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Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

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Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#171
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you buy a kindle that is specifically advertised as having ads(and therefore being sold for less money), then yes, you will get ads. If you don't want them, buy the ad free version. And the deletion from your library happened...once? Over millions of titles available?

Can't believe there is such a thing of having an Ereader with ads. Ok it's cheaper but come on, that really shows us how low they think of us. I can understand for a free product but for something you pay ... like seriously!

Wait until you figure out printed books (paperbacks) come with ads too ...

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#172
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you buy a kindle that is specifically advertised as having ads(and therefore being sold for less money), then yes, you will get ads. If you don't want them, buy the ad free version. And the deletion from your library happened...once? Over millions of titles available?

Can't believe there is such a thing of having an Ereader with ads. Ok it's cheaper but come on, that really shows us how low they think of us. I can understand for a free product but for something you pay ... like seriously!

They're only on the lock screen, never when you're actually reading. I've had the same ad for years (because I use the device with Wi-Fi off) and have no idea what's on it since I never paid any attention.

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#173

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…

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.

If you're just talking about old enough to have a grandchild, 50 is plenty old -- indeed, old enough to have gotten married after college, had a kid who got married after college, and that kid now has a kid of their own. At least one of my high school classmates did that. (I'm 51.)

If you're talking old enough to be, say, a college student's grandma, then obviously your 70-90 estimate is much more likely.

(Bigger picture: I've been professionally programming for three-and-a-half decades. I find myself more and more annoyed by the user-unfriendliness of tech as I age. As an on-topic example, earlier this month Amazon's mail-to-Kindle feature rejected an EPUB I sent it, and when I used Calibre to convert it to MOBI and sent that instead, lectured me that MOBI was obsolete. I guess this is especially annoying because it seems like they're replacing a service which basically never failed with one that is failing like 10% of the time I try to use it...)

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I turned off WiFi on mine because I was too annoyed by ads.

Where do they show up? Never seen one.

An ad replaces the "screen saver" when you unlock the device (until you swipe it away), and there's a small banner at the bottom of the book list in the main menu. You probably bought a more expensive version with no ads. They can also be removed later for a small fee, or you can simply never enable wi-fi and there will be no ads at all.

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 eas…

As someone whose first language isn't English - 100000x times this. The fact that I can just hold down on any word and instantly see its definition is just incredible. It's a must have feature of any e-reader for me.

Kobos have this feature

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 around 50 books and a dozen of comic books on my e-reader. It works perfectly without any connection whatsoever. I'm not sure that being able to download a book while sitting on top of Mountain Everest it's a such an important feature, but YMMV.

Ha, funny you say that. Last time I was at Everest Base Camp nearly everyone had an e-ink kindle. The long battery life and light weight are ideal for long isolated stretches in the Himalayas.

Check and Mate.

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#177
post #171
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't believe there is such a thing of having an Ereader with ads. Ok it's cheaper but come on, that really shows us how low they think of us. I can understand for a free product but for something you pay ... like seriously!

Wait until you figure out printed books (paperbacks) come with ads too ...

They already do, especially like the travel guides, there are always some ads here and there :|

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#178
That's too bad. I used it a lot to produce epub fitting on my old Sony PRS-300. It couldn't parse pirated epubs with tables of contents, diacritical signs and illustrations, so it was easier to download mobi and convert it in Calibre to epub. It worked nine times out of ten, compared to maybe 10% with epub->epub conversion.

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#179
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't believe there is such a thing of having an Ereader with ads. Ok it's cheaper but come on, that really shows us how low they think of us. I can understand for a free product but for something you pay ... like seriously!

It's a very clear trade off - you get the device for less money, but you get ads. How is this "how low they think of us"?????

I think this trade off shouldn't exist in the first place.

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#180
post #168
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pocket is the reason I chose the Kobo, how can the others miss that feature, it's not like people just read books nowadays.

While not exactly like Pocket, there are services that can send web articles to your Kindle. I work on one called Push to Kindle: https://www.fivefilters.org/push-to-kindle/

that's a good idea, you should try to implement some sort of extension to make it easier
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