I am still a huge fan of printed books, to be honest. I like the touch of the pages, the feeling of the cover, the way I put any book upside down or insert a bookmark somewhere. What can I say, I’m an old timer.
With the introduction of the iBooks section in iPad (if I’m not wrong, Apple did have another iBook brand line) some things are going to change about books. Or so I think. It’s still early to talk about it, without having an iPad in my hand, but I will risk a simulation, just for the sake of it.
The Huge Library
They say you could have hundreds of books in your iPad. Judging by the size of a decent ebook, including annotations, cover artwork and maybe some internal art work, you can take an average of 5 Mbytes / ebook. On a 16G iPad, you could easily carry 600 ebooks and that will only take about 3 Gigabytes. That’s huge. That more than my own physical library, I guess.
The Gentle Touch
We certainly had this type of library before, and I’m talking abut Kindle. But what’s fundamentally different now it’s the color and the touch. It’s a huge enhancement of the senses and let’s face it, we do experience reality through our sense. You can’t look at a black and white eInk display and imagine you’re seeing a cream background with a brown text on it. You can’t replace the touch of a transparent surface with the push of a button for browsing.
The Ubiquity
Allegedly, one could carry an iPad everywhere. And, most important, it will be around for a huge variety of reasons. One could keep it close for business, drawing charts and pulling out numbers, one could have it around for email or instant messaging, and others can keep it for education. I really think it could become an ubiquitous device. This unexpected quality of the iPad could make it a very good candidate for replacing old, traditional books.
Of course, all these are just speculations now. iPad will still have to pass some very severe tests on the market. But until I’ll really have one in my hand I’ll just keep dreaming.
What’s your take on this? Do you think it wold be a good replacement for printed books? Can you imagine this future? Do you think it’s a blasphemy? Would love to chat about it?
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Well I don’t think will replace the books, well at least for me, like you say I love even the smell of my books.
I read a lot of things in the computer and even some books, but for me there is something in the books that is special, even i like to have to turn on the ligth when is low ligth in the ambient or when is really late.
I see the ipad and the kindle like another interesting alternative, but for me is just innecesary.