Every time I walk through Warehouse Stationery (New Zealand's equivalent to Office Depot) or Dick Smith's Electronics (pretty much Best Buy), I'm struck by how probably half the products in each store are pretty much useless to me since I've got an iPhone.

Thanks to the apps that come pre-packaged with the iPhone and the more than 100,000 third-party offerings now available in the iTunes Store, the iPhone has gained functionality that might have seemed hard to fathom under three years ago when Steve Jobs first announced the device.

"A widescreen iPod with touch controls... a revolutionary mobile phone... a breakthrough internet communications device... these are not three separate devices. This is one device." So Steve Jobs told us all back at Macworld Expo 2007. But since then, the iPhone has grown to be much more than just those three concepts.

What follows is a sort of anti-buyer's guide, a list of products and devices that you may never need or even want to buy again (or receive as a gift) if you have an iPhone. Some of these are certainly open for debate, but more than a few of them are products that, for all intents and purposes, are completely unnecessary if you have an iPhone. (Items in bold also apply to the iPod touch).

Fast Company is reporting that there is a Kindle reader application coming for the Mac. At the Windows 7 launch this week, Microsoft said there is a Windows version of the e-reader on the way, prompting a promise from Amazon that a Mac version was coming as well.

Amazon hasn't released sales figures for the hardware-based Kindle reader, but under pressure from Sony and the new Barnes and Noble 'nook,' Amazon is working hard to increase the share of Kindle users. That means not restricting e-book reading to an Amazon device, but opening up the software to run on more platforms.

Kindle already has a clever e-book reader for the iPhone and iPod touch, and it allows standalone use, or synchronization with a Kindle so you can stop reading on one device and then pick up on the same page on the other.

There's no estimated shipping date for the Mac Kindle software, and we can't forget that if Apple delivers a tablet computer it could put Amazon into direct competition with Apple.

This is bound to be fun to watch.

Those of us in the Mac rumor and news business (is there a difference?) love it when we get a good tip, especially when that tip is from someone who has given us good, solid info in the past. iLounge featured a post last night called "Ten New Details on the Apple Tablet" that passed along some rumors that they've received from one of those solid sources.

While I won't parrot back the bullet list of ten details that are in the iLounge post, here's the gist of the article: Apple has created at least three prototypes of what editor-in-chief Jeremy Horwitz calls the iPad. The prototype that is still in the running has a 10.7" diagonal display, runs iPhone OS, and looks like a large iPhone 3G.

The device will have two variations, one with 3G networking built-in (think of it as an über-iPhone 3GS) and another without it (a mongo iPod touch). The larger display is expected to have about 7 times the surface area of the iPhone, and about 6 times the resolution, allowing easy reading of books, magazines, and cropped newspapers.

With the extra screen space, the new devices are designed to bring ebook functionality to the iPhone platform as well as make a more compelling platform for games, media, app, and the web. Apple doesn't expect this device to compete with netbooks, hence their continued denial that the company will come out with a netbook killer. Instead, this will be an extension of the iPhone platform.

Horwitz finishes his list by noting that the device is still awaiting a green light from Steve Jobs, and that it has about an 80% chance of making it to market. If it's given the go-ahead, the source is stating that the device would be announced on or before January 19, 2010 and would go on sale in May or June.

While this is still a rumor, the information is from the same source that gave iLounge the scoop on the iPod nano 5G, the iPhone 3GS, and the Chinese iPhone 3G. It appears we'll still have to wait until 2010 before the fabled tablet appears in our local Apple Stores.

An e-book (or ebook, or eBook, depending upon who you ask) is the digital equivalent of a paper book. According to KiwiTech, the publishers of Classics2Go, the market for eBooks has increased more than 60% over the last six years and growth from this point is expected to be very strong.

We can reasonably connect the start of this burgeoning market to the release of the Amazon Kindle in 2007. Strong sales convinced some wary readers that this was a viable option. You could carry a few hundred books under your arm, and the reading experience was, well, acceptable. Going on a long trip? Wouldn't it be nice to take about 20 pounds of paper out of your luggage?

2007 also marked the introduction of the iPhone; it took about a year for eBook apps to appear on the iPhone. Now there are so many of them that finding the right one for your purposes can be a confusing prospect. I would like to clarify all this a bit by categorizing the four types of eBook apps, at least so far, and letting you know what you can expect from each.

In deciding upon an eBook reader you need to consider: what sort of material you will be reading, how much you are willing to spend (if anything) and the quality of the viewing experience.

Last year, Andrew Kazmierski and Phill Ryu released Classics (iTunes link). Their idea was to take a bunch of books in the public domain, 22 in the current release, and control all aspects of the user experience. We covered the first release of Classics upon its original release when its price was $2.99. Since then, the price has dropped to .99 and the number of books has increased.

This app looked so impressive that it was featured in an Apple iPhone commercial. Upon launch, the reader is presented with a nicely rendered wooden bookshelf displaying colorful dust jackets. Click on a book and start reading. There is no wait, since all the books were downloaded with the app. Future updates bring more books. The books are all the kind of classics that are on school reading lists ranging from Frankenstein and Dracula, to Hound of the Baskervilles.

The feature set is slim. Tap the right side of the screen or swipe right to left and the sepia toned pages turn using a pleasing animation. There are two buttons on the top of the screen. One brings down a maroon and gold bookmark and sends you to the bookshelf. When you click on the book again, you are brought to where you left off. The second button takes you to a table of contents. The bottom of the screen tells you the name of the chapter you are reading and what page you are on. The top of the screen displays the title of the book. Illustrations in books like Alice in Wonderland are nicely rendered, and the text is attractively formatted. A change in color of the title bar gives you an idea of where you are in the book.

You knew it had to happen, and now it has. Book retailing giant Barnes & Noble, feeling no doubt a bit of pressure from the Amazon Kindle, has launched a free eBook reader for the iPhone and reports are that it is discussing a dedicated eBook reader as well.

The B&N eReader [App Store] is free, and comes with 2 free classic titles (Jane Austen and James Fenimore Cooper), and when you register you get three more. B&N claims they have more than half a million eBooks available.

B&N also is offering a free reader for the Mac and PC so you can read your books on a desktop or laptop computer.

You can change the text color, fonts and font size, and read in portrait or landscape mode.

I have to say that using the iPhone app was a festival of frustration. To do anything I had to create an account. I couldn't even read the free books without an account. To do that I had to give my email and a password. So far, so good. Then it asked me for a good security question. I chose my middle name, but it was rejected because it didn't have enough letters. Thanks Mom and Dad. When it gave me the error, it also removed my email and password so I had to start all over again, as I had to choose another security question. It suggested I answer what kind of car I have. I did, and was promptly rejected again, and had to go back and fill out the form because it erased my already entered email and password again.

I finally straightened all that out, but was hardly in the mood to read anything. Searching for titles was kind of weird. If you select an eBook, (or any other function) you're dumped to Safari and it then says 'search eBooks for:'. Kind of odd nomenclature. Nothing about title, author or subject. I entered photography and it came up with exactly 2 books. 'Flags of our Fathers' for US$6.50 and a book called 'Photography' that was free. There was absolutely no information about the book or what was in it. And the book cover image was missing.

At this point I was mainly interested in books about anger management. but I didn't want to spend the $9.99 to get the one book on the subject in the 'vast' B&N library.

So I tried something by Stephen King. I searched for Just After Sunset. Bingo! They had it in eBook format. $22.40. Hmmm. Seems a bit high. Yep. Kindle Store for the same book -- $9.99 delivered wirelessly.

Do you get my drift here? This is a bad product debut. It has an onerous and ill-thought out sign up routine, lousy selection and many prices are way too high.

I'd suggest the B&N execs read up on competition and capitalism, if they can find any books on the subject in their damned half a million book collection.

Amazon's Kindle app for iPhone [App Store link] was updated this week to include, among other things, landscape mode! Hooray! Additionally, you can change the color of both the text and the background. I like the "Sepia" option; it's similar to the way Classics looks.

Finally, you can turn pages by tapping on either side of the screen (I still prefer to swipe). You'll remember that the Kindle store for iPhone is still only accessible via Mobile Safari, and was optimized a few weeks ago.

Kindle for iPhone was introduced in March of this year and has been popular since.

The internal email list for all the TUAW bloggers is a busy place. Some of the best conversations from the list, including musings, rants and raves, don't ever appear on the site. Today we wanted to give you a taste of one of those conversations, about Apple's 'next big thing.'

There has been plenty of discussion lately about Apple's next category-defining product. For months, I've dismissed tablet rumors. I know that Windows-based tablets are plentiful, but I've never used one, and don't know what the most useful applications are. I immediately think of a guy conducting inventory in a warehouse, but I know that's only because I have no experience with these machines.

Some suggest something that's essentially a laptop inside a touch screen, much like the iMac is a computer within its display; of course, Axiotron already makes a MacBook-based tablet. I don't see the practicality. I certainly enjoy the internet and email on my iPhone, but the amount of typing I do on the iPhone is a small percentage of what I do on my MacBook Pro.

Still, I think a similar device is coming.

Last month Amazon released the free Kindle application for the iPhone in the US [App Store link], shortly after the Kindle 2 hit the market. If you haven't used it yet, it works quite well. Users can buy books (but not subscriptions) from the Kindle Store via Mobile Safari for reading on their iPhones, although the purchasing process is easier from a desktop browser. Unlike the Kindle, the iPhone app is able to display color images, but it lacks text-to-speech as well as a direct connection to the Kindle Store. Whispersync, which synchronizes ebooks between the iPhone app and Kindle, works as advertised.

A few weeks ago, we posted a comparison of ebook readers featuring, among others, the iPhone app Stanza [App Store link]. As Steve mentioned, Stanza works with nearly every ebook format, even Project Gutenberg etexts. I only used Stanza briefly to check it out and I can say that the UI was very nice. Additionally, the folks who created Stanza have an existing relationship with ebook seller Fictionwise. In fact, Fictionwise created an ebook store just for Stanza users.

This week, we've learned that Amazon has acquired the company behind Stanza. We can only assume that aspects of Stanza will make it into a future release of Kindle for the iPhone.

When it comes to screen pathos, nobody does it better than Shatner and Montelban in the classic confrontation Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan. Now the twisted minds at the SciFi Network's Dvice blog have taken a wonderful cinematic moment, full of overwrought line readings, and handed it over to the voice-synthesis capabilities of the Amazon Kindle 2 and the iPod shuffle via Talking Gadget Theater. "Buried alive... buried alive..."

This isn't the first screen collaboration for the two gadgets; they also did a rendition of the interrogation scene from Blade Runner -- clip in the 2nd half of this post.

Now, if we can get the iPod shuffle to convincingly say "I'd like to thank the members of the Academy," we'll be on to something.

Before the release of the original Amazon Kindle a little over a year ago, there were a number of electronic book readers that tried to create and capture the market for a replacement to traditional "dead tree" books. There have been readers for just about every handheld unit since the Newton, as well as a series of devices that all required would-be readers to hook their book to a PC or Mac to transfer the content.

Amazon changed all that with the Kindle by creating a device with built-in 3G networking that delivers books to you the minute you buy them. I was one of the people who purchased the first-generation Kindle, and though it delivered on wireless purchase of books, it was a clunky, poorly designed device.

In the meantime, Apple introduced the iPhone 3G and the App Store, and several ebook reader apps have worked their way onto the home screens of millions of iPhone owners. So, is Steve Jobs right? Is there no need for a dedicated electronic book device like Kindle?

I've used both the original Kindle and the new Kindle 2, and I've also read my share of electronic books on the iPhone. Which of the reigning champions of the ebook world is the winner? Read on to find out.

You knew it was going to happen. Today Amazon is offering a free app [App Store link] for the iPhone/iPod touch that will give owners of those devices access to all the books Amazon sells for the Kindle eBook reader. The Kindle, which was updated last month, costs US $359.00. Amazon says it has a library of more than 240,000 eBooks for sale.

The app does not make a direct connection to the Kindle store. You'll have to use Safari on the iPhone, iPod touch, or computer to actually buy the content. If you own a Kindle already, you will be able to sync the books you have over to the iPhone.

Amazon says it has been working on the software for months, and sees it as a gateway to get people interested in buying a Kindle.

One of the advantages of the Kindle app is that you will be able to see color illustrations in books, something not possible on the Kindle hardware, which only shows images in shades of gray.

The iPhone version of the software does not have the controversial text to speech feature that has raised the eyebrows of companies selling audio books. Friday, Amazon said it would let publishers selectively turn off that feature on the Kindle.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

Buried in the announcement of the Kindle 2, Amazon also released a small nugget of information that had been flying around the Web for the past few days - that Kindle content will eventually come to cell phones.

So, how would that work? According to the announcement, the new Whispersync technology would allow readers to pause in reading a book on the Kindle and pick it back up on either another Kindle or eventually a cell phone. Not much detail was provided, though Gizmodo did confirm with Amazon's Ian Freed that Kindle content is on the way. Whether it's for the iPhone or Google's Android phone or the Blackberry, we don't know.

On one hand, the announcement is a victory for those advocating that digital content be available on more than one device. Amazon's already broken ground with music, and now wants to spread that to books. With more than 230,000 books currently available in the Kindle format, it's an impressive library to suddenly have at your fingertips.

On the other hand, Apple could see this as Amazon infringing on a potential product that could be sold and keep Kindle content off the iPhone. Yes, there is the Stanza store, but Amazon is by far a more visible and well-known competitor. I hope that this won't happen, as it'll just erode good will toward Apple, but it's by far not the first poor decision that Apple has made regarding what they feel belongs on the iPhone or not.

Forbes is reporting that the iPhone has become the country's top eBook reader. The claim is based upon the number of downloads of Stanza [App Store link], an ebook reader for the iPhone and iPod touch (395,000 and counting), versus the number of projected US Kindle sales (380,000).

For those unfamiliar with Stanza, it's a free application that lets users download books over the air, as does the Kindle. All of Stanza's offerings are free works in the public domain, and flipping pages is a breeze with the touch screen.

Of course, it's silly to compare an iPhone to a Kindle. The screen is very tiny and I wouldn't want to read anything longer than an email message with it. However, many people will, some of whom do it just because they can. I can remember reading a Stephen King book on my old Palm ///e simply because I thought it was neat.

Still, combine the 395,000 downloads of Stanza with nearly 380,000 Kindles sold (plus the Sony eBook reader figures), and it seems that many people enjoy reading very tiny type.

[Via MacDailyNews]

Don't get me wrong, I love my iPod touch. As a matter of fact, I'm writing this post with it on the beach as my girlfriend goes surfing. But with Apple's new product announcement on Tuesday, it makes me wonder what changes could be in store for our favorite supercharged music player.

I think the single greatest thing Apple could do for the iPod touch is take a page from the Amazon Kindle and offer free "Whispernet" service for every iPod touch sold. (Or, say, roll it in with a Mobile Me subscription.) Amazon bought access to a chunk of Sprint's EVDO network, which means every Kindle has network access wherever it goes.

Apple could make such a deal with AT&T -- and its various partners worldwide -- to provide the necessary bandwidth. Who knows -- perhaps they have already. Allow tethering with software like NetShare, and you've got Internet access for your Mac, too. Instant-on, and always there. Brilliant.

Another simple addition would be GPS functionality, bringing the iPod touch in line with its newer sibling. Suddenly, the need for both a GPS and an iPod in your car is obviated, and it opens up interesting opportunities with the car manufacturers who already offer iPod integration in their vehicles.

Third, and this could apply to new iPhones too, would be to allow access to the dock connector for Apps. This opens up all kinds of options for iPhone and iPod touch owners to use voice recorders and cameras, as well as potentially control a wide range of equipment from industrial automation tools to backyard telescopes.

Who knows what Apple has up their sleeve? Certainly not me. But with this wish list fulfilled, you can be sure a new iPod touch is in my immediate future.

While it's not a replacement for the Amazon Kindle, ZappTek today announced Legends, an ebook service for iPhone and iPod touch. The Legends service will be available in the App Store on July 11th, with pricing of $1.99 for short stories and $4.99 for novels.

ZappTek plans on partnering with "today's hottest writers" to distribute new fiction using Legends to bring the reading experience to iPhone / iPod Touch 2.0. Each book appears as an icon on the Home screen, and the books automatically re-open to the last page you were reading. You can also bookmark or annotate any page.

Both landscape and portrait reading modes are available by rotating the iPhone, and you can invert the display (white characters on black background) by triple-tapping. Double-tapping zooms in on text.

To start off, ZappTek is making a number of short stories and novels by New York Times bestselling author Michael A. Stackpole available. Many other authors will be joining Legends soon.

If you're a voracious reader, be sure to try out Legends this Friday!