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Apple and the Kindle

aaronsw.com

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Re: Apple and the Kindle

#31

Post by mikecane »

danso wrote: post #2

"And this is all before I’ve even got to the disastrous incompatibilities between the Kindle device, the Kindle for Mac app, the Kindle for iOS app, the Kindle Online Reader (read.amazon.com), and the kindle.amazon.com social network — all of which are full of gruesome interface annoyances of their own." I just bought a Kindle, and besides my first attempt at buying one resulted in returning it to Best Buy because of…

If you haven't returned the Kindle yet, pay the difference to remove the ads:

Amazon Charged me $30 to get the Adverts Off my K4 http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2011/10/05/amazon-charged-...

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#34

Post by colin_jack »

jgrahamc wrote: post #4

To me the Kindle has two killer features: the screen (because I can read it like paper for hours) and its weight (can hold it for hours like a paperback book). Those two things made it a 'wow' device. The 3G access made it effortless. None of those things seem very clever and have been pretty easily duplicated in the Nook. The software itself (and this applies to Kindle and Nook) is rather ugly and it feels slow to r…

I agree, I have exactly the same complaints as the author of the article. Some of the issues, like the "full definition" one, are so frustrating I can't believe that Amazon let them through.

The Kindle hardware is great and all but I'm still wishing Apple would get in on the game. Apart from better software they'd address the issue of an elegant screen protecter (as with iPad 2), and the iCloud already synchs highlights to books between devices (even if you didn't buy the books direct from Apple).

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#36

Post by dholowiski »

dfc wrote: post #12

I cannot highlight/annotate samples. I have a second generation kindle. Is this a new feature of the newer models?

You have this one? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amazon-kindle-gen2.jpg I can on mine. I believe this was a software update... have you been out of 3g service (or had 3g turned off) for almost two years?

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#37

Post by Selvik »

ianferrel wrote: post #5
danso wrote: post #2

"And this is all before I’ve even got to the disastrous incompatibilities between the Kindle device, the Kindle for Mac app, the Kindle for iOS app, the Kindle Online Reader (read.amazon.com), and the kindle.amazon.com social network — all of which are full of gruesome interface annoyances of their own." I just bought a Kindle, and besides my first attempt at buying one resulted in returning it to Best Buy because of…

I'm 100% sure you can cancel whatever you accidentally ordered on Amazon.com. Just like One-click ordering, the point is to make a purchase easy and let only the people who don't want to go through with it cancel, not to bilk people out of money via misclicks.

Yep, I've cancelled digital audiobooks from audible (owned by amazon, if memory serves me right) and even books sent to the wrong address in europe (full refund).

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#39

Post by subwindow »

So far I've had a pretty frustrating experience with the Kindle (Kindle 4 no keyboard, no touchscreen) from the get-go. Sure, the box was nice, but as soon as I powered it on it was frustrating.

Since the Kindle was a gift, I had to enter in my Amazon account information before I could do anything else. Total buzzkill. I wanted to flip through a book and see what the screen was like and how it worked, but instead I have to laboriously type in my 35-character password like I'm using an NES controller.

After that, there's no sample books on there- you'd think they could put a public domain book on there for free. Every MP3 player I've ever bought comes with a few sample songs. Ok, fine. Now I have to hook it up to my computer via USB. Put an epub file on there. It doesn't support epub? Ok, fine. Put an RTF file on there. That doesn't work. Ok, fine.

Finally put a .txt file on there of a book I'm halfway through the paper version of. Apparently the Kindle has a weird concept of pages for txt documents, so I have to hit the "Next Page" button 97 times, or guess what "location" I'm at (1456 out of 4452 I guess?) and enter that in.

All of that frustration, in the first 30 minutes, just to get an idea of what it is like to read on it and page through a book. Never had that kind of experience with an Apple product. "Unboxing" experiences with Apple products have become a religious experience for a reason. Amazon is still far short of that.

Re: Apple and the Kindle

#40

Post by phxrsng »

subwindow wrote: post #39

So far I've had a pretty frustrating experience with the Kindle (Kindle 4 no keyboard, no touchscreen) from the get-go. Sure, the box was nice, but as soon as I powered it on it was frustrating. Since the Kindle was a gift, I had to enter in my Amazon account information before I could do anything else. Total buzzkill. I wanted to flip through a book and see what the screen was like and how it worked, but instead I h…

My iPods (1G and Video) never had sample songs on them. Just saying.
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