I don't own a Kindle and frankly I wasn't interested in it even when it was the cool new tablet or eReader. However I did go buy an iPad because of it's multifunction ability. I get to use it less than almost everyone in the house, and my twin 3 year olds are the heaviest users (but that's another story).
When I got the iPad I immediately got the Books application and was ready to grab a few titles and experience something I had been looking so forward to. Unfortunately for Apple I couldn't find anything and after a few days of resistance I installed the Kindle app for the iPad. The selection of course was huge since Amazon has been doing books since it's inception and eBooks for a handful of years now. After easily finding the book I was interested in I was surprised at the features. Of course they have a bookmark feature but there were some hidden gems like community highlighting & notes. Of course it's cool that you can highlight and add notes to certain passages but you can also download highlighting that others or the kindle community have added as well. Takes me back to college when you would buy used books that already had someone's hard earned study notes.
So if that wasn't enough they just released the Android version of the Kindle app. I installed it and whala, all my highlighting and everything comes across from the iPad app. not only that when I launched the app on my phone it automagicly was on the page I last bookmarked, allowing me to jump back and forth from the iPad to Andorid phone without search for my place. Multi device consumption is pretty nice since the 3 year olds don't let me take my iPad out of the house unless they are coming along.
If you think about it, the Kindle team over at Amazon probably doesn't care if they make a device. They had the relationship and the ability to sell alot more books if they had an electronic distribution system. issue was they didn't have a socially acceptable device to distribute them to. Their own hardware was just a means to an end and Apple has probably only made them happier they don't have to be in the consumer hardware manufacturing business.
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