Kindle Review – Kindle Fire Review, Kindle 4 Review

Reading through posts on the Amazon Kindle forum and a very common sentiment is – Oh, so this is what the iPad is. I prefer my Kindle.

These are not the extreme people (iPad haters or Kindle haters). Just people who were curious and wondering whether the iPad would be better for reading books than the Kindle. It reminds me of what happened with the Nook and even with the Kindle DX.

Every secret, unknown eReader makes Kindle owners wonder

People begin to second guess their choice of the Kindle and wonder if there is a better device for reading.

A new product is always dangerous – Since it hasn’t been revealed (or been revealed only by the company and painted as the best thing since sliced bread) it is a much more dangerous competitor than an actual product available in the market.

We’re seeing that again with the iPad – the fact that its suitability as an eReader isn’t fully known makes everyone curious and undecided.

As it becomes more and more obvious that it’s not an eReader more and more readers lose interest.

There will obviously be people for whom the iPad is better since they never wanted a dedicated eReader in the first place (or some other reason). However, we are talking about the core Kindle target audience – people who love to read and read a lot. It’s unlikely that a device that is not dedicated to reading can win them over.

With a Secret Product you’re competing against Perfection

Take a normal person who wants to buy an eReader. If there’s an unreleased product like the Pixel Qi powered Adam or the iPad or the Plastic Logic Que it’s easy to project all of your desires for an eReader on to it -

1. People start imagining that the Que will be priced at $250 and have a touch screen and be unbreakable and the screen will be the size of an A4 sheet of paper.
2. The iPad turns into a dedicated eReader that is optimized for reading. People start thinking its screen will be an eInk-LCD dual-mode hybrid and books will be $9.99 or free.
3. The Adam is envisioned as the perfect Pixel Qi implementation that effortlessly flits between dedicated eReader and mode X – where mode X varies per person. For one person it’s the perfect email checker and for another it’s a perfect web browser and so forth.

Basically people imagine the product to be EXACTLY what they want in a product.

An App Store lets developers try to do this – create something that is close to various people’s ideal product. However, with an unreleased product we have the ultimate app store – our minds and our desires conjure up a product image that is EXACTLY what we want.

Reality changes everything

Once the product is actually released and people realize that it’s not their PERFECT eReader they snap back to reality.

This is why we are shocked by things like the Plastic Logic Que being priced at $649 and some people are shocked by the Kindle being at $259 – It doesn’t match our ideal eReader prototype.

For some people a dedicated eReader can NEVER be Perfect

Hand in hand with this projection of perfection is the fact that for people who don’t read much or don’t value what a dedicated eReader brings to the table a device loses the minute it’s a ‘dedicated’ eReader. It’s as if in their minds such a possibility just doesn’t exist – Who would want a device that does nothing except read?

For them multi-purpose devices that let you read are great because not only do they come closer to their image of Perfection they attack this discomforting notion that a dedicated eReader could exist.

Why else would people take the time to come to a Kindle forum and talk about buying an iPad?

t’s like they’re proving to themselves that dedicated eReaders are just an anomaly in the structure of the Universe.

Familiarity breeds deeper love or contempt

As more and more product details are revealed there are various possibilities, some of the most interesting ones being -

1. The device matches a person’s IDEAL DEVICE prototype. 
2. The device turns out to be a complete disappointment.

You see this illustrated with products where people wanted openness but don’t get it and are livid – There’s no openness and everything is closed. How could it compete? How could you be Evil?

At the same time you have people for whom a product matches exactly what they were looking for and they’re ecstatic. It has feature X and it is at just the right price – Wow!

The most interesting are devout followers who love their products and for them the product becomes more than a device -

1. It’s part of their identity.
2. It’s a pleasure to use.
3. It lets them feel superior to people who use competing products. 
4. It lets them feel special.
5. It lets them form a bond with their product.
6. It lets them signal things like what they’re passionate about, their status and their good taste.

For these people their product is Perfect and nothing else can compare and no other preferences are admissible.

Committment and consistency means that you have to attack other products

Products that become part of an owner’s identity are dangerous – Not only does the owner have to love the product itself he also has to attack competing products.

This is particularly amusing when a product isn’t released and we still have future owners attack competing products. You see a lot of this with video game consoles.

Secret Products that are gradually revealed are really powerful

If a company gives users time to obsess over a product and tantalizes them by slowly revealing details it gets the users very, very committed.

1. They talk up the features they like. 
2. They dream up features they want from their Ideal Product and project it on to the device. 
3. They delete/ignore/rationalize negative features.
4. Given enough time and anticipation they amp up the intensity of their feelings. Research has shown that keeping someone waiting for 20 minutes signals power over them (you’ve subconsciously shown them you’re in control) – Surely, there must be an equivalent for products. Perhaps a 2 week wait full of anticipation means that users have no choice but to love the product.

Users have to give the product more credit than it deserves – Because otherwise they’d feel like fools for waiting for it for months. Of course, there’s a limit – A bad product will not be considered good. However a product that is worthy of 4 stars is likely to get 5.

Where does that leave us?

With a few interesting takeaways -

1. People who’ve waited months for a product will tend to be irrational about it.  
2. People will appreciate a product more when they have to wait for it, wade through product shortages, and make an effort for it.  
3. That appreciation is mostly due to committment and consistency – Every thing you do for the product gets you more vested in it. Yet it gets rationalized as the product being exceptional or better than it really is.
4. When a product doesn’t meet at least a basic level of expectations it’ll get brutalized by users. However, if it does meet the bar it’ll get additional qualities ascribed to it. 
5. Pre-orders and conferences displaying a product (as done for the Kindle 2 and iPad) are amazingly powerful. It allows products to get sold out and lets users wait and anticipate and talk themselves into loving a product irrationally.

At some basic level it’s appreciating things more when you have to work for them and/or wait for them. It’s basic human nature and it’s also basic human nature to not recognize that tendency and instead attribute it to the product’s magical qualities.

Filed under: thoughts Tagged: | artificially, improve your product