341–350 of 433 posts
It is infuriating there are communities of readers who are so in the pocket of Amazon they block conversations about DRM stripping.
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.
Further the conversion that they do is notoriously bad and often results in unreadable books. So you often have to tweak the ePub files before sending them to get a decent result. Calibre is essential to that process.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As others have said, I think the value for the Kindle is pretty damn high. * Works in lots and lots of countries * Great iOS and Android apps to supplement reading on Eink * Well-priced devices, even if you pay to remove ads, that offer years and years of software support and are extremely durable/reliable * Great hacking community and ability to use things like DeDRM to bring your purchases to other devices * Insane…
A point that you're forgetting, which is extremely important for a lot of people, is access to a public library's collection of ebooks. In Canada, Kobo is overwhelmingly capable of connecting with a public library, while Kindle cannot. It is, in my experience, the number one reason why people around me choose a Kobo over a Kindle.
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A point that you're forgetting, which is extremely important for a lot of people, is access to a public library's collection of ebooks. In Canada, Kobo is overwhelmingly capable of connecting with a public library, while Kindle cannot. It is, in my experience, the number one reason why people around me choose a Kobo over a Kindle.
You can get library books on your kindle, you just need to use a phone app
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.
Most younger people are also really bad at using computers.
No, not because they're ruined by smartphones—because most people seem to find most current operating systems and computer systems in general unintuitive and hard to understand. They always have and seemingly always will, unless/until UIs and core metaphors in computer interfaces change significantly.
The typical experience of most non-nerds using a computer, no matter their age, is repeating some steps they memorized and hoping the right thing happens. They don't make connections between functionality (say, thinking to try copy-pasting a file, not just selected text), they don't experiment because it usually gets them in some state they don't know how to get out of without help, and any change to UI layout or any kind of pop-up notification confuses the hell out of them. Desktop computers are mysterious, frustrating things. Observe some workers in a non-tech office using their work computers for a while and you'll see what I mean.
I have a very old Kindle (3rd gen, ~12 years old) and I am unsure how it will be impacted by this. My understanding was that Kindles didn't support EPUB files. It seems that Amazon now intend to roll out support for EPUB, but I highly doubt a model as old as mine will get an update. So it seems that for now, while Amazon are just converting EPUBs to MOBI behind the scenes, everything will continue working. But if dow…
My understanding is that Amazon already crossed into that "mixed" state you are worried about: after a certain OS version Kindles natively understand EPUB (and can be sideloaded via USB, not just emailed). This was rolled out relatively quietly and the Send to Kindle tools have been taking a lot longer to update to support the .epub file extension even when the devices support it. We have something of an idea of when…
All that's happening is Amazon is retiring MOBI support. Since Send to Kindle only supported MOBI, they are transitioning Send to Kindle to support receiving ePub which then gets converted to AZW3.
So the only Kindles losing support for the Send to Kindle stuff is the Kindle 1, Kindle 2, and Kindle DX. Since those ones never got AZW3 support.
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’m not incredibly comfortable with Kindle transmitting information on every page turn back to Amazon. Always felt a bit creepy to me. https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/31/21117217/amazon-kindle-tr...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
>Afterwards, Jeff Bezos apologised [...] It is therefore unlikely to happen again. If it's still technically possible (it is), it will happen again. It's implemented to be used, even if occasionally. And mere existence of this feature is a clear declaration, you don't own it, you rent it. Many people may find it acceptable, taking other circumstances, but it's a big bold minus.