21–30 of 192 posts
To be fair, I find it much easier to fall asleep after using my Kindle Paperwhite than I do with an iPad. But, virtually every aspect of the Kindle ecosystem user experience is an experience in mediocrity. In some respects, I feel like the company is like what you'd get if you crossed the worst aspects of Microsoft and Google. (And apologies to my friends who work at Amazon, but let's be honest: you're all going to q…
I had been planning to launch a big, public campaign about Kindle typography to try and get Amazon to change her ways. But I came to the conclusion: why bother?
Amazon thinks that it already has "the customer," in its most broad abstraction, already in its grasp, and doesn't ever need to fight to keep any of them there. That is why, when I departed my Amazon subsidiary in December of 2014, they were only just starting to hire a UX team. These principles can be made so dogmatic to the point of destructive company culture that outwardly resists change, be it to marketing designs or entire technology infrastructures that entire teams comprising hundreds of people rely upon to get work done.
This is why it is very hard to keep talented people in positions of management at Amazon.
It's not for the faint of heart, given the inaccessible brick-ness of the Kindle and its long, nerve-racking reboot time, but you can jailbreak your device and install KUAL (app launcher) and KOReader. http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=203326 https://github.com/koreader/koreader ePub and PDF support, text reflow/cropping/reformatting (great for papers!), plethora of options from contrast to margins, c…
Does KOReader fix the Kindle typography? That is, get rid of the rivers of white running through the poorly justified pages?
it also gives you a lot more options on how to tweak the way it reflows text, as well as font choices. It makes it a much better device for reading.
I had been planning to launch a big, public campaign about Kindle typography to try and get Amazon to change her ways. But I came to the conclusion: why bother? This is precisely the feeling I had right before I resigned from my position at Amazon. Though I worked at a subsidiary, not Amazon proper, the culture at Amazon everywhere can be absurdly stubborn. In the presence of a bad team, the "leadership principles" c…
I really pity the author. He's lost the ability to enjoy a book and throws a fit when typesetting is flawed. A sure path to disappointment and unhappiness is to demand only "the best" in everything. He should just learn to read his books as they are.
Why should someone choose to read on Amazon if the experience is so hostile? It's a lament for a lost opportunity most of all.
I use the Kindle app for Android because that is where the indie authors seem to be. I use the app in spite of itself. The Kindle app on Android has over the past few years been such a buggy piece of shit that I curse it's very existence. It alone has demonstrated that Amazon can't competently develop mobile apps worth a damn and made me laugh when I heard Amazon was making a phone. Once a month Amazon seems to make…
I had been planning to launch a big, public campaign about Kindle typography to try and get Amazon to change her ways. But I came to the conclusion: why bother? This is precisely the feeling I had right before I resigned from my position at Amazon. Though I worked at a subsidiary, not Amazon proper, the culture at Amazon everywhere can be absurdly stubborn. In the presence of a bad team, the "leadership principles" c…
I'm curious: were you at Lab126?
No, I don't like touch screens. The buttons are much better. The Kindle 3 nailed it. The only thing it is missing is a backlight.