eBook Readers Need Color
Earlier this month “electronista” posted a story about the recent leak of Amazon’s second-generation Kindle eBook reader. One of the things that I commented about was the lack of color, and of course some piped in wanting to know why it would need color when its purpose is to display text.
My theory is that is fine if you are reading a novel. But what about other kinds of books for example course books for high school and college. Those books often have color diagrams and pictures for the purpose of clarifying what you are reading.
How about newspapers and magazines. Maybe I would like to subscribe to an electronic version of MacWorld, Time, or National Geographic. Many of these documents have color pictures that acompany the stories. Don’t you want to read the publication the way the publisher intended it to look.
Another person commented on the fact that it had a keyboard, and why would you need a keyboard. I remember as a college student I would highlight text in my books and write margin notes. Obviously I can’t use post-its in my Kindle so it needs to support that kind of functionality.
If we are going to make an electronic replacement for paper and bound text we need to think about how people use these products today and duplicate it in the eBook readers of tomarrow.
