Mossberg on Reader Daily Edition
Respected tech reviewer Walter Mossberg quite likes the Sony Reader Daily Edition. He sums up its relative strengths and weaknesses versus the Kindle fairly well. The only major flaws he finds are that it costs more and has fewer new titles than the Kindle, and the touch-sensitivity makes the screen dimmer.
More New E-Book Devices
A couple of blog reports spotted on Twitter: CrunchGear shows a couple more Kindle-clone readers from Tianjin Jinke, the A6 and A9. Akihabara News shows a reader from Hanvon, the N618, that includes handwriting recognition. If there was any remaining doubt that e-book readers’ time has finally come, all these clones popping up like weeds should put it to rest.
How is the Apple Tablet like Mark McGwire?
PC World quotes an unnamed source as saying that the Apple tablet is going to be an “iPhone on steroids”. This phrase seems to be becoming the equivalent of the stock description of a certain kind of movie as “Die Hard in a [location]”; it was already used to describe the Google Nexus.
Of course, unlike the Nexus, the tablet is actually going to be made by Apple, which means the myriad iPhone reading solutions should have an easy path to compatibility.
More Apple news after the jump.
Next iPhone to Have Better Camera?
In other Apple hardware news, a Goldman Sachs analyst predicts the next iteration of the iPhone will have a 5-megapixel camera like the Nexus, and a touch-sensitive casing like the Mighty Mouse.
I wonder how soon it will be before someone writes an app that will allow such an iPhone to be used as a portable scanning device? That could have e-book-related applications, as well as assist in college note-taking. Perhaps Evernote might consider it.
Apple App Store Has Lost $450 Million to Piracy, Analysts Say
24/7 Wall Street calculates that the Apple App Store has lost $450 million to piracy since the store opened in July 2008. The article notes that jailbroken iPhones can run illicit copies of apps from the store (though only 40% of people who jailbreak phones actually do this).
The figure was derived by estimating the total value of illicit App Store apps that have been downloaded ($4.5 billion), then guessing that 10% of those who downloaded would have paid for the apps if the downloads had not been available.
The article notes that Apple does not seem to be too concerned over these losses, as the $140 million that would have been their share of the take is peanuts compared to what they make from selling the hardware. It compares this to Apple’s stance on illicit music downloads, which drove sales of Apple iPods. One wonders if e-book hardware vendors might develop a similar point of view?
Hi… actually there are around half-dozen scanning softwares for iPhone. I bought one called “DocScanner” i’m still testing it, but looks fine. It’s compatible with Evernote, also.