Kindle From BlackBerry to e-reader
The initial Kindle sprung from the early BlackBerry smartphone.
Although it was instrumental in changing the publishing business, the initial Amazon Kindle wasn’t quite the best looking devise. It was a strange shape,, it was clunky, and more resembled a calculator left over from the 1960 than the e-reader it was.
So, why did it look so odd? A hardware engineer who helped design the initial Kindle recently confided that the idea for the
original design was lifted from the early BlackBerry smartphone.
When Jeff Bezos would attend the early design meetings and confide that he really liked his BlackBerry smartphone and the easiness with which he was able to locate e-mails and react to people, is the very reason the first Kindle appeared so boxy, featured the dumpy square keyboard plus that odd scroll wheel at the side was all motivated by the early BlackBerry.
The designer is not able to be called by name because of legal agreements that prevent him from publicly discussing participation in the Kindle project.
However, from those initial beginnings, the Kindle has covered a lot of ground. The newest Kindle versions recently announced are all delivered without kludgy scroll wheels and scores of untidy buttons. Although, in many ways, they are beginning to look like they should be iKindles, impersonating the Apple iPad design.
The Kindle Fire, on the left, an Apple iPad 2 on the right. with almost identical bezel and glass.
The Kindle design along with other tablets have all started marching to the Apple’s drum beat; although it's difficult to get much more basic than a rectangle in black. It’s extremely revealing that the newest Kindle uses the identical Gorilla Glass to the iPad."
Co-founder of a site called gdgt, Ryan Block remarked in a blog that the Kindle Fire hardware is actually based upon a Blackberry PlayBook tablet layout. This is not easy to tell just from viewing the Kindle Fire as almost all tablets resemble on another now.
During a phone interview, Mr. Block explained, "We're discussing a screen here, and the screen's the total experience while it can really only have one look and be one way, and that's to resemble the iPad, The bottom line is, they all are going to resemble each other, as a tablet is only so much of glass."
Mr. Block observed that companies attempting to be competition to Apple iPad need to attack on both software and price.
"Price is huge," Mr. Block said, who observed that Amazon would obviously tempt customers with their lower Kindle price. However the software must also work. "When every tablet looks like a screen only, the software turns into the most important aspect,
Companies should also take a cue from Apple by spending more attention on minuscule design layouts. The weight, the thickness, the feel, the glass texture, are all very important to experience overall," he said. "These devices were created to be employed in a very personal manner."
Oct 24, 2011
|