A couple of weeks ago I was waiting, with a group of friends, for our flight back home to Israel. They were all playing with their iPads as I pulled out my Kindle. I can’t even start to describe the outburst of laughter and ridicule that followed as they were holding the THING.
It started when they tried to touch the screen and nothing happened and went on with the Kindle’s primitive looking page flips and ended up with them, almost lying on the floor, laughing at the description of how I need a flashlight to read at night.
I took it as a man :) And then I asked one of them “Do you read on your iPad?”. “Sure” he said “I read thousands of articles since I have the iPad”. “No” I insisted “Do you read as in reading a book”, “Oh” he said and immediately opened his iPad to show me how beautifully pages flip when you read on iBooks “I’m already at chapter number 3 of this book”.
You know what? They were right. My Kindle is pathetically lame. Using the five click navigation instead of simply touching the screen it annoying, the keyboard is ridiculous and don’t even get me started on the so called “browser”. The funny thing though is that while my friend read the first 3 chapters of his book (in the 3 months he has an iPad) I read thousands of pages worth of books in the 3 weeks I have my Kindle.
Reading articles will fill your brain, reading books will fill your soul.
From the amazing Gandalf to the unforgettable Druss. From Middle Earth to 12th century Kingsbridge. For every person I’ve met in life I’ve met 10 amazing characters in the books I’ve read. For every place I’ve visited in our world I’ve traveled to 100 amazing other worlds those gifted writers created for me. The people and places I’ve met in my books are as real, for me, as the rest of you guys and I can’t imagine my life without them.
In a world where content is consumed in chunks of 140 characters and 60 seconds videos, in a world of push email and Blackberries, being able to lean back and loose yourself in a book for 5 hours is a priceless gift.
It’s true, my Kindle IS lame but for me it’s simply a book, nothing more. A 10.2 oz book that gets me reading more than ever before… and for that I love it.
Posted
on Monday, November 1st, 2010 
Name's Avi Charkham. I'm a product person, co-founder @ Familio and Chief Product @ lool Ventures. Normally I prefer to simply tweet my thoughts but some times 140 are simply not enough :)
What you forgot to say is that the Kindle is a book reading device, unlike the iPad. You cannot compare the pleasure and ease of reading a book on the Kindle with the experience of reading on the iPad. So what if there is no cool animation of pages turning? The screen is much easier on the eyes, the battery life is light years ahead of the iPad.
And that’s EXACTLY why I now want a Kindle. I started reading a book on my iPad (which is ideal for magazines and I love it for that). But for reading books? It sucks. I want a Kindle. Now.