Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On , a column about consumer technology.
Spring proved cruel for the sparse population of goods that combine e-paper and LCD displays. Startup Entourage announced that it was discontinuing its Edge dual-screen e-reader / tablet combo. After which Barnes & Noble closed the book at the original Nook to introduce a successor that had just one screen and one button. In doing so, it leaped over (or is that under?) even the Kindle’s minimalism.
E-readers have followed an unusual demographic adoption curve for a client electronics product. The primary buyers were, like those of many other tech products, more affluent, however the majority of them were also older and feminine in line with the book-buying habits of physical books. They were drawn to the crisp display and high contrast of e-paper displays. And plenty of were (and remain) attracted by a focused product that allowed them to focus on the text without distraction of alternative media type, the net or thousands of apps.
While smartphones have cannibalized a bit of the low-end digicam market — leaving enthusiasts to find digital SLRs and mirrorless camera systems just like the Panasonic Lumix G and Sony NEX cameras — tablets are paradoxically pushing some early adopters toward a product that does less.
For sure, many readers of digital books are indeed attracted to all manner of multimedia. Along with a wide selection of tablets, the Nook Color addressed those consumers, but left the unique dual-screened Nook looking a chunk long within the tooth. With the brand new Nook, Barnes & Noble covers the important thing features of WiFi and a touchscreen, and continues to abstain from cellular to maintain prices lower and create an almost distraction-free reading experience. But Barnes & Noble thus gives up something within the new Nook, too — a target platform for its budding third-party development efforts.
As today’s inherent compromises between e-paper and LCDs continue to vanish, we are going to see displays that combine the daylight readability and long battery lifetime of the previous with the colour and video support of the latter. Originally, these will cost greater than today’s monochrome e-paper screens, but over the years they are going to be suitable for cheap e-readers corresponding to the Nook and Kindle.
As these the fewer versatile generation of displays fades away, so too may the assumption of a product focused purely on reading. Returning to the digicam market, advanced amateurs and pros long snubbed the video capture capabilities in point-and-shoot digital cameras inside the name of a pure and undistracted experience of capturing superior still images. Visit a high-end photography conference, though, together with PhotoPlus Expo in Big apple, and you may see that many pros embracing video capture, and that their assignments are increasingly requiring it.
Just as these extra features haven’t made for worse images, do-it-all e-readers haven’t — and will not — mean the top of a pure reading experience. Limited technology, though, may now not help one focus. Just as for the passionate pro photographer who must now decide when to capture a still versus video, the exercise of electronic book reading would require the exercise of self-discipline.
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