This is what happens when sub-quality design engineers are further hampered by having to answer to the marketing department on every decision. I'm an avid book reader and I would buy something like this if it were designed well in spite of my iPod Touch. The iPod is a painful way to read a book, after all, but it works well enough that a dedicated eReader would have to be stunning to entice me to purchase it. The Kindle isn't stunning, it's stupid, just like the Sony reader, hampered by too many limitations and pure marketing foolishness. If Apple were to turn their designers loose on an idea like this, it would probably just wind up looking like an oversized iPod Touch, and it would have full web functionality, a gorgeous color screen, play music, store pictures, play movies... um, wait, what am I describing here? Does sort of make one think, doesn't it? Come on, Apple, I'd drop a grand on a 4"x6" iPod Touch with full OS X functionality in a freaking heartbeat, and such a beast would absolutely render these goofy Sony and Amazon readers obsolete in about 10 minutes after product launch.

If they had a touch screen, the keyboard could be virtualized onto that.

The greyscale display works well for text, but of course it limits usability of anything that uses those new fangled picture things. Is there even a concept version of a color digital ink thing at this point?

apple dropped the price. multiple times. as they added new features. where you been?

Well, I can see you won't need a kindle, since reading and comprehension aren't top of your list of abilities.

I didn't mention the iPod, now did I. I mentioned the iPhone (which dropped in price ONLY because of a new deal with how Apple gets paid) and macs, which almost never go down in price (the plastic macbook is the exception to this). Apple would rather add features and keep those prices high, high, high, so they can stay in their upper-crust market (just like what Tim Cook (?) said on the conf. call about the iPhone, and what everyone here repeats anytime someone says "Hey, can we get a sub $1500 mini-tower?).

I already have a Kindle. And btw, not everyone on the planet has an iPhone. Much as I'd like that since we own a few shares of Apple. also, once past the age of, oh say 40?, it's nice to be able to change the text size a bit.

and my Kindle already will handle audiobooks and music although for me that's beside the point since I own 4 iPods. I don't like the new keyboard layout. I like the old one. As to what it's used for ... it's useful if you live where you can access the Whispernet and search online and buy books directly from Amazon. Or as someone else pointed out, you can make notes on what you're reading.

Personally I use mine 90% of the time for fiction. No more staggering piles of paperbacks all over our home office floor, or the bedroom.

I love my Kindle. Just the way it is. The only improvement I would like to see would be a backlight. Maybe then hubby would stop bellyaching about what I paid for it.

All of this buzz from Google and Amazon about ebooks. They know something from Apple is coming. As soon as Apple's quarterly financials show needed income to meet quarter's guidance we will see new hardware announcements. Exciting times. Hardware announcements so much more effective than backdating stock options.

Right.... Apple, the follower. That's what they're called.

And don't know how to break it to a lot of people, but Apple will surely tell you, so I'll do it here. Books are dying. People don't want to read. They'll listen. But too many people are too busy to waste their time reading.

The market is small not because Apple isn't in it, or because ereaders are c***, it's because the book market in general is just going downhill...