ipad vs kindle: CAGE MATCH!

[rmd]

OKAY YOU OVERLY OPINIONATED INTERNET PEOPLE! CONVINCE ME! OR SOMETHING.

I need to choose a $SIGNIFICANT_MILESTONE gift for someone. iPad? or Kindle?

iPad has the advantage of doing much more - apps! widgets! other stuff!
Kindle has the advantage of not requiring a separate pay-by-the-month data plan for cell access. Plus more battery life.

thoughts?

I figure either an ipad and a small itunes store gift card (and possibly a small amazon gift card for ebooks), or a kindle and a larger amazon gift card.

Comments

Re: Just to be contrarian

[drwex]

(we should probably stop hijacking rmd's LJ so I'll make this my last response.)

I'll accept that the reporting has been somewhat imbalanced. I do know for a fact (having emailed with the developer) that the apps Google yanked from the store were proof-of-concept hack apps with no actual value and once the creators admitted that I didn't think it was unreasonable for Google to yank them.

Likewise, I've talked with Apple app developers who have been frustrated that in order to fix a bug in their app they have to go through the whole approval process again, making the update cycle painfully slow. They're prohibited from putting the app on their own Web sites or any other site so people are forced to continue using a buggy/broken app until Apple gets around to approving the fix.

And to my knowledge Apple still won't allow boobies or even Pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist Mark Fiore to put his political cartoon app up.

Re: Just to be contrarian

[dfjdejulio.livejournal.com]

Not completely accurate anymore, *and* it only applies to apps in the app store. There's plenty of content in plenty of formats with no DRM or anything that one can consume just fine on the iPad.

Many of the videos on mine, I ripped from DVD myself. Much of the audio on mine, I ripped from CD myself. You can set iTunes up to autoconvert from FLAC to device-supported formats transparently as part of the sync process. DRM-free EPUB files work perfectly well in iBook and at least one competing reader application. And heck, *VLC* is on the device now.

It perhaps ain't as free as the most free Android handsets, the ones that are wide-open and that support sideloading. But it *is* more free than the *least* free (in terms of carrier/manufacturer lockdown) Android handsets.

And as for tablets, we'll have to see how that shakes out once Android tablets really start to show up in consumer hands, which hasn't happened yet.

Re: Just to be contrarian

[johnromkey.livejournal.com]

Mark Fiore's app was approved last April, about a week after the flap about it. The reversals on app store problems never get the coverage that the problems do in the first place. Not that all the problems are reversed.

As I pointed out, anything that can be done as a web app can be saved to the iPhone. If you want a booby app and Apple won't approve it, make it a web app and show people how to save it.