It's still not rocket surgery.
I mean, look at the Amazon Kindle: you only need Internet access to download the latest book, daily newspaper or magazine issue. Most of the other times, the Kindle operates quietly, and since it uses an e-ink display there are no distracting backlights to deal with like you have with an iPad.
These coffee shops are going to start losing a LOT of business if they ban people from using an e-book reader in the coffee shop.
I couldn’t read the rest of the article because I’m not a subscriber, but this strikes me as incredibly stupid. But it’s typical of the romantic, anti-technological mindset of the liberal world (and I’m sure the average “coffee shop” owner is pretty liberal, unless we’re talking about Greek diners, which I don’t think we are).
Maybe books are too modern. Maybe the readers need to haul out a roll of parchment. Oh - but wait, isn’t the cash register electronic???
Perhaps it is not the device itself, but using the device for hours which is what the coffee shops don't want.
It’s called the Starbucks rule. It’s meant to drive business to Starbucks. While the other places wonder why the have no customers and end up going bankrupt and then closing.
I have to assume that this is because someone using an e-reader sits for a long time sipping on a cup of coffee and taking up a table?
Why shuold they be banned. If I want to sit over breakfast at a restaurant and read the news via the internet, what is it to you?
This nation is full it seems of a bunch of bored busy bodies that have no better calling in life than to take away other people's liberties because "they don't like it."
As far as I can tell, the policy was aimed at laptop owners who were typing all day, and the clack-clack of the keyboard can be irritating.
But iPads and Kindles are also eBook readers, and reading in a Cafe is almost mandatory. If shop owners don't want squatters, then manage their free internet better, cutting off patrons who don't make a purchase after 60 minutes.
Yeah but you are taking up space while you read for a few hours.
Borders has people stooging in its cafes and stacks all day. Doesn't seem to have worked all that well as a business model.
The New York coffee shops miss the old days where patrons in shaggy clothes would congregate to listen to acoustic Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie songs while discussing Marxist politics and the overthrow of the imperialist, capitalist pigs.
You ban my Kindle - you ban my wallet!
However, were it me, I'd get rude to these slobs and ask them to leave after 1 hour and one coffee. Wanna stay? Keep ordering food and beverages.
Just my take.
These restaurants and cafes first accommodated PDAs with their free Wi-Fi. Now, it appears that people are squatting in the restaurants, thus limiting the turnover to more paying customers. That might be the problem but it’s the short-sighted hospitality business that invited it.
It's still not rocket surgery.
As martin noted, there are places which offer time-limited web access for a modest cost. There are also places like the burger chains which do that, or offer it for free, with cheaper coffee and a full menu. It’s not as if anyone (in, say, France, in an open-air café) never spent the morning reading their entire newspaper while nursing a single cup of coffee. Or in a diner where their single cup of coffee was freshened up by a helpful waitress.
The real thing at work here is that there are alternatives now which didn’t exist before, and it’s become more difficult to sell a $4 cup of coffee and $3 bagel. Throw in gratis web access (which plenty of these java places do) and fairly small numbers of tables, and it’s obvious that, since their floor space hasn’t changed, and their prices have gone up, that their margins have declined due to rising costs, and cutting free web access — which is their prerogative — is the one place they can easily cut their costs. It also helps (they think) with turnover.
What they’re about to find out is, there won’t be any more customers than before, and in fact there will be fewer.