If you haven’t tried reading a book on the Kindle consider yourself a Luddite. I have read on the original and 2nd Kindle from Amazon, the iPhone, the iPad, and the Mac version and have enjoyed each medium as much as reading a real book. The reason reading on the Kindle is so effective is that Amazon has done a great job of focusing on one thing: reading a book. The interface is intuitive and drives you into reading mode where you can get just as stuck as with a real book.
Recently Amazon announced the Kindle Cloud Reader https://read.amazon.com/ (KCR) which should just be called Kindle in Browser or KIB. In as layman terms as I can put this Amazon has created a website that mimiks the Kindle device and various applications. Currently it only works on Safari on iPad, Safari desktop, and Chrome cause its using really advanced web programming stuff that Internet Explorer, Firefox, and the iPhone cannot yet handle. The Chrome version is what I use cause I am a smarty pants. The cool thing is that you can install some software into Chrome that allows you to read your books even when your computer doesn’t have online access. This process takes 5 seconds to complete and is all done through the KIB.
Reading in the KIB is very nice with large fonts and little UI clutter. You use your left and right arrow keys to move forward and backward and through your book. While you can leave bookmarks on various pages you cannot highlight or note as you can in any of the other Kindle variations. I only use those features rarely and have never gone back to review any highlights or notes I have made. Disclaimer: I am a bad student.
There is a bunch of hoopla and commotion over this new version of Kindle in various tech publications and nerd blogs:
I think Amazon had this in the works for a long time — a web-based Kindle reader has been around for a while, and it makes sense to improve it in these ways. But surely Apple’s new App Store rules for paid content have motivated Amazon to push harder in this direction.
via Daring Fireball Linked List: Amazon Kindle Cloud Reader.
You can count me as an Apple fanboi but I have to say that this policy is not a good one and will only serve to slow growth of the App Store market. I agree with having to share the revenue of any App sold via the App Store as Apple is providing the marketplace and delivery of the initial app and subsequent updates. Apple also polices the App Store to ensure that some level of quality exists in the App’s sold their. However this policy of getting 30% of anything sold via a companies App is excessive and unfair.
What do you think?