DIY-IT

David Gewirtz

7 reasons the Kindle Fire is better than the iPad

By David Gewirtz | November 16, 2011, 5:39am PST

Summary: To be fair, I’ve only had a few hours to tinker with the new device, but I can already say that there are a bunch of ways the Kindle Fire is better than the iPad.

My Kindle Fire arrived last night. I was surprised to find myself excited, waiting for it to arrive. This was especially surprising, because in September, I detailed 12 reasons you might NOT want to buy a Kindle Fire.

To be fair, I’ve only had a few hours to tinker with the new device, but I can already say that there are a bunch of ways the Kindle Fire is better than the iPad.

Reason 1: Price

This is the Big Kahuna of reasons. The Kindle Fire is $199. The cheapest iPad is $499. There’s three hundred big reasons the Kindle Fire is better, already.

Obviously, if the device was terrible, the price savings wouldn’t matter. But — at least on first impression — the Kindle Fire is solid, fast, and smooth. In fact, it seems to be just as nice, if not nicer than the iPad.

The proof: within about an hour of my using the Kindle Fire, my wife wanted one. And, at $199, it was easy to make her happy and pull the trigger. Hers, though, will arrive in a few weeks since she didn’t pre-order.

Reason 2: Flash

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Flash is dead. We all know that. ZDNet has been covering the death of Flash in substantial detail over the last week or so.

But, the real fact is, Flash is not dead. It’s baked into many web sites, and I’m talking about real web sites, not just silly casual gamer sites.

Take, for example, educational web sites. My wife is continuing her college education, and she’s been using a fantastic mathematics simulator site called MathXL. This site runs on Flash, so it won’t run on our iPad. It will run on the Fire.

Did I mention the Fire costs $300 less than the iPad?

Reason 3: Native USB drive mode

These next two reasons are related. There’s much better access to the Kindle Fire as a storage device than Apple provides with the iPad. For example, you can take a USB cable, plug it into the Kindle Fire and then to your PC, and drag-and-drop documents for later reading.

There are some hacks for this for the iPad, but native USB drive mode is supported, out of the box, for the Kindle Fire.

Reason 4: PC-format document viewer

Once again, out of the box, the Kindle Fire supports PC-format documents, ranging from Word files and PDFs, even to PowerPoints.

Yes, there are add-on apps that will do this for the iPad (the excellent GoodReader is the best example), but the Kindle Fire supports it, out of the box.

Reason 5: Free Prime video

I’m an Amazon Prime customer and use the absolute heck out of that service. As a Prime customer, I also get free Prime movies and video.

I turned on my new Kindle Fire, jumped over to the Video tab, and within seconds was watching a completely free episode of Star Trek: Enterprise. A few moments later, I was watching John Cleese playing Mozart and mocking both Genghis Khan and A. Lincoln (of the U.S.A.) in an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

Minutes later, I was watching Top Gear in all its HD glory. You know, come to think of it, I never realized just how much John Cleese and Jeremy Clarkson remind me of each other.

In any case, Apple doesn’t have anything like this. With Apple, you have to buy everything and struggle with iTunes and the iTunes store. With Amazon, it’s just there.

Update: I also forgot to mention the free Amazon lending library for books. Another free bonus that Apple certainly doesn’t provide.

Which brings me to…

Reason 6: Amazon integration

We’ve talked a lot about how pocketbook-dangerous the Kindle Fire may be.

That said, the integration between the Kindle Fire and the Amazon cloud is excellent. There certainly is an iPad-based App store and iTunes store, but their integration isn’t nearly as smooth. iCloud is still substantially untested, and — to be fair — Apple has very little successful experience providing cloud services while Amazon provides them to the entire planet.

Reason 7: Size

There is something deeply satisfying about the 7″ tablet form-factor. It’s possible to easily hold it in one hand like a paperback, carry it around without worrying that you’re lugging an entire window pane in your backpack, and even use it as a live shop reference when crawling around machinery, doing maintenance.

It’s easy to hold in the hand, it’s easy to prop up on a pillow for bedtime reading or a last-minute TV show, and it’s just, plain comfortable.

Now that I’ve used the Kindle Fire for a little while, I think Apple is missing the boat seriously if it doesn’t come out with a smaller, 7″ iPad.

Conclusion

So there you go. I’ve only just started using this, but I may actually like the device. Stay tuned for further impressions.

What do you think? Is the Fire actually a better device than the iPad?

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Topics

Apple iPad, Apple Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Amazon Kindle Fire, Web Site Development, Corporate Communications, Web Technology, Channel Management, Digital Music, Digital Media, Internet, Marketing, Personal Technology, Consumer Electronics, David Gewirtz

David Gewirtz, Distinguished Lecturer at CBS Interactive, is an author, U.S. policy advisor, and computer scientist. He is featured in The History Channel special The President's Book of Secrets.

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David Gewirtz

At various times during his adult life, David has voted for both Democrats and Republicans, and has been disappointed by both. He is deeply disturbed by how partisanship has come before patriotism in America, which gives him the freedom to pick on both sides.

David is a frequent guest on TV and radio stations across America and can usually be heard or seen on-the-air at least once a week. He writes weekly commentary and analysis for CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360 and has been interviewed by Fox News, CNN, various ABC and NBC affiliates, and Canada’s Global TV. He has been a featured guest on National Public Radio and has also been featured on Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Liberty where his commentaries on technology, industry, and emerging nations have been broadcast into 46 countries (all in their own unique translations).

David is the executive director of U.S. Strategic Perspective Institute, a nonprofit research and policy organization. He is the Cyberterrorism Advisor for the International Association for Counterterrorism & Security Professionals, a columnist for The Journal of Counterterrorism and Homeland Security and a special contributor to Frontline Security Magazine. He is a member of the FBI’s InfraGard program, the security partnership between the FBI and industry. David is also a member of the U.S. Naval Institute and the National Defense Industrial Association, the leading defense industry association promoting national security.

David is an advisory board member for the Technical Communications and Management Certificate program at the University of California, Berkeley extension. He is also a member of the instructional faculty at the University of California, Berkeley extension.

David’s “day job” is as publisher and editor-in-chief of ZATZ publishing, an online publisher of technical magazines. Other than than his ownership stake in Component Enterprises, Inc. (the parent company of ZATZ), David has no additional industry investments.

ZATZ has many advertisers who do, in part, provide for David’s lush income and extravagant lifestyle. Most of them are IBM and Lotus aftermarket suppliers, some of them make goodies for Microsoft Outlook, and a few make all sorts of strange mobile devices and add-on products. David has been a regular judge of the IBM Awards, but has no formal financial interest in or with IBM.

Because the ZATZ online magazines often review products, David and ZATZ are sent an overwhelming stream of unsolicited, silly, and often useless products to review. Because they’re such a pain to track and ship back, these products often wind up in a dumpster or fill up the corner of a large closet. Although David has no plans to review products in connection to his ZDNet blog, if he does do a product review, he will disclose any relationship completely in that posting.

Both through ZATZ and independently, David derives a small income through various advertising and sales relationships with Amazon.com and Google. These are minor relationships and they will not impede his willingness or ability to chastise either company should they deserve it.

David has many other business relationships, but none of them relate to anything he covers in his ZDNet blog. David does have a bit of the sales-guy bug and if he’s not doing a sales deal with someone at least once a month, he goes through withdrawal. He has a number of consulting clients, but none of them relate to anything he covers for ZDNet (and if they ever do, he will either disclose that fact, or decline to write about them).

Back in the 1980s, David held the unusual title of “Godfather” at Apple. He has written and published 40 incredibly simplistic applications for Apple’s iPhone.

Although David is forbidden to disclose the terms of his iPhone developer agreement, he isn’t drinking the Apple Kool Aid, will never be confused with a metrosexual, and feels free to mock Apple, and Apple users, any time the occasion permits, on alternate Tuesdays, or if he’s bored.

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In two months you'll be back on the iPad

Citing how the small screen is just too limiting and the memory too constrained.
baggins_z
16th Nov
- Reply to
- Flag
RE: 7 reasons the Kindle Fire is better than the iPad

@baggins_z This comment is amusing to me, as the call of Apple fanatics everywhere is that it's not the hardware, it's how its utilized. At least, that's what they say when yet another tablet comes out with better specs. To be fair, it definitely is true, and it also applies to the Kindle Fire. If everything runs smoothly, nobody cares about the memory.

Unless you're talking about storage space, in which I laugh at you. I've used maybe a GB (after OS space and what all) on my iPad, all of them apps. Everything else comes to me straight from the cloud.
Aerowind
16th Nov
- Reply to
- Flag
the touch screen is the primary way you intereact with the thing..

@Aerowind ..this impact the interaction an UX directly and the most of any component on the device.. you don't understand that the screen size has a huge.. the biggest impact on how you use the device?
doctorSpoc
16th Nov
- Flag
you don't have kids that like to watch movies in the car..

@Aerowind ..how's your cloud working for you for video in the car.. 64GB kicks KF but for road trips.. KF becomes basically useless in the car..
doctorSpoc
16th Nov
- Flag
Watching Movies

@doctorSpoc...Most movies are wide screen, as is the form factor for the Kindle Fire. A wide screen movie played on a iPad (not wide screen form factor) takes up about the same screen space as the Kindle Fire.

So for movie entertainment Kindle Fire beats iPad.
kyron.gustafson@...
16th Nov
- Flag
NOPE! iPad screen is almost 2 inches wider than a Fire's screen..

@Aerowind iPad 7.8 x 5.8... Fire is about 6 x 4.. even with the non-widescreen the iPad screen is 30% larger than the Fire's screen..
doctorSpoc
16th Nov
- Flag
RE: 7 reasons the Kindle Fire is better than the iPad

@Aerowind I agree, guys like DoctorSpoc will wax poetic about screen size being essential that it is larger and later on tell you the iPhone Screen is the perfect size regardless of age. =D
Peter Perry
16th Nov
- Flag
RE: 7 reasons the Kindle Fire is better than the iPad

@doctorSpoc
And thats exactly the problem with tablets sized like ipad. The HP touchpad is the same dimension and watching movies on it is extremely distracting. Its like watching letter box movies. All that extra black space is irritating. And I find 10" tablets to feel as portable as my ultra compact laptop. Its just not portable enough. 7" screen is much more convenient when you are on the go and constantly getting on/off a plane like me. No matter how you justify 10" tablets the fact is there are a lot of people who just don't like it. And having that choice of size/form factor is nice. Being told this is the only choice you have is not so good. I already have parents who still tell me what to do. I don't need a gadget parent as well.
rengek
16th Nov
- Flag
Apple fans will never come over to the dark side

@Aerowind You wasting your time. Apple fans will never agree that another product outside of Apple is as good if not better. The took a oath to never doubt Apple and always have plenty of credit to buy whatever Apple makes and whatever it costs they will pay it.
jscott418
16th Nov
- Flagged
RE: 7 reasons the Kindle Fire is better than the iPad

@Aerowind So, if I understand correctly, its not how big it is, but how you use it?
jigglesden
16th Nov
- Flag
phones are mobile devices & tablets are portable devices..

@Aerowind by that i mean a phone is a device to be used when actually moving/mobile.. where as a tablet is a device that is portable, but to be used when you get here or there.. not when you're actually on the go... there is a trade off of how portable the device is vs the quality of the interaction.. for a phone it's biased for mobility sacrificing utility/usability/features.. for tablet it swings a little to the usability/utility/features side while sacrificing mobility.. 7 inch tablet is a lose - lose device.. you can't put in in your pants pocket (unless all your pants are cargo pants) so in real terms it's not any more mobile than a 10 inch tablet since it needs to be carried in a bag or in your hand and the screen is not big enough that you can really get good gains in terms of the UI.. this is why we see phone OS's on 7 inch devices.. i think 4.5 inches is about the biggest you wan to maker a mobile device and 9-10 inches for a portable device/tablet..
doctorSpoc
16th Nov
- Flag
RE: 7 reasons the Kindle Fire is better than the iPad

@doctorSpoc 7 inches just isn't enough for someone who wants to use a tablet for work (reading emails, creating documents, et cetera).
xamountofwords
17th Nov
- Flag
It's the screens size for me

@Aerowind

I'm not Apple fanatic but it seems like Apple is the only one with the size I want. I'd buy something other than Apple if they were the same screen size and a low price.
voska1
21st Nov
- Flag
RE: 7 reasons the Kindle Fire is better than the iPad

@baggins_z
Hate to say it to you, but I have been enjoying the Samsung Galaxy 7" for the past year and have never once have I wished for a bigger screen. The thing is great for viewing what I need in the 7" form factor and the convenience just makes the points even clearer to me. I also recommend the Otterbox case for it as it gives it a nice lip around the edges to hold easy as pie with one hand and is rugged enough we don't have to worry about damaging it. But I have great vision so maybe for those that need some help a 10" may be better.
OhTheHumanity
16th Nov
- Reply to
- Flag
RE: 7 reasons the Kindle Fire is better than the iPad

@OhTheHumanity
Ditto. Loved the samsung 7". It fits in sport jacket inside pocket. It fits in cargo pant pocket. I never worried about screen size. Even my iPad is too small comapred with my giant multi-display desktop setup
dbgreen53
16th Nov
- Flag