it’s too bad about the kindle

There was a moment when I thought (well, hoped) that e-readers and tablets might both be allowed to evolve. I was hoping for a Kindle with a few more features, but with all the advantages of an e-reader.

But, no. After all, selling the device is not the point. Amazon doesn’t make money on the device; they make money on the content. And they can sell you a lot more different types of content on a Kindle Fire than they can on a Kindle.

So, the newer Kindles have fewer capabilities, not more. You want more than the minimum? Buy a Fire.

My dream Kindle?

– A real keyboard and a touch screen (why the heck not?)

– A simple but usable built-in note-taking program

– A basic (very basic) email client

– A slightly more functional music player

And, of course, Text-to-Speech, which the older Kindles have but the current ones don’t.

Not a lot to ask (according to me, anyway), but it’s not going to happen.

Oh, well. In general, nobody ever got rich designing things for me. When I was married, if we saw a new TV show that we really liked, we’d try to figure out how quickly it would be canceled. It was usually pretty quick.

I remember a great show called “Empire” (six episodes), and what was that one where they were writing a soap opera…