16/01/07

The Key Phrase is “3.5 inches is suspiciously perfect for reading.”

Booksquare has made the one insightful comment I’ve read since Steve Job’s iPhone presentation. And it is that the ‘iPhone can save the book industry’. Two quotes from the full article:

The iPhone also features a surprisingly large screen, and has the ability to automatically change the screen orientation when a user turns it sideways. At 3.5 inches it seems suspiciously perfect for reading.

and

In other words, you can read lengthy texts. Articles. Short stories. Novellas. Books. Compendiums. On your cell phone/miniature computer/portable media player/killer device.

Setting aside the comfort issues, the iPhone could either kill the nascent e-reader business or take it to new levels. We’ve been saying just about forever that the problem with dedicated e-reader is the fact that the consumer isn’t seeking a device that does only one thing. With its “smart” orientation features, the iPhone could usher in the mass market e-book era.

Yup. And there was me thinking that digitisation was a waste of time and money.

Posted by Peter Collingridge in Design, Future of the book, Google print, Publishing.