Yeah, what a waste of time that was. :rolleyes:
Let’s analyze this.
First, the article is from 2010. In a fast-moving market any four year old analysis is obsolete.
Second, the article is opinion. One person’s opinion. You can never present an opinion column as factual support for an opinion.
Third, the article is simply wrong in its predictions of the future market. Especially about magazines. Books are driving the electronic market and magazines and newspapers are still scrambling to make the move over.
In summary, you cited an worthless aged opinion column that we know from actual history to be wrong as a defense of your position. How can we possibly spin this to be a positive? Well, at least you’re consistent.
I don’t understand. Books are fine. These readers won’t cause the demise of books because they are less convenient, not more. Can these electronic books be read on my laptop (running Windows 7)? Not to my knowledge. So, why should I buy another device to read a book when I can just buy the book?
Perhaps you should start a thread to discuss ebook readers? It seems a tangent from the main subject of this thread.
Are you kidding us? Are you that far removed from everyday reality? Yes, many thousands of ebooks can be read on laptops. Not only can many of them be read directly in their native formats, but it’s easy to convert formats to make them readable. This has been true forever. Here’s an article from 2010, your favorite year.
Aarrrgghhh.
Consistency is not a virtue.
Well, if by similar you mean a car with four wheels and seats and a steering wheel which goes from point A to point B by roads, I can’t argue. That seems a bit broad, though. Would you say self-driving cars are different?
The change in cameras was from film to digital. My Instamatic wasn’t all that different from my last SLR which I bought in 2000 except for some bells and whistles, so I won’t argue that film cameras have stayed pretty much the same.
I for one, feel the FUTURE* I was promised has largely been delivered. I was born in 75. My dad worked in computers. Mom owned and operated a day care center.
Mom correctly predicted that the USA would continue to get more flavors in the old melting pot. I remember her saying in 1980 that ‘We should all learn Spanish because one day soon, Hispanics will be the majority in this country.’ Please note, Mom didn’t see this as a bad thing. She was merely noting that power would pass from one group to another.
Dad showed through his purchases that home computers kept getting smaller, faster and cheaper. Our modems kept getting faster. Graphics kept getting more colors and pixels.
I remember sitting in the theater with Dad watching Tron. I said “Dad, I bet one day there will be whole feature-length movies done with computer animation.” It wasn’t a hard prediction to make. But it was a heck of a lot of fun to watch it come true.
I have an issue of an sf magazine from the seventies. You know the story in it is set in the future, because the boy in it gets a robot dog for his birthday. When he grows up, he gets a handheld computer for his birthday.
Now, I can buy an iPet or a RoboSapien or an iPhone or tablet.
We have a black President. We have 3D printers. We have white LEDs. I still say I’ll live to see autonomous vehicles be common place.
The FUTURE I was promised is here.
*Note there is no font that displays things in glistening chrome. Otherwise I’d have used that instead of capitals.
Sorry - that prediction of the future is now in the past. He kind of scoffed at a 10% market share in 5 years - in reality ebooks now have a 20% share, and have jumped 4,456% since 2008.
I don’t own one since I have over 1,000 books yet to read on my bookshelves, most of which will never be available in ebook format.
However, if you take an airplane flight, you will see the number of people with ebook readers. My daughter in Germany can get books in English a lot more cheaply on her Kindle. If you are going on a trip it is a lot easier to carry one light reader than lots of books. And for those who don’t obsessively collect books, an ebook doesn’t sit on your shelf and doesn’t make you trade it in. My wife, who got one for Christmas, can borrow books from the library without driving there, and when she wanted to get a book she just found out about, she could do it immediately.
And it is a lot more comfortable reading a book on a Kindle than on a laptop.
That you and I don’t want one doesn’t mean it has failed.
My point was that Leica introduced the first practical 35mm camera, and they have maintained more or less the same approach ever since. The 35mm camera replaced the bulky plate and sheet film cameras. The point I was making was that it turned out to be a very practical and popular item. Numerous imitators followed almost immediately.
The change to ‘digital’ was not really a change in camera design. In fact, camera companies tried as hard as they could to maintain compatibility with earlier products. Leica changed from screw-thread lenses to bayonet-mount lenses in 1956, and that was actually a bigger change than to digital. Almost all of the bayonet-mount lenses that fit the oldest Leica M film cameras will also fit the latest Leica digital M cameras.
I didn’t say it failed, I said there is really not an overwhelming advantage, like cars replacing horses.
To my knowledge, these various book formats are not compatible with one another. Barnes & Noble has one, Amazon another, etc.
Early automobiles were rightly called ‘horseless carriages’ and made mostly of wood. The sedans I showed you from 1930 are in fact much more similar to today’s automobiles than they are to the earliest autos. They are made of steel and are enclosed.
Look:
https://www.google.com/search?q=horseless+carriage&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=1TH9Uo7cFMT4yAG68oHgDg&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAg&biw=1280&bih=884
http://previewcf.turbosquid.com/Preview/2012/07/26__11_32_49/Duesenberg%20J%20232%201930%20sedan%202.jpgda09122b-5b9c-4c9c-bed5-11b1c183e0e6Large.jpg
Yes, but e-book readers are now everywhere. Of course they are not going to completely replace books (and magazines and newspapers) any time soon. But they’ve went from zero % of the market 10 years ago to 20% of the book market. During my commute nowadays I see dozens of people with e-readers. They are now officially a thing that actual people actually use, even when they don’t have to.
And film cameras are dead, dead, dead. As dead as horses and buggies. Yes, you can to to any downtown and find people giving horse and buggy tours. People will be using film cameras in niche applications for a long time to come. But digital cameras have completely replaced film for 99% of users.
And claiming that a digital camera is just a film camera, except digital, misses everything. A digital camera is just like a film camera in the same way that a horseless carriage is like a horse-drawn carriage.
In the real world, the past continues to exist. Buildings don’t magically update to the new styles, they have to be bulldozed down and replaced with new buildings on purpose. People wear the same clothes for years, they don’t all one day wake up and throw out their jeans and t-shirts and start wearing silver lame jumpsuits.
But yes, dress styles have changed dramatically in 40 years–in certain industries. 40 years ago if you were a computer worker you came to work dressed in a suit and tie. Nowadays where I work people work in shorts and sandals, or leather straps, or jeans and hoodies, or random hipster apparel. If I showed up to work in a suit and tie, people would do a double take. Except, there actually are PMs and such who often dress up in a suit and tie for work. But that is seen as a hipster affectation-wear. The point is, people dress however they want.
I use a film camera (Leicaflex SL-2) and have no plans to change any time soon. If I need digital files I have the film scanned. The Leica digital M camera is almost exactly the same in appearance and handling as the Leica film cameras. You would not really want it otherwise! The sedan of 1930 is not at all the same thing as a horseless carriage and had not been for some time.
If you care to see some of my recent images made with film, you may look here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ornello/
Leica M digital:
http://en.leica-camera.com/assets/media/img24302.jpg
Leica M4 (1967):
http://www.cameraquest.com/jpg5/LeicaM4P70_06.jpg
I don’t think anyone is saying that everything changes - 35 mm cameras are a good example of something that didn’t.
I wouldn’t qualify as a hobbyist, let alone a professional, but for me lens technology wasn’t all that important in how I used a camera. But while digital cameras may look the same as film cameras externally, how they are used is way different, in both the number of pictures taken, immediate evaluation of picture quality, and making editing available to the masses. It used to be that only those skilled in the darkroom could make changes, now anyone who knows Photoshop can.
True, but the basic handling of the cameras is unchanged. It’s not like a horse vs a car. You used to have to feed a horse and give it rest, etc. Cars are mechanical, horses animal.
A film camera vs a digital camera…the only difference is the nature of the light-sensitive medium. Neither is like painting.
Except you’re one dude. Trust me, outside of a few hipsters and artistes and poseurs and true believers, nobody uses film cameras.
Surely you’ve noticed that all the drugstores and supermarkets where you used to be able to get your film developed don’t do that anymore? And that you can only get film developed at specialty boutique businesses, or do it yourself? You haven’t noticed, because you wouldn’t have been caught dead developing your precious film with the barbarians at One Hour Photo, back when One Hour Photo was a thing? My point exactly.
There are hundreds of horses in the rural area where I live. People ride horses, and hitch up wagons every day in my town. For fun. As a hobby. Just like you enjoy using retro-technology like film.
So?
And by the way, I don’t get your contention that the Duesenberg is some sort of revolutionary advance over the 1905 style vehicles. No, every step of the way was an evolutionary advance. The revolution was strapping a motor to a carriage, rather than using a draft animal. Everything since has been incremental refinements. Even things like internal combustion rather than steam engines is an incremental advance.
I would argue that the change from open wooden carriage to closed steel sedan is actually quite important. What I am saying is that the basic ‘arrangement’ of the sedan automobile was already quite well established by 1930, and this was something quite different from the horseless carriages of ca 1900.
I have been saying that between 1880 and 1930 most of our modern way of life was established, with hardly any changes except for refinements:
Electricity, aeroplanes, electric lights, telegraph, automobile, telephone, radio, motion pictures (sound by 1930, also color by 1930), television, etc…
I remember reading a description of an automobile trip someone took around 1910-20 from Los Angeles to a town about 40-50 miles away. The trip took all day and involved multiple tire changes (flats were frequent). And you know how all those rich people in the movies had chauffeurs back in the day? They needed them, because the cars needed frequent maintenance, like lubrication every 200 miles or so. Now of course, a trip of 40-50 miles takes less than an hour and the maintenance interval for cars is in the thousands or tens of thousands of miles.
If you think cars haven’t changed much in the last hundred years, you’re crazy.