Apple Proves Irresistible

Greetings from New York, where the mark of a good trader and a total lunatic is the ability to change his mind on the fly. The Kindle is a device I’ve mocked directly to Jeff Bezos’ face as “the answer to those who are seeking a way to strike back at the Greens by starting fires with something plastic.”

I’ve ridiculed the Kindle’s perpetual out-of-stock nature, called it “a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist,” and generally used it as a way to rip Amazon.com (AMZN) in a manner which draws attention away from my irritating inability to accurately predict movements in Amazon's stock.

I ordered a Kindle entirely because my loathsome iPhone had lost the ability to spark fresh hatred. I’m a man who needs a steady stream of bad decisions chasing me everywhere I go. By now, I fully expect my iPhone to drop my calls, send indecipherable emails and behave in every way like the glorified toy it obviously is. In need of fresh self-abuse, I ordered a Kindle to fill the void and said as much last week.

The strangest thing happened when my Kindle arrived over the weekend. The worst thing I can say about it is that it can’t do crosswords, and was a minor hassle to set up. Beyond that, the Kindle is a fraction of a pound of pure joy. It’s beyond cool; it’s a game-changer. For an over-read ADD case such as myself, it’s a license to print money for Amazon. If a book occurs to me for reasons better left unexplained, I can order it immediately from my Kindle and have it arrive in minutes.

In the last 3 days, I’ve purchased books by Norman Mailer, Christopher Buckley, George Plimpton, limey comedian Russell Brand, Aesop, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I’ve ordered subscriptions to 3 different newspapers. I buy the newspapers anyway and already own some of the books mentioned. If that kind of behavior reminds you of how you purchased songs you already owned when the iPod came out, that’s no coincidence. The Kindle is an iPod for people who read.

I have no idea how big a market it can serve, but Mrs. Jeffmacke (who is wise and gorgeous) took one look at my Kindle obsession and suggested I buy Amazon stock. Amazon is on my black-list of “Stocks I Won’t Trade,” given the statistically impossible frequency with which I’m wrong about Amazon.

Still; I’m a man who respects a game-changing product. If Amazon drops the price from an absurd $359 to a point where mass marketing is possible (free advice: go $199, Amazon; if you’re making a penny per book, the volume will offset the subsidy) I’m a buyer in size of Amazon stock.