Comments on: Are you bookin’ it to buy an iPad?

By: Dylan

Dylan — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 18:30:15 +0000

I think it’s a very similar thing that has happened with music. When the iPod came out people were scratching their heads wondering why the heck they would put all of their music into digital files just for the sake of portability. We all enjoyed album art and liner notes. But look at what the iPod has done…

Digital music is still around today (and going strong) but look at the comeback of vinyl. More and more albums are being pressed to vinyl for the same reasons you point out here about the tangible love of books. I love flipping through bin after bin in a record store. I love the smell of a 40 year old vinyl that still sounds amazing.

I think we will see large room for both, at least for a while…

By: Dana Sallee

Dana Sallee — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:03:13 +0000

I too am a book person and still love to go to the library and book stores (New England Mobile is my fav!)and browse through the stacks! There is no doing that with an ipad or Kindle. You read it and poof it’s gone! How do you go back and re-read it? Please pardon my ignornance but there’s nothing like a rainy day curled up in the chair with a good book.

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 13:57:45 +0000

Being a true Gemini, I have one foot in both camps. Gavin’s sentiments are what will push me over the edge (and into the Apple store) eventually. But I am never giving up my book, and music, shelves!

By: Gavin Heaton

Gavin Heaton — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 05:15:32 +0000

I am not in a rush, but I can see other possibilities. The iPad, for me, will be all about the third party apps. There will be apps that will change the face of business. There will be apps that help us find new ways to consume media, and there will be new apps that help us make sense of all this connectedness. They make take a little while to hit the market, but it is the apps, not the iPad, that will make the difference.

By: Tamsen

Tamsen — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 18:44:53 +0000

Count me in the “old-fashioned” crew. There’s something about being able to flip through a book, ACTUALLY flip the pages, to find a barely remembered passage that just isn’t replicable on an e-reader.

Just last week I had the experience of trying to find a passage in a long-ago finished book. No amount of online searching could land me on it…I had to physically pick up the book so that I could recreate the sensation of not only where in the book it was, but where on the page.

Can’t do that with an iPad….

By: Jen M.

Jen M. — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 18:36:01 +0000

No, no I’m not.

This subject has been on my mind a lot lately. Like you, I’m a book person. To me, part of reading is enjoying the smell and the feel of a book. The way you can curl up with one, browsing through a library or a bookstore, and keeping it on a shelf to pick up another time is all part of the process. I’d love, one day, to have a “library” of sorts in my own home.

I really do feel that you lose something, if not all, of that experience with e-readers. I remember reading about a private school that replaced their library with e-readers and it made me so sad. That magic, as you say, is just lost. And I wonder if you lose something in the reading process along the way.

So, I just can’t get behind an e-reader, and I don’t care if that leaves me hopelessly in the dust. I’ll proudly be there, curled up in a chair with my favorite old, worn paperback.