For those of you less enamored of the idea of Kindle, here’s some grist for your mill: the always thoughtful John Gruber.

John’s got some good points, though they largely hinge on one’s faith (or lack thereof) in Amazon’s commitment to the Kindle platform. The fact that Amazon will keep the purchased books online for you in a virtual library to some extent sets my mind at ease about their intentions. I think they’re in this for the long haul.

His paranoia over lockdown is a bit overblown too. I’ve bought songs and albums through iTunes that I’ve already owned, and I have very rarely if ever backed up my proprietary AACs to CD, even though that avenue is open to me. And though I can still buy CDs, I buy most of my music through iTunes.¹ I happily embrace Apple’s DRM because I find the convenience of their service to be worth the tradeoff in freedom of use. When I look at Kindle, I see a similar thing.

Nevertheless, the future of e-books might very well be the subscription model: you pay your monthly fee to have access to hundreds of thousands of books, all at your fingertips all the time. Perhaps these will be based around large public libraries, and you’ll access them from the device of your choosing. That sounds appealing as well.

Regardless, these are exciting times. I’m glad to be alive.