Luddites, I thought. Remember when the first digital typewriters came out? You could see about 16 characters on a tiny screen embedded just above the keyboard, and as long as you made changes there, it wouldn’t print on the special coated paper. Sounds laborious and nitpicky nowadays, but I was so happy to be rid of the Olivetti; its racket, its physicality. The digital was like a whisper of footsteps accompanying the smoke from my cigarettes.

All right, so I take the Sony Reader home, I download a couple of Sherlock Holmes stories from Gutenberg.org, I plug the Reader into my Mac…. Hah! I should have known better. No Mac support.

But, I’m used to this kind of stuff. I’ve had Macs since 1989. Easy enough to Google “mac support for sony reader” and download some free software. (What gets me is, if it’s so easy (free), then why don’t these gadget-makers include it in their software package in the first place?) That done, I’m hooked up… But can I upload my new books from Gutenberg? No. Need more freeware for that. Finally, I’m all loaded and ready to test drive.

Huge disappointment. Sherlock Holmes is visible on the Reader, but only barely. The type is miniscule no matter how much I magnify. This means that I’m stuck with the partial books that came loaded on the Reader, or I’ve got to go to Sony website and pay for their exclusive product. But wait! I can’t, because it doesn’t support Macs.

A couple of weekends ago, I was in a BestBuy with my thirteen-year-old. I needed a powercord for my iPod and he was browsing. He liked the new Sony PSP where he could play games, listen to music, watch movies. But can he move his iTunes files over to the PSP? No. Can he even plug the thing into a Mac? No.

Honestly, I don’t understand this intolerance and exclusivity among gadget makers. Google seems to have the right idea with the announcement a couple of weeks ago of its Open Handset Alliance software that will run on any phone, and will, I presume, make every cellphone a mini pc. With the obvious trend in electronics moving away from in-home, in-office, physical gadgetry and storage, it seems to me that the first guy to market a device that runs everything wins.

Who wants a collection of movies taking up space when there’s NetFlix and InDemand? Who wants to buy a whole album when you can cherrypick? Why do I want to buy the brand new Amazon Kindle when I can already read papers and (expensive) books on my iPod, and email, watch TV, movies, listen to music? Why do I want another product that forces me to purchase their exclusive book product?

I don’t.