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Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

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Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#271

Post by gwbas1c »

maratc wrote: post #132
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.

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.

I really only have three minor gripes about the Kindle ecosystem... (Which is why I like it so much.)

1: The desktop applications don't auto-sync. (I really like reading books on my laptop because it holds the screen at a comfortable angle. This is especially the case when reading while eating or doing something else with my hands.)

2: Sometimes the Android app is buggy, requiring that I reinstall. When I reinstall, I have to re-enter all my preferences.

3: Some of the default settings in the Android app are dumb, like showing popular highlights. I always turn that off as quickly as possible.

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#272

Post by Derbasti »

goosedragons wrote: post #217
gambiting wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't know that! Can you upload custom dictionaries to them? That was my only gripe with how Kindles do it - they support this feature in some languages but not others.

Yeah it's possible but it's not an official feature (it's not hard though).

What are you talking about? It's built right into the Kobo reader, and has been for years. https://help.kobo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360017639893-Define-...

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#274

Post by ectopod »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #163
qwerty456127 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK Kindle shows you ads and can occasionally delete a book from your library. Isn't it so?

My Kindle doesn't show ads, because I didn't buy the version that shows ads. I have never had a book deleted from my Kindle by Amazon. There was a single instance of a couple of George Orwell's books being removed from user devices in July 2009. Customers had the purchase price they paid refunded. It was done because the company selling those books didn't actually have the rights to sell them. Afterwards, Jeff Bezos…

I bought a version that didn't show ads but I did a hardware reset after a few years. Now it does.

Since then they've also added an annoying carousel of sponsored apps to the home screen.

I've never bought an ebook from Amazon so at least I can easily move to something else when the kindle finally packs in.

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#275

Post by hiidrew »

notdarkyet wrote: post #273

Are there any good ebook services that sell books in epub formats? Typically I will try and buy from the publishers website to load onto the Kobo but ideally I can buy the epubs themselves without being locked into a service like Amazon/Kobo.

library genesis is a wonderful site :)

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#276

Post by Derbasti »

gambiting wrote: post #185
Derbasti wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kobos have this feature

Didn't know that! Can you upload custom dictionaries to them? That was my only gripe with how Kindles do it - they support this feature in some languages but not others.

It seems to be a limited selection of languages (EN, DE, ES, FR, IT, PT, TR, SE, JP on my Kobo), with both EN-XX and XX-XX available for most languages. It doesn't look like you can add your own, at least not on my kobo.

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#277

Post by eddieroger »

Namari wrote: post #188
gambiting wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Do you think companies giving you 10% in exchange for signing up for their newsletter shouldn't be able to do so too? It's the same thing - you get a discount for signing up to their ads campaign.

Well they already got profits on their bookstore, why would they need to make a version where you got ads on top of that. I guess if we follow your logic they could build phones, consoles and TVs with ads too. I can understand free books with ads but not the hardware/software that reads it.

You know, hardware isn't free, right? Each Kindle model requires R&D, design, testing, manufacturing, lots of work to product, beyond the ability to show books. Sure Amazon makes money off the books, too, but those files aren't free to store on a server (and the servers aren't free), or free to send to you over the Internet, and so on. Ads support hardware cost. If you don't want to see ads, buy the one without ads.

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#278

Post by RuggedPineapple »

gwbas1c wrote: post #271
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.

I really only have three minor gripes about the Kindle ecosystem... (Which is why I like it so much.) 1: The desktop applications don't auto-sync. (I really like reading books on my laptop because it holds the screen at a comfortable angle. This is especially the case when reading while eating or doing something else with my hands.) 2: Sometimes the Android app is buggy, requiring that I reinstall. When I reinstall,…

My biggest issue is Kobo doesn't actually support epub, or at least the modern incarnation. Their reader software is woefully out of date and has terrible epub handling, so to get the features you expect you're back to the Calibre->reader loop you're on with kindle, only instead of converting to AZW3 or KFX you're converting to KePub, Kobo's homegrown version of epub they did instead. You can fix that by installing KOreader which DOES support the current epub format, but that again puts you in the same boat as the kindle (perhaps minus needing to jailbreak it) and the kindle has a much more robust community and support.

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#279

Post by swyx »

moffkalast wrote: post #219
longrod wrote: post #9

Finally! Amazon should have done this long ago. ePub v3 supports everything MOBI does and it has really extensive support across platforms. This is HUGE for people with a big eBook collection.

I mean, given that Calibre can convert from anything to the reader's native format I couldn't care less what kind of format any eBook I get is in, as long as it's not PDF. Still it's a good thing to move to a common standard to simplify things.

as a self published book author, i have to worry about formats that my readers use to give them the least hassle. unfortunately kindle is 1/3 of my readership.

Re: Retirement of Amazon MOBI eBook file format

#280

Post by quesera »

krageon wrote: post #126
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…

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.

> Grandmas are 70-90, not 50.

To a reasonable approximation:

  - Grandmothers of infants are between the ages of 40 and 80
  - Grandmothers of HN commenters are between the ages of 55 and (dead for decades)
> I work with many folks around 50 and most of them are functionally technologically illiterate

Most people of all ages are functionally technologically illiterate.

Many people around 50 are functionally literate in different technologies than you are. Those may be less relevant, or merely invisible to you as a user.

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