Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

Post by peoplefromibiza » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 8:50 AM UTC

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…

Post by helpfulmandrill » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 8:51 AM UTC

Post by peoplefromibiza » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 8:54 AM UTC

nucleardog wrote: post #80

jfim wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Combined with Calibre, I don't even see what the Kindle value prop is. Easy purchasing of ebooks from Amazon, combined with their large selection of ebooks.

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 (…

Post by Namari » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 8:55 AM UTC

spacehunt wrote: post #147

maratc wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Kindle is inexpensive, has great support, has a huge library (open to non-US people with non-US credit cards), and you could just email a MOBI to it (which is great if the Kindle owner is your parent). It's only disadvantage was that it did not support ePub and so one had to go through Calibre. Now that Kindle is supporting ePUB and no Calibre-tion is needed, I don't even see what the Kobo value prop is.

Kobo has built-in Overdrive, Dropbox and Pocket support on the device itself, which Kindle lacks.

Post by peoplefromibiza » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 8:57 AM UTC

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.