Last week’s announcement of the Kindle 2 means that the first-generation Kindle is no longer being sold.  While the original Kindle had its flaws, its design was quite unique and will be missed by some.

The Kindle classic, if you will, had a design only an engineer could love.  It was shaped like a squashed parallelogram with funky keys that looked like they came from a cheap toy.  It had all the design flair of a space-age doorstop.

The part of the first Kindle I will miss the most is the polarized pneumatic LCD strip it had on the side of the screen for navigation.  A scroll barrel below caused parts of the strip to turn from opaque to clear, revealing a darker portion underneath.  While this was not the most user friendly way to navigate the Kindle, it was cool for sheer geek factor.

In many ways, the original Kindle reminds me of the first-generation iPod.  The first iPod had a scrollwheel that actually spun, which today seems almost quaint.  Both of these devices had novel ways to navigate and were popular, but it was their successors that slimmed down, dropped the quirky controls, and became wildly successful.  Now, we shall see if the Kindle can reach the level of success the IPod has.

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