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Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

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Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#121

Post by just_for_you »

Thorentis wrote: post #25

I very consciously did not buy a Kindle when choosing an Ereader about a year ago. The Kobo H2O is incredible and has served me very well. The format support is wonderful, and the stock OS does more than I need (though there is a whole community of custom OSes that also look cool). Combined with Calibre, I don't even see what the Kindle value prop is.

>I don't even see what the Kindle value prop is

One reason I'm stuck with Kindles is because Amazon makes it sane to look up words when reading Japanese books and articles.

When you use Amazon's "Send to my Kindle" service (eg, you email a book to yourself, and then it appears on your device), Amazon seems to do some kind of de-conjugation which magically knows how to break-apart terms and grammar so that you can easily look anything up. Normally, if uploading straight to your device, or if using a Kobo, a term you want to look up has to match your on-device dictionary exactly, which is clunky and awful, especially since Japanese doesn't use spaces and has lots of inflections.

If Kobo had something similar, I'd ditch using Kindles entirely.

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#122

Post by akudha »

Thorentis wrote: post #25

I very consciously did not buy a Kindle when choosing an Ereader about a year ago. The Kobo H2O is incredible and has served me very well. The format support is wonderful, and the stock OS does more than I need (though there is a whole community of custom OSes that also look cool). Combined with Calibre, I don't even see what the Kindle value prop is.

I have a couple of thousand books on my ageing Kindle. Looking for a new ereader, will check out Kobo. Do you buy books from Kindle and convert them to ePub?

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#123

Post by msh »

Thorentis wrote: post #25

I very consciously did not buy a Kindle when choosing an Ereader about a year ago. The Kobo H2O is incredible and has served me very well. The format support is wonderful, and the stock OS does more than I need (though there is a whole community of custom OSes that also look cool). Combined with Calibre, I don't even see what the Kindle value prop is.

I am not located in the US and dont have an american payment method. Amazon will still let me shop ebooks from amazon.com

I have previously had problems (I dont know if its still a problem) with being allowed to buy US books from other ebook stores, like kobo, when I did not have a US credit card.

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#124

Post by krageon »

fancy_pantser wrote: post #79
innocenat wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox is only available on Kobo Forma, Sage, and Elipsa. It isn't available in more popular Libra 2 or Aura HD.

It's not native, you're right. Many of us have been using Kobocloud for years to automatically sync to cloud drive services: https://github.com/fsantini/KoboCloud

I won't lie, I was excited to see the technical solution here - but this appears to be a stack of horrific shell scripts fixing everything via curl. Is it dependable, in your experience?

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#125

Post by josephg »

scarygliders wrote: post #108
michaelmrose wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of this difficulty goes away if Grandma uses her phone or tablets browser to download unlimited free books from zlibrary and reads them on the same device. Honestly the grandma example is starting to feel dated. When I was born in 1980 a 50 year old grandma was born in 1930 and probably didn't own a TV until they were raising their own family. The same 50 year old today was born in 1972 and would have been 5 when…

Don't know why you're being downvoted. This born in '69 53 year old right here is programming backends and frontends for websites, and PySide5/6 Qt5/6 applications. I'm still sharp as a pin. Like you say, there has to be some point at which those younger than I stop thinking someone in their 50's isn't as hopeless with technology as they assume. Of course not everyone in my Gen X'er group will be like me, then again,…

I got yelled at at a conference for using my mum as an example of a user who wouldn’t use some complex software solution. I was told off for being sexist, or ageist or something.

They didn’t get it. My mum is super smart and prolific. She has a PhD in international development and has helped tens of thousands of disadvantaged kids go to school.

It’s not that she’s not smart enough. She just doesn’t care about the technology. She’s not going to spontaneously get comfortable with the terminal and learn rsync. But she can install Dropbox no problem. If a kindle just works and has all the books in easy reach, that’s what I’ll recommend to her. She’s too busy to bother with software that’s not user friendly.

That’s not ageism. I think about her a lot when I build software because I respect her. She deserves to spend her day thinking about her job, not thinking about stupid tech problems.

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#126

Post by krageon »

michaelmrose wrote: post #95
nucleardog wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah like, I don't wanna point out the typical HN problem but... Imagine explaining this to someone's grandma. "Click this Amazon shortcut, type your book name up here, click on it down below, press 'buy now'. If it doesn't show up right away, wait 5 minutes and check again." Versus... something to do with trying to download mobi files (from where?), starting calibre, starting an import process, locating said files (…

99% of this difficulty goes away if Grandma uses her phone or tablets browser to download unlimited free books from zlibrary and reads them on the same device. Honestly the grandma example is starting to feel dated. When I was born in 1980 a 50 year old grandma was born in 1930 and probably didn't own a TV until they were raising their own family. The same 50 year old today was born in 1972 and would have been 5 when…

Grandmas are 70-90, not 50. At that point we're still close to the second world war, which is a very different path. Those folks simply cannot be expected to have any competence.

As an aside, I work with many folks around 50 and most of them are functionally technologically illiterate. It doesn't seem like such a strange assumption to make from where I'm sitting.

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#127

Post by andrepd »

paranoidrobot wrote: post #40
Thorentis wrote: post #25

I very consciously did not buy a Kindle when choosing an Ereader about a year ago. The Kobo H2O is incredible and has served me very well. The format support is wonderful, and the stock OS does more than I need (though there is a whole community of custom OSes that also look cool). Combined with Calibre, I don't even see what the Kindle value prop is.

It's trading customisation/flexibility for ease of use, at a (potentially) higher cost. The older kindles with 2G/3G "Whispersync" functionality had another major drawcard of working just about anywhere, even if you didn't have wifi coverage or a phone with data services. I have in the past used this to load several more books while in an airport in a foreign country between flights. Many people if you hand them a Ki…

But the Kobo does have a built-in store. And it does support WiFi sync. I don't see any way how a Kobo is harder to use for a non technical user than Kindle. No trade-off there x)

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#128

Post by another-circus »

scarygliders wrote: post #108
michaelmrose wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of this difficulty goes away if Grandma uses her phone or tablets browser to download unlimited free books from zlibrary and reads them on the same device. Honestly the grandma example is starting to feel dated. When I was born in 1980 a 50 year old grandma was born in 1930 and probably didn't own a TV until they were raising their own family. The same 50 year old today was born in 1972 and would have been 5 when…

Don't know why you're being downvoted. This born in '69 53 year old right here is programming backends and frontends for websites, and PySide5/6 Qt5/6 applications. I'm still sharp as a pin. Like you say, there has to be some point at which those younger than I stop thinking someone in their 50's isn't as hopeless with technology as they assume. Of course not everyone in my Gen X'er group will be like me, then again,…

Back when Netflix first started, and they were sending out DVDs instead of doing streaming, my stepdad, who is now in his mid-80s wanted to get his money worth. So, he started ripping the movies immediately and returning them the same day, ordering more as quickly as he could. When I went to visit he'd always have added more to his bookcases of DVDs. He recently setup a NAS and Plex and copied them all over. They, my parents, have a streaming service, but they live in the boonies so the connection isn't great, and having thousands of movies and shows ready to go is great for them.

Some old people know a thing or two.

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#129

Post by scarygliders »

josephg wrote: post #125
scarygliders wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know why you're being downvoted. This born in '69 53 year old right here is programming backends and frontends for websites, and PySide5/6 Qt5/6 applications. I'm still sharp as a pin. Like you say, there has to be some point at which those younger than I stop thinking someone in their 50's isn't as hopeless with technology as they assume. Of course not everyone in my Gen X'er group will be like me, then again,…

I got yelled at at a conference for using my mum as an example of a user who wouldn’t use some complex software solution. I was told off for being sexist, or ageist or something. They didn’t get it. My mum is super smart and prolific. She has a PhD in international development and has helped tens of thousands of disadvantaged kids go to school. It’s not that she’s not smart enough. She just doesn’t care about the tec…

I agree with what you say. I've witnessed more than enough software with absolutely abysmal UI/UX and don't have time for that myself - except for when I really need to, like this one truly abysmal phone app for an energy company which I need to use to pay for my energy.

It looks and acts like it was designed/coded by idiots; additional popups to remind me to rate the app (already did and it was very negative!), a popup with an "okay, got it" prompt - the only prompt - which instead of setting that yes, I actually did get it, just pops up again the next time reminding me to use some feature I don't want to use.

And so on.

That's obviously the fault of the people involved in vomiting out the abysmal application(s).

But yes I agree, most people simply don't care about the technology, they just want a Thing to do the thing they want it to do, no muss no fuss. This situation has always been the case and I can't envisage a time when it will change.

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#130

Post by another-circus »

DharmaPolice wrote: post #116
michaelmrose wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of this difficulty goes away if Grandma uses her phone or tablets browser to download unlimited free books from zlibrary and reads them on the same device. Honestly the grandma example is starting to feel dated. When I was born in 1980 a 50 year old grandma was born in 1930 and probably didn't own a TV until they were raising their own family. The same 50 year old today was born in 1972 and would have been 5 when…

I highly doubt that people are thinking of 50 year olds when they're talking about grandmas. But in answer to your question, I suspect the cliche will slowly die out when most of the 60/70/80 year olds we meet are tech savvy.

A ton of kids these days aren't that tech savvy. I work with high school kids and many have a real lack of understanding about how things work. A large number have no idea how to much with software outside of browser, believe that internet traffic travels through satellites to get between continents, and can't even debug simple printer jams.
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