Kindle Experience Headed for the PC (and Mac)

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I’m definitely a fan of the digital book reading devices. If you read many books, you’ll want something that’s easy on the eyes – you know, like paper. And e-ink is really the way to accomplish — unlike LCD screens it doesn’t strain the eyes. But there are those times when it’s nice to “extend” your book to other devices. For example, My wife has used the Kindle iPhone app to continue reading a book she’s been reading on the stand-alone Kindle during times when she’s stuck waiting in line.

Amazon and Microsoft have announced a new Kindle app that will let you extend those Kindle books a little farther – onto a Windows PC.  Beyond adding yet another device you can access your Kindle eBooks on, this app adds a few additional features to note including multitouch capability and color.  Here’s the feature list mentioned on Amazon.com:

  • Get the best reading experience available on your PC. No Kindle required
  • Access your Kindle books even if you don’t have your Kindle with you
  • Automatically synchronizes your last page read and annotations between devices with Whispersync
  • Create bookmarks and view the annotations you created on your Kindle

This will allow the Kindle books to work on tablet PC’s sporting Windows 7 and multi-touch. Not for me, but I know a lot of you want a multipurpose computing device that also functions as a usable ebook reader. (Mac support is coming, too.) This is potentially as big or bigger news compared to this week’s Barnes & Noble Nook eReader. Make no mistake, the day of the eBook breakthrough into mainstream is extremely near.

Check out more of Brent’s reflections on tech, gadgets, software and media at Brent Evans Geek Tonic.

5 thoughts on “Kindle Experience Headed for the PC (and Mac)”

  1. I’m not as fired up as you. It’s a nice to have for either OS, but I’m not sure it’s a huge deal. I am, however, very much looking forward to B&N’s Nook and am hopeful most publishers agree to the 1 14-day lending option.

  2. Kindle expanding to other devices assumes a back room deal cut with the OS makers ( Windows and Apple )….

    Barnes & Noble Nook eReader uses Android, so no deal need to extend it out to millions of Android phones and Netbooks.

  3. Yup, saw this. Honestly felt like a response to the fact that the B&N Nook announced Mac and PC software. Another obvious advantage to having competition in this space finally.

    One obvious advantage for me would be the ability to read magazines in color, assuming they actually add that at some point in the future (kinda stupid they’re not there when they launch, but whatever…). One of these days I’m going to have to move my PC Magazine digital subscription over to the Kindle version and see what it feels like. I assume it’ll come out formatted differently.

  5. I think this is a very good idea. I have a marathon training book on Kindle that has lots of graphs optimized for the supersize kindle, but don’t look that great on my regular sized Kindle 2. If I could access those graphs on a PC app, that would be helpful.

    My biggest question is whether this is a free app for current Kindle users or will it cost extra?

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