I'll tell you what every iPad owner already knows: Everyone wants to "borrow" your iPad (especially kids). The Kindle, on the other hand, weighs less than half what an iPad does: just 10.2 ounces.ĩ. That's a little on the heavy side for long reading sessions where you're holding up the device. The iPad weighs about a pound and a half. Note that you can't get Kindle magazines in your Kindle iPad app you must use a Kindle.Ĩ. News & World Report, Foreign Affairs, The Nation, MIT's Technology Review, BusinessWeek, Forbes, The New England Journal of Medicine, Reason, The New Republic, and a bunch more. Kindle offers what I think are the three best magazines: The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The Economist. But for now, the Kindle platform has a far better selection. The iPad is a uniquely compelling platform for magazines. Since I bought my iPad, none of the non-classic books I've tried to purchase have been available on iBooks - but they have been available on .ħ. But you can't get by with the iBooks store alone. This isn't a strong argument in favor of owning Kindle hardware, since you can read Kindle books on the iPad app. If you're a serious reader, you're going to need an Amazon Kindle account anyway. But the Kindle battery lasts two weeks! If you're traveling, camping, or flying from Idaho to India, or if you find yourself in any situation where you're going to be away from an electrical outlet for more than 12 hours, you can do your reading on a Kindle and save your iPad's battery for other things.Ħ. I personally get about 12 hours of active use. The iPad is famous for long battery life. So if you're like a lot of people who read in bed before sleep, reading on a Kindle will probably help you sleep better.ĥ. But the Kindle screen is passive, meaning that it merely reflects light.
The iPad has a very bright screen ( Apple wisely built a screen dimmer slider bar right into the iBook interface). It turns out that reading on or using any device with a back-lit screen can interfere with the quality of your sleep. If you intend to tuck your reading device under a towel and take a dip in the water, well, you're just not going to do that with your shiny new iPad, are you?Ĥ. If you're going to do some reading at, say, the beach, the Kindle is vastly superior, not only because of the way it performs in sunlight and heat, but also because it's less likely to be stolen. The iPad is a tempting target for thieves. However, in direct sunlight, in a hot car or in hot weather, an iPad can overheat and shut down. For a tablet computer, one of the iPad's many charms is that it's totally silent. The iPad is unreadable in direct sunlight, but the Kindle works best in the sun.Ģ. Most active readers enjoy reading in bright light or even direct sunlight. Here are 13 reasons why I think every reader who owns an iPad also needs a Kindle:ġ.
But the list of things the iPad does badly is identical to the list of things the Kindle does well.
In a nutshell, the e-book reading on the iPad is generally great. This impulse became stronger after I installed the Kindle app on my iPad, which gave me access to all of my Kindle books.īut now that I've used an iPad for a month and a half, I've come to realize that I still want, need, and love my Kindle. The Amazon Kindle is in trouble." My second thought was to sell my Kindle. When I first opened Winnie-the-Pooh on my iPad's iBooks app, my first thought was, "Oh, man.