This is another great point.
The e-ink screens have always been touted as better than a reflective LCD for reading...
...yet suddenly many people are calling the iPad a "kindle killer".
Wha? Why?
For reading and reading alone, the Kindle is far superior and easier on your eyeballs.
Can the iPad do more and thus Amazon may have to work harder and get the Kindle prices down? Absolutely...
But just because Apple is making the touch screen device doesn't suddenly mean that shiny LCD screens are now "great for reading for long periods of time!"
After all. Apple uses the same LCD technology has everyone else. It hasn't magically gotten better for long periods of time reading on it.
First of all, majority of people complaining about eye strains are reading content on bright LCD in dim rooms. Those are what caused the eye strains, not the LCD itself. Some people use special anti-glare glasses to help with the eye strains if the LCD doesn't dim low enough. There's a reason many of the ebook applications on iPhone has dark mode, they do help a lot when reading on bed. Same situation with iPad, there'll be dark mode to help with reading in dim or dark room.
Secondly, hundreds if not tens of millions of people read content all day on their monitor. The eye strain occurs when reading for long period of time because of the previous reason and because people are not blinking their eyes as often as needed. This happens because of more words per line on a monitor cause people to try to read the whole line without blinking and it will put more stain on the eyes. People need to rest their eyes more often. (Especially on a wide screen monitor, I have seen people read ebooks like this and they don't barely blink once per line).
Third, Apple is using IPS screen, which is the best screen technology you can get and the best for reading as well due to the fact that it has high viewing angles and superior text clarity with high contrast, which is why eInk is better, it has very high contrast. Good quality IPS screens are usually very expensive. 24" monitor using IPS would cost you 300-400$ nowadays, majority of people don't buy those when they can buy 150-200$ 24" monitors.
I have no eye strains reading books on my 24" IPS screen in good lighting environment, which is why I'll have no problem with iPad.
Also, Kindle DX sucks for PDF files. iPad will let you read any ebooks from BN using their BN app, Amazon with their Kindle app, and drm-free epub files from Baen and other small stores as well as Safari O'Reilly Books as they don't use DRM. Hell you can even get a subscription from Safari Books Online and read thousands of technical books on your iPad for a monthly fee without trying to convert files or whatever. You can't do that with any of the e-ink devices now.
As for the question, even if I have MBA with Kindle for Mac app, I would just sell MBA and buy iPad instead with the Kindle for iPad application. The money I save probably would go toward buying ebooks.
