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While I do appreciate visiting homes where you can see the physical library, I do greatly prefer to read on my smartphone. Having all titles available whenever and wherever is a huge luxury (likewise with music streaming services). Not to mention the build in dictionary and the well-made books app on IOS.

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Certain books need to be physical. Flipping back and forth through a calculus book is much faster than through smartphone.

Smartphone books only work for books that are meant to be read from page 1 to end.

Sure, but what percentage of all the books being read in the world right now are calculus books? Or math textbooks? Or textbooks in general?

I think you're bringing up an edge case. Fiction and non-fiction books tend to be meant to be consumed front to back. A better edge case would be books with heavy endnotes, but honestly, those are handled better on my Kindle than with a physical book too.

For technical audiences like hackernews I would expect more textbooks than non textbooks in their library.

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