Boy, Apple’s Design Aesthetic Really Didn’t Rub Off on Kindle 1.0 at All, Did It?
by John Paczkowski
Posted on May 6, 2009 at 3:45 AM PT
What propitious timing. At a press conference in New York later this morning, Amazon (AMZN) is expected to announce a new large-screen Kindle designed for reading periodicals and textbooks. And yesterday, on the eve of the announcement, came word that the company had been awarded a patent on the original Kindle design. The patent, #D591,741, is entitled “Electronic media reader” and it makes just a single claim:
“The ornamental design for an electronic media reader, as shown and described.”
About as exciting as the original Kindle design it describes, but this isn’t a utility patent, so you can’t really expect much from it. That said, the reference citations it contains are interesting. Among the devices included: the iRex iLiad, the NUUTbook an early prototype of the One Laptop Per Child Foundation’s XO laptop and Apple’s MacBook Pro.
Note: Be sure to see the liveblog of the Amazon announcement in New York by MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka, starting at 10:30 a.m. EDT.
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