Source: Microsoft

Source: Harper’s

Introduction: 

As I’ve shared in previous posts, I’m a big Kindle fan.  I don’t own a Kindle device as I prefer to read on my iMac, iPad, and Google Chromebook, but I’m beginning to wonder if I should buy a Kindle Fire HD.  This post is a comparison of the Kindle reading experience across Mac, iPad, and Chromebook.  While highlights and annotations ARE SHARED across platforms, the fidelity of Kindle across these platforms is degrading over time.  

Best Kindle Platform to Read With: iPad

Of the three platforms I use, the iPad’s Kindle reader is head and shoulders better.  Here is a snapshot of the highlighting tool in Kindle for iPad.  Note the multiple colors to choose from.

Source: A Kindle for iPad - A First Rate Madness page 78

Here are the annotation options on the Kindle for Mac software (version 1.10.5 (40381) freshly installed before I wrote this post.  

Source: A Kindle for Mac - A First Rate Madness page 78

Here is the annotation option on the Google Chromebook using Amazon Cloud Reader: 

Source: A Kindle Cloud Reader on Chromebook - A First Rate Madness page 78

Kindle iPad ≠ Kindle Mac ≠ Kindle Cloud Reader … So what? 

When I discovered the multi-color highlighting in Kindle for iPad, I thought to myself about how DICE (Deep Indulgent Complete and Elegant) Kindle’s software has become.  For example, here is a highlight that I created the first time I read A First Rate Madness:

Source: A Kindle for iPad - A First Rate Madness page 78

 And here is an updated highlight that allowed me to separate the ideas I was pointing to in the passage: 

 Source: A Kindle for iPad - A First Rate Madness page 78

The ability to more finely highlight for a bookworm like me, is a big deal.  As a professor, I’m looking forward to the day that Amazon will allow me to share my highlights with my students (and whomever else wants to see them) in a branded by me, way.  

However …

When I look at this same passage on Mac or Chromebook, the passage is one large blob of highlight.  So, … I’m now shifting my reading largely to my iPad, just so I can highlight in a more nuanced way.  And, I’m beginning to worry about whether … 

• Amazon will preserve the integrity of my highlights into the future. 
• I will be able to see my nuanced highlights on Mac and Chromebook, and if so, when.
• I need to buy a Kindle Fire HD in order to avoid an adulterated Kindle reading experience. 
• Google (resistance is futile, we will all be assimilated) will allow me to port my Amazon books to their reader with my highlights.
• There will be an App for Kindle that will allow me to export my Kindle book highlights to a neutral format where I can re-apply my highlights to new formats of books that do not yet exist.   

Kindle as a GTD tool is incomplete.  I wish I could:

• connect my highlighted passages to projects that the passages can support. Like I take my 3×5 cards with ideas on them and drop them into manila project folders.  It would be cool if I could print highlighted passages on 3×5 cards, so that I could move ideas from bits to atoms. 
• link highlighted passages across Kindle books. 
• have multiple Kindle books open on a single device, the digital equivalent of the bookworm on the ladder above.
• dynamically link passages in Kindle books with web links (pictures, movies, slideshares, etc.)    

Finishing Up: 

Kindle is amazing, I’m sitting in my office surrounded by about 5,000 books.   So many books, that the thought of moving them actively repels me from the job market.  My computers running Kindle on the other hand, each have 215 books in them.  And, none of the devices carrying these books weigh any more than when I purchased them.  

 

Source: Google Nexus 4 in my office

So, every format of content, has pluses and minuses.  But the lack of fidelity in Kindle software across hardware platforms, gives me pause about whether Kindle is really earning our patronage as the book of the future.  

The biggest bugaboo of Kindle across platforms is that text-to-speech is not available unless you are reading on a Kindle hardware device. I had previously written off ever having text-to-speech thinking that Amazon is trying to force users to buy their devices.  But when you compare Kindle software on non-Amazon hardware, it becomes clear that text-to-speech isn’t the only Kindle experience adulteration.  

Any RestartGTD readers who have a color Kindle device, if you could compare the highlighting colors between Kindle device and MS Windows Kindle, it would be good to know if my experience is isolated, or is a signal to a more widespread adulteration.  

bill meade