Barnes & Noble has released the NOOK app for Windows 8 and RT, so if you’re a NOOK customer, you’ll want to check that out. But I’ll be sitting this one out, sorry: I just prefer Kindle.
On a related note, I get a lot of questions about whether I’d ever consider a NOOK tablet (over an Amazon, Apple, or Windows-type device) or use the NOOK eBook platform instead of Kindle. The answer to both is no.
Amazon’s Kindle platform is bigger and stronger, and I’ve been an Amazon customer for years. The firm has created one of the best content ecosystems on earth—arguably on par with Apple’s—and Kindle is of course just a part of that. A key part, but a part.
B&N’s NOOK devices, while occasionally interesting—the NOOK HD+ is, for now at least, one of the best full-sized tablets in the market—seem like a response to other innovators, something the firm got into almost begrudgingly. But more important, to me, is that I have no faith in the company’s ability to survive. And when I look at the mobile computing platforms of the future, I see iOS, Android, Amazon (which we might also just call “Kindle”) and Windows. It is interesting to me that Amazon has been able to carve out a market for itself by subverting Android. I don’t see B&N doing that with NOOK.
So, no hard feelings. I’m just not interested.
