Launching the Kindle Fire was a mistake

I couldn't agree with this more. My grandma recently bought one and I spend all of Christmas getting it set up for her and teaching her. She's gotten really frustrated and would probably return it if it hadn't been free from her company.

This part especially is what I agree with:

"Yet, the drive to quickly release a product in a hot field is almost irresistible. Amazon believes growing marketshare is more important than the reputation of their tablet. This is wrong. I believe consumer tolerance for poor products is at an all time low, thanks to ten years of amazing Apple products. Unfortunately, the idea that first movers win is widely believed across the tech industry."

Version 1.0 should be magical.

I do need to correct the author on one point though - I did find a native email client on it.

Companies need to stop copying Apple, because if they don't, every review will be tainted by why Apple did X better than they did. Apple might not have actually done X better, but they did it first, and people like what they already know. The comment about the unlock gesture is especially relevant; there is no need to stipe something across the screen to unlock a tablet. If people copy that, though, the reviews will inevitably compare it to Apple's implementation, and will like Apple's better. (Be it less lag, better color scheme, better font for "Slide to unlock", etc.) If they do something completely different, like a hardware switch, then everyone will be happy because it's the first time they've ever seen anything like that and the idea will be allowed to stand on its own merits.

The Fire is flawed from the start because it uses out of date software. If you are going to advertise something as Android, then people expect it to be good at Android. Look at Archos' Android tablets; dead because they kept it on 1.6 forever. (I will certainly never buy an Archos product again.) The solution is to not advertise it as having Android, even if you use Android behind the scenes. There are many Linux devices that don't claim to be Linux, and as a result, nobody ever cares that GHC 7.4 doesn't run on it; it's just a box that runs software that does stuff rather than being "a Linux box". (Hell, the original Kindle is a good example of this. Do you want an xterm on your Kindle? Nope! So you don't care that it doesn't have X11.)

Anyway, I guess I'm saying that the key to hardware design is expectation management. Be different so that you aren't compared to Apple. Underpromise so that you aren't compared to something you aren't.

My problem with this post is the assumption that the Kindle Fire would have blown away the iPad with a few more months' development time.

Lots have companies have tried to beat the iPhone/iPad. Nobody has even come close. This guy's whole worldview centers around the fact that since he worked at Amazon, all their engineers are clearly the best. And if that engineering team releases a bad product it's clearly a reflection on someone other than the engineering team.

What is far more likely is that Amazon's engineers weren't going to approach the iPad no matter how hard they tried or how long they worked. It's nothing to be ashamed of - they have lots of great company in this regard.

Why wouldn't the next version of the Fire run Windows 8? Here's three reasons:

1. Microsoft's not likely to let Amazon put Amazon put Windows 8 on the next Fire for free.

2. Microsoft will be running the app store for Windows 8 tablets, not Amazon (BTW, do we even know what the in-app purchase rules will be for Windows 8? If they're at all Apple-like, that's a dealbreaker by itself).

3. Windows 8 is likely to have more demanding/expensive hardware requirements than Android

Some people think "I didn't like it" means nobody should like it. I like my kindle fire, although I think I'd prefer a Ice Cream tablet next year. I like widgets and power and awesomeness. But just because I think I might like something else better doesn't mean I'm going to jump on a soap box.