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Thibaut Sailly does not like the Amazon Kindle. Not the whole ebook-DRM thing (which is also broken), but the form factor itself. For example:

I don’t have anything against asymmetrical designs… the volume itself is ok to me. But having symmetric elements (the keyboard and the screen) that give the most visual weight to an un-centered (left aligned) element in an asymmetric shape can only result as a mess. If you choose asymmetry, stick with it. For example, don’t make a symmetric keyboard when you can do an asymmetric one. But first, don’t choose it when the purpose of the object is to display a book page that looks like it has a center line (apparently they acknowledged this fact by placing the logo centered under the screen).
(Note: Edited a few words– his English is not perfect.)

I’m inclined to agree with the guy, not only because of the clear arguments he makes with his visuals, but also because he follows a posting about the gorgeous video game Bioshock with a video about Paul Rand (“hero” tag, indeed!).

Personally, I wonder if Amazon isn’t possibly “pulling a Gameboy” here, wherein they lead with a subpar, feature-crippled design only to follow it with the design they should of come up with in the first place (i.e. Gameboy Advance to Advance SP; Gameboy DS to DS Lite).

Old Skool “Phatty” DS vs. the DS Lite

Regular folks will buy some of each, but the fanboys will buy both versions. Question is, does the Kindle already have fanboys? Suprisingly, perhaps it does.