Kindle Hopes Its Fire Will Singe the iPad

Until now, Amazon's Kindle has been basically an ereader -- something you could use to view the virtual versions of those odd boxlike things they used to call books, leaving the hipster crowd to jam, groove, chat and game play (as playing games now seems to be called) on the iPad.

The Kindle Fire aims to change all that, providing nearly as much spark for a lot less scratch.  The Fire is to the old Kindle what Lady GaGa is to Doris Day, filled with sound and fury and signifying, well, that's another question.

It's a little smaller than the iPad, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  And it costs a lot less, $199 compared to the iPad's starting price of $499.

Or as Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos put it on Amazon's home page today: "There are two types of companies: those that work hard to charge customers more, and those that work hard to charge customers less. Both approaches can work. We are firmly in the second camp."

Verbose

But don't call the Fire cheap, Bezos cautions.

"Kindle Fire brings everything we’ve been working on at Amazon for 15 years together into a single, fully-integrated experience for customers – instant access to Amazon’s massive selection of digital content, a vibrant color IPS touchscreen with extra-wide viewing angle, a 14.6 ounce design that’s easy to hold with one hand, a state-of-the-art dual core processor, free storage in the Amazon Cloud, and an ultra-fast mobile browser – Amazon Silk – available exclusively on Kindle Fire," he continued, on an apparent quest to construct the longest sentence in a non-scholarly journal.

Bezos is betting he can succeed where such giants as H-P and Samsung have failed.  He's betting he can unseat Apple as King of Tablet Valley.

But, you say, Apple has all those wondrously sleek stores.  Yes, but Amazon has its wonderfully ubiquitous Web site, which exists in a few billion more places than Apple's stores.  

Both companies, of course, have lots of product, although you can't buy a lawn mower at Apple last time we checked.  Apple may have more music in its iTunes section but with Spotify and the like becoming more common, does it matter?

Which brings up the question of whether any of this matters.  Two wars drag on in foreign lands, the economy remains moribund, candidates for top office become weirder by the year, the Obama Administration has locked the public out of its own malpractice database and everyone with a DVR missed the last few minutes of The Good Wife because a ball game ran over.

There are those who think this fascination with gadgets that are really, when you get right down to it, little more than toys is just something folks use to take their minds off weightier matters.

You know what?  They might be right.