There’s been a lot already written about Kindle for iPhone and I’ll have more to say about it soon. The Kindle iPhone app is pretty basic, in line with one might expect for a 1.0 product, but represents an auspicious start for electronic books branching out from dedicated readers, which will be a niche market for the foreseeable future.
One of the best best features of the iPhone Kindle app is support for WhilsperSync, Amazon’s synchronization technology that keeps your library and multiple instances of a book updated to the latest reading “location”. It’s a great idea that fits in well with how one might use e-books on an iPhone, catching up on a few pages during some downtime. Wouldst that other sellers of rights-managed content were so generous and flexible with product that has been legitimately bought. Unfortunately, due to the iPhone’s multitasking limitation, one must remember to start up the Kindle application to sync book locations prior to going offline in a train or airplane and to keep it connected (or reconnect it) to get the sync back to the on Kindle. I’m sure this could all be resolved through MobileMe, but that doesn’t seem to be the case yet.
Clearly OS X is a its heart a multiasking operating system. I don’t think Apple will capitulate to the increasing competitive pressure of the Pre and other operating systems per se, but if compelling applications appear on rival platforms that require true multitasking, Apple may need to reconsider.