodafone Netherlands (and Germany) will join the iPhone deal in the very near future.

That's positive. More choices for the user. With the better network, Vodafone might easily collect convert T-mobile users to switch. Vodafone360 will get its own iPhone app as well, albeit limited in functionality. However, if the iPhone comes to Vodafone, that won't be an issue anymore and Vodafone360 may be a full-fledged service. (Not sure how they will handle this technically, with the sandbox application model in the iPhone)

A lot of times you hear people (myself included) say the iPhone is great but the T-Mobile network sucks. Well, the above may make those users happier :-)

Exciting times ahead? You bet. Let's just say the silly season (sic) has begun.

Snow Leopard sales double that of Leopard, I think not just because of the price.

According to theAppleBlog, sales of SL are double that of Leopard.

Most will agree that the price is pushing sales high, but I also think Leopard was just not good enough. At least in my case, and talking to other Apple users, a lot of them aren't (weren't) really happy with Leopard.

Leopard was suffering from "Windows syndrome". Being bloated and slow. Some of it due to carrying legacy PowerPC support, some of it by feature creep and unoptimized code. In SL there are still some loops open, but that is mostly in the application area. (iTunes is still carbon for
instance). That will change in due time (I predict an "iMovie08" makeover for iTunes next year)

The OS is finally mature :-)