The big question for me: does it support sideloading? If so, I'll definitely be purchasing one.
Amazon Unveils $199 Kindle Fire Tablet
281–290 of 318 posts
Re: Amazon Unveils $199 Kindle Fire Tablet
#282The interesting thing is that this will be probably the first successful Android tablet but Google will have absolutely zero benefits from its success. Actually, it might even hurt Google position in mobile/tablet market. Two random examples: The word Android was barely mentioned on Amazon site. On device itself, the web and content to be consumed is showed Amazon.com but not thru Google search. EDIT: Why is this com…
I am not sure but your first sentence sounds a little bit trollish. I think the Galaxy Tab 8/10 the Xoom or the Eee Pad Transformer are quite successful and established in the market. Yes Google does not directly benefit from the android fork amazon created but i think it is also a quite good and interesting example of the often called openness and freedom of Android. It is quite refreshing to see a big company using…
Galaxy Tab 8/10 the Xoom or the Eee Pad Transformer are the best selling Androids up to date but to call them successful is quite of a stretch.
For example, last week a Lenovo executive claimed that Samsung's Galaxy Tab sales were far lower than what Samsung vaguely stated: 20,000 actual sales, rather than two million (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2392422,00.asp#fbid=EJq...).
Re: Amazon Unveils $199 Kindle Fire Tablet
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Audio is the core feature of the original iPod. Reading is the core feature of the Kindle. Reading from an lcd screen is a significantly worse experience than from e-ink. My point is that Amazon releasing the Kindle Fire is akin to if Apple released the iPod Touch (which had new features such as web browsing, youtube etc.) with degraded 8-bit audio.
Audio is the core feature of the original iPod. Audio quality was not. iPods never supported Ogg Vorbis or FLAC, for example. Ultimately, some ppl like reading white-on-black text on LCDs at night instead of e-ink. LCDs aren't better or worse, they're just different. Matter of preference.
??? Vorbis is a lossy audio compression algorithm, much like AAC or MP3. I would be very surprised if in a A/B test anybody could tell the difference between comparable bitrate lossy codecs.
FLAC was a licensing problem -- when Apple wanted to add lossless, they did so, with a clean-room lossless compressed audio codec.
Re: Amazon Unveils $199 Kindle Fire Tablet
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The only thing the ipad has going for it is the larger display." There are a few other key, and important differences other than screen size. o IOS 4 (and soon 5) - Lots of pre-existing premium apps. o 8 Gigabytes Flash vs 16 Gigabytes. (I was surprised to see no SD card capability on the Fire. That sucks. I have a 64 GB iPad, and the extra flash makes a difference on long trips when you are watching videos) o Video…
> IOS 4 (and soon 5) - Lots of pre-existing premium apps. Android has tons of premium apps too. > 8 Gigabytes Flash vs 16 Gigabytes. The Kindle stores everything in the cloud for free. > Video/Camera capability on iPad > 10 Hours Battery on iPad vs 8 Hours on Fire I see everyone saying here that people don't care about features, they only care about the content, this is why previous Android tablets failed despite hav…
> Android has tons of premium apps too
Kindle Fire is built off the Android 2.1 phone OS and lacks the speed improvements of 2.2 and 2.3, as well as the tablet interface elements added in 3.X. I would hesitate to call the compatible Apps in the Amazon Appstore "premium" for those reasons. Games will work comparably, but for anything else people there is distinct difference.
Re: Amazon Unveils $199 Kindle Fire Tablet
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
"school district can give those to every student" How cool would that be! My library finally got the overdrive support so I wanted to check out an e-book (an audiobook) to try out on my kindle/iphone. And found a nice book that I wanted to read and the page says, "available copies : 0, library copies : 1, No. of patrons in waiting list : 23, Click here to add yourself to the waiting list". File this under w.t.f.
Yeah, its a weird (and stupid) system. Libraries are toeing a fine line between getting sued vs not. They only got agreement for 'lending' ebooks if they set up a system like real books where if its out, you can't borrow it. This from the head librarian at the Sunnyvale Library at least.
I agree that it's silly from a technological point of view, but the libraries are at the mercy of publishers, and what else can the publishers do, really? If they let libraries "lend" out unlimited copies of books, who would buy them?
Re: Amazon Unveils $199 Kindle Fire Tablet
#286People in Europe are getting screwed again . - Small Kindle: $79 - Power Adapter: $10 - Cost in USA: $89 (free shipping) Okay, so I see a banner that they ship to Europe. Excellent, I click it. Then I get a new banner, saying that my country qualifies for free shipping (pending some conditions). I go through the checkout process and I'm faced with the following list: - Kindle + Adapter: $119 - Shipping: $27 (what hap…
How is Amazon responsible for the fact that your government chooses to impose import duties? For that matter, why didn't somebody in Europe start Amazon? Could it have anything to do with the high cost of doing business there? I think your complaints are misdirected.
I agree that it isn't Amazon's fault for governments imposing duties, but I think the parent was referring more to the fact that Amazon wasn't upfront about the total cost before he had to go through the entire checkout process. I think what he was suggesting was Amazon determine what country you are in, and show the prices for your country.
I think that's a reasonable request to make of Amazon.
Re: Amazon Unveils $199 Kindle Fire Tablet
#287I love this form factor and price, but is anyone else concerned about the whole cloud proxy (remote EC2 / S3 cache)? This puts all of your browsing history on their servers so forget privacy. It would even enable them to do things like substitute their own ads in place of the originals etc. On the one hand the predictive thing seems really cool and the techy in me is excited about the idea. On the other hand I'm real…
I'd imagine you can opt out of that by either installing another browser (like Skyfire) or going to some settings in Silk.
I don't think Amazon will track your browsing without your explicit approval, and I'd imagine it would be much easier to send each request as a stateless request to any of its EC2 instances.
Re: Amazon Unveils $199 Kindle Fire Tablet
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great price point. It's basically in impulse zone: "This book is 6 dollars cheaper at Kindle price... if I buy 12 it pays for itself..." but note there's no physical keyboard. Without a touch screen, it looks like it won't do note-taking, which is a bummer.
I'd be interested to see what % of Kindle users make use of the Keyboard. I'm pretty sure that I've only ever touched it for inputting URIs when web-browsing from abroad.
I use it for shopping for my next book when I'm too lazy to get out of bed and go to the computer.
Re: Amazon Unveils $199 Kindle Fire Tablet
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm I'm not so sure... My iPad can replace my laptop for basically everything but work. Web browsing, listening/browsing/buying music, twitter et al, emails, games, books, movies/tv shows, etc, etc.
"My iPad can replace my laptop for basically everything but work" - so I guess my point stands. I was trying to argue against OP's point that all these things "Web browsing, listening/browsing/buying music, twitter et al, emails, games, books, movies/tv shows, etc, etc" can be done on a Playbook too.
Ok, fair enough.
I thought what you were trying to argue was "Your tablet can never be a replacement for your laptop. Period."
Re: Amazon Unveils $199 Kindle Fire Tablet
#290I own a tablet (Motorola XOOM) and have used an iPad on a couple of occasions. Those tablets are pitched as substitutes for the PC, suggesting that you might produce content using them. (Apples early release of an office suite for iPad is further evidence of this focus.)
However, so far, I've really only found tablets useful for content consumption. The Kindle Fire makes the bold (and I think right) choice to optimize for consumption. I suspect its smaller form factor will appeal to how more people will actually use these things. Similarly, I don't think people really want high-quality cameras or video on their tablets.
The Kindle Fire is exactly the right product for Amazon to release (given their strengths), and I suspect it might be match the needs of a larger group of people than the iPad.
However, content production in tablets will surely improve over time and I don't think iPad/Windows 8/Android are misguided. I'm just betting that Amazon latched on to a real hole in the market that can be profitable right now.