When Amazon launched the Kindle yesterday I pondered the future of this device and the future of reading and have come to the conclusion that the Amazon's model for the Kindle is flawed for several reasons. It is not at all the "iPod of Reading" as many websites are calling it. Sure Amazon is hopeful that many will think that is true, deriving the same success that Apple has had with the iPod when comes to selling the Kindle.
It is not however a fair comparison. The iPod had from day one the ability to play the music you already owned. In fact, when the iPod launched that is all there was as the iTunes Store did not yet exist. The iPod has always had the ability to play DRM-free MP3s and and AAC tracks ripped from your own CDs or purchased from some other online stores.
Apple offers many DRM-free songs at the iTunes Store these days. But, even after you buy tracks from iTunes that have DRM you are able to easily burn them to CD. You also have the ability to play these tracks on up to five computers and as many iPods or Apple TVs as you like. Of course for videos this is a different story.
Amazon has seemed to have gotten a lot right with the Kindle as far as the user experience and probably even the hardware. But the Amazon model for the Kindle has some clear shortcomings.
The books, newspapers, and magazines you purchase for the Kindle can only be read on one device and are totally entrenched with proprietary DRM. There is no computer syncing at this time. Your existing PDFs can not be read on the device (Sony's E-Book readers can display PDFs). Word documents and pictures (.JPG, .GIF, .BMP, .PNG) need to be emailed to the Kindle at a small cost to you.
If the Kindle were to become the "future for reading" as some have already claimed it will become a world were sharing a newspaper or a book is a thing of the past.
Amazon does allow you to re-download your purchased content in case of a hardware failure or when you are forced to delete your device to make space for more content. There seems to be no way to really build a library as with physical books or with your music as the iPod/iTunes allows.
I know people that own iPods and have never bought any content from the iTunes Store and have still enjoyed the device. There is also tons of free podcasts and choices of DRM-free music from Amazon's MP3 Store and EMusic. Without Amazon’s DRM-protected content (solely controlled by Amazon), the Kindle is pretty worthless.
You can not even really browse the Internet with it. Sure you can read "selected" blogs on the Kindle, but you need to pay for each one to be placed on your Kindle since it does not use the standard RSS feed or have a full featured browser. The blogs would need to be converted to this DRM format to read them on the device.
Amazon's model for the Kindle is this in a nutshell: Pay for downloadable books that can’t be printed, shared, or read on any device other than Amazon’s own $400 device with no way to build a library.
Surely this is not the same as the iPod model that Apple has its business on. As cool as the Kindle looks it is to be seen if it is a big seller when users realize these shortcomings.