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Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story

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81–90 of 192 posts

Re: Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story

#81
Oh, those seething bureaucracies with faceless collectives and blurred responsibilities...

Also that's sort of interesting to see how a company which is supposed to take over the world is unable to deliver even the ordinary products. I hope, this will prove in the long run that to be successful you need to have a good product or service.

Re: Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story

#82
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely hated my Kindle Touch (1st gen), so I sold it and bought a used 3G. Since then, I've cracked two screens, but fortunately, they're very easy to get parts for and repair ( http://www.powerbookmedic.com/Amazon-Kindle-Parts-for-Repair... ). Amazon still sells used Kindle Keyboard 3Gs for reasonable prices, if you're ever tempted to go back.

Only 15 bucks to fix my old Kindle! Why didn't I think of that? I definitely miss the old one, and wish I'd thought of doing this to start with. I wasn't really excited about the new Kindles (the move to touch screens everywhere has been a thing I've been unenthusiastic about, always...I was hesitant to move away from the G1 to a touchscreen Android phone, too). I just assumed I had to "uprade". Thanks for the link.

Yeah, the lack of responsiveness/feedback makes the touchscreen kindles especially frustrating - my page turning error rate was probably >10%, between accidental brushes, double turns, and other mishaps. Really got in the way of getting lost in the book. Plus, I love the tactile feedback of the buttons they used on the old ones.

If you want an old one, looks like good quality ones are going for ~$60-80 on Amazon, and it's pretty easy to sell a Kindle via the fulfilled by Amazon seller program - just set a price slightly below others offering Prime, ship off your Kindle and other old electronics, and they send you money when your stuff sells.

Re: Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story

#83

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 agree with this post, but not with regards to the Kindle, but more Amazon as an entity. Also, perfect timing to read this article, after just purchasing a Kindle Paperwhite and having it for a few weeks now. As a casual reader, I find the Kindle Paperwhite as the perfect medium for my reading needs. I can hold it in one hand, I can read it any time of the day with adjustable brightness, and the e-ink is very clear…

> The justification notion, I would argue that the typical user may not notice it as much as the hardcore reader.

The fact of the matter is it impacts all readers, whether they recognize it or not, and there is a reason the printing industry generally doesn't do it.

Re: Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story

#84

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…

The leadership principles mentioned in this post: http://www.amazon.com/Values-Careers-Homepage/b?node=2393650...

Re: Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story

#85

>and white light is the worst for reading in bed. It’s proven to keep you awake. This is not a great argument. First, because the Kindle allows you to dim the screen, and in fact, does so automatically in dark rooms. Pulling my Voyage out and comparing it to my screen with Flux, anecdotally, it looks to be producing less light than my laptop does. And what are the alternatives? Not lighting the kindle display, and ha…

> The pressure sensitive buttons previously mentioned by the author are on both sides of the Voyage.

Yes, but they're a total usability disaster. The author's description of them is spot on, I've disabled them because they're just too painful to use.

Re: Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story

#86
post #85

>and white light is the worst for reading in bed. It’s proven to keep you awake. This is not a great argument. First, because the Kindle allows you to dim the screen, and in fact, does so automatically in dark rooms. Pulling my Voyage out and comparing it to my screen with Flux, anecdotally, it looks to be producing less light than my laptop does. And what are the alternatives? Not lighting the kindle display, and ha…

> The pressure sensitive buttons previously mentioned by the author are on both sides of the Voyage. Yes, but they're a total usability disaster. The author's description of them is spot on, I've disabled them because they're just too painful to use.

I think this comes down to personal preference - I absolutely love them. I didn't even change the sensitivity/haptic feedback settings on my Voyage for a few months because I really had no complaints, and my changes have been minor tweaks to get it just right.

I think this falls into the whole 'You can't please everyone' bucket - my anecdotal evidence among friends/family/coworkers with the Voyage suggest it's a big hit.

Re: Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story

#87
post #70
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While there are plenty of mediocre aspects of the Kindle ecosystem, there are plenty of excellent ones as well. For example: 1. Return policy. Amazon has the best ebook return policy in the business. It seems essentially the same as their physical book policy. The last time I checked, Google Play was next-best (7 days no-questions-asked, regardless of jurisdiction) and everyone else grudgingly had a return policy whe…

One frustrating thing about side loaded books, you cannot read them with Kindle for PC, Kindle for Mac, or Kindle cloud reader.

I was under the impression that you can, though they might show up under Documents rather than Books - assuming you've side-loaded by sending the files to your kindle e-mail address. It's not something I try to do very often though, so I might be mistaken - they don't seem to appear in the Cloud Reader though.

In any case, since you can just open the files in the desktop version of Kindle, it doesn't seem like it would be such a big deal.

Re: Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story

#88

This person seems extremely picky. I have pretty much every generation of kindle and they just keep getting incrementally better. Resolution, backlight, multiple dictionaries, x-ray, etc.

Removing physical buttons to turn the pages was a giant leap backwards. It's stopped me from buying the Voyage.

Re: Voyage to Nowhere: The Amazon Kindle Story

#90
post #13

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…

> Once a month Amazon seems to make a release that outright breaks a critical flow in the app. For the past couple weeks I've had to use the website to skim through books because every time the app tries to open the store view for a book the app instead opens Chrome with "about:blank" as the URL. /facepalm

Had same issue, reported it, was told to uninstall and reinstall, no joy. Upgraded to Android 5.1 which included a new webview component update, issue fixed.

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