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Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

reuters.com

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Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#181

Post by thrownthatway »

umbra07 wrote: post #157
kuschku wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why 15 years? Why should I ever have to accept things getting worse? Isn't the point of progress that things get better ? There's multiple touch zones (which aren't visible or marked), there's multiple gestures you can interact with, and it's so slow and janky enough that you never know what will happen when you touch it. Will it go forwards? Or backwards? By one page? Or a dozen? Will it open the settings? Or change…

I've never had this issue. And I use Koreader - which has much larger touch zones than the normal Kindle software. Are you normally reading in a moving vehicle or something?

Reading in a moving vehicle?

Is this something people aren’t supposed to do?

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#182

Post by Zambyte »

Aloha wrote: post #126
e28eta wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know how I feel about it. I’ve been on one side, looking at usage numbers of older iOS versions, and arguing that low single digit percentages were fine to stop supporting with the new version. On the other hand, I view my kindle as an appliance, and I don’t need it to have updated functionality. I think this is true of many electronics: digital cameras, printers, misc USB peripherals, etc. I believe Amazon c…

I'm supporting a 30 year old product, the oldest one in the field are 20+ years old, we still support them. I'm just in the process of developing a lifecycle policy, being able to cut off support for a 12 year systems would make my life much more full of joy.

There are other people who can and will support it. Let them.

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#184

Post by MerlinDE »

This move has nothing to do with usability or device capabilities or software support. The only reason for turning them off is to remove a hole in their DRM. These old devices allowed you to remove the copy protection from their books (hardly anyone else uses DRM these days anymore). Removing the old devices makes freeing your books from DRM just much harder.

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#185

Post by WalterBright »

Aloha wrote: post #107
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #34

Amazon's attitude towards its Kindle device customers is one of lofty disregard. Every time they announce new Kindle products, half of the comments are like "I hope they have buttons," "I hope they bring back the Oasis," etc. But they appear to exult in dashing the hopes of their customers, or at the very least they don't care about them at all. They've doubled down on no-key devices with stupid pens, pointless and p…

14 years of support for a device is pretty incredible.

I'm sad that Apple cut off support for my iPod. It still takes a charge and is a joy, except that most of the apps no longer work, because what they connect to is gone.

I used to be able to read books on it and watch Netflix.

My iphone is a boat anchor next to the sleek, slick iPod.

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#186

Post by WalterBright »

phil21 wrote: post #155
paulcole wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

No amount of "getting used to buttonless" can keep a touchscreen from registering water droplets as touch. So until they can figure out how to make touch screen work in those conditions, any device released without page turn buttons is useless to me. It's not a preference thing for me. It's simply a physical requirement for my environment. Yes, I do understand I'm a rather niche use-case and don't really expect them…

I left my Kindle in the airplane seatback pocket. I got it back because taped to the back of it was my name, phone #, and email. I was very happy to get it back!

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#187

Post by Aloha »

_doctor_love wrote: post #136
Aloha wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm supporting a 30 year old product, the oldest one in the field are 20+ years old, we still support them. I'm just in the process of developing a lifecycle policy, being able to cut off support for a 12 year systems would make my life much more full of joy.

(This may be a very ungenerous reading of your comment, so my apologies if this is not what you mean.) The phrase that jumps out at me is: > being able to cut off support for a 12 year systems would make my life much more full of joy I think this is a nearly-poetical capturing of the core problem. The focus is on the joy and well-being of the maintainer, not the impact to all the people who will be impacted by this c…

How long should a hardware and software product be expected to last?

Try estimating doing win11 updates on a 20 year old piece of delphi spftware with hardware full go custom ASICs be expected to lsat?

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#188

Post by literalAardvark »

phil21 wrote: post #156
literalAardvark wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really wish my 1st gen Paperweight had split forward and back buttons on the right side. But then I also understand that'd increase the price by 10% and only help right handed people with weak hands so... c'est la vie.

> But then I also understand that'd increase the price by 10% and only help right handed people with weak hands so... c'est la vie. You can... turn them upside down to become a left-handed device. That way you can be weak-handed with either hand!

Only way to get buttons that are comfy on both sides would be to flip it screen out. That doesn't seem like a very useful position to hold a reader in though.

If you turn it upside down the left hand buttons will be way too high on the reader

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#189

Post by yuchtman »

lagrange77 wrote: post #45
Weryj wrote: post #15

If only there was a way to download e-books and upload them to a Kindle with Calibre.

I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic, but there is! I've jailbroken my Kindle Scribe and installed coreader and feed it my Calibre library and its awesome. Oh and i kept it in airplane mode from the first day, which is important so it doesnt self update and break the jailbreak.

Kindles don't need to be jailbroken to transfer books via calibre (or a file manager or a terminal).

Re: Kindle loyalists scramble as Amazon turns page on old e-readers

#190

Post by Flere-Imsaho »

kuboble wrote: post #8
onidj wrote: post #5

Having used an early kindle and a recent kindle, they are incredibly similar. One of the main innovations of the new models appears to be adverts you have to pay to get rid of.

My kindle from 2012 used to have ads you needed to pay for to get rid of. It was sold as separate product with or without ads at a time. I had one with ads. I keep it offline in airplane mode permanently from 2016 and haven't seen a single ad in a long long time.

The fact that having ads on a product designed for reading is so dystopian. A great new term has recently entered the lexicon to describe this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

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