Tech gremlins, delays in lining up books, magazines and other goodies from publishers, misaligned planets—for one reason or another, the Amazon Kindle has yet to be with us.
Can the Kindle E Ink gizmo, having neither tricked nor treated this Halloween, make it out in time for the nonpagan holidays? Might Amazon even be engaged in a deliberate misinformation campaign designed to stretch the hype out, as some are speculating?
Out of compassionate for loyal TeleBloggers, I’ll not run yet another picture today of that uglier-than-a-gremlin box. But hey, it’s the performance and features I care most about. Will we finally have an E Ink machine with a keyboard for word searches? Geekish ability ahead of looks!
Meanwhile the New York Times’ Brad Stone, a source of earlier predictions, has graciously helped explain why Amazon was still playing dumb about the very existence of the Kindle when I called up this week about a review unit. His sources now say by the end of the year.
Tidbit from the Times: The Gremlin—whoops, maybe Jeff Bezos can rename his problem child out of affectionate exasperation—is supposed to use its internal EV-DO modem to download books via a Sprint network.
In fairness to Brad Stone: Abandon ye not all hope. Perhaps Amazon will surprise us when we’re least expecting it.
How Jeff could make it up to us, even though I know it’s just a dream: No DRM!
Related: MobileRead and Engadget and whatever you can read between the lines here.
Technorati Tags: Amazon , Kindle , E Ink , Jeff Bezos , New York Times , Brad Stone
