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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

#271

Post by lynndotpy »

paulcole wrote: post #249
lynndotpy wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Crying" is needlessly dismissive and it doesn't strengthen your position. I'm happy there is a mass of popular sentiment that consumer devices are better with buttons. I think they're to whom we can credit the return (or addition of new) buttons to cars, to phones, and to all manner of appliances (induction stoves, thermostats, ACs.) In either case, it looks like the last Kindle with buttons disappeared only late 20…

> I'm happy there is a mass of popular sentiment that consumer devices are better with buttons There is not. It’s the same 11 people who have a hobby of posting online about how much they miss buttons.

This is more needlessly dismissive rhetoric. You don't really believe it's eleven people.

This sentiment is widespread enough to be a common point of comedy and conflict, and it's widespread enough problem that consumer intelligence companies have been reporting on this for years ( https://www.jdpower.com/sites/default/files/file/2025-09/202... , https://www.vibilagare.se/english/physical-buttons-outperfor... , https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/tesla/model-y/2020/road... , etc.) If you spend time in the lobby of a kiosk-only fast-food, you are sure to hear someone complain too.

I know "touchscreens are the future and those button-lovers are rarities who will die out soon" was a popular thing to believe, but that was back in the 00s. People like b uttons.

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

#272

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

paulcole wrote: post #146
kuschku wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason people complain is because the old kindles used to have buttons, and honestly the touch screen is really fucking janky if you're used to the page turning buttons of the kindle 4, or the onscreen keyboard is janky if you're used to the kindle 3g. And the sad part is that there's no best of both. You can't get a kindle paperwhite with buttons.

[flagged]

You may have noted the number of automobile makers announcing they are switching back to buttons after trying several years of button-free ... I wonder why that might be ...

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

#273

Post by stavros »

mrec wrote: post #149
strooper wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I replaced the battery after using the kindle Paperwhite for 7+ years. And now its battery life is as good as the new one's.

Ooh, I honestly hadn't considered that; thanks for the tip. The waterproof seal around the screen has degraded too, but I very rarely read in the rain these days.

[dead]

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

#274

Post by songinz »

mystraline wrote: post #232
Aloha wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> How long should a hardware and software product be expected to last? Until it dies due to unintentional software or hardware defect. NOT when it is sabotaged by the manufacturer.

>!

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

#275

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

kuschku wrote: post #261
paulcole wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kindles are much cheaper today than they were 15 years ago (adjusted for inflation). Seems like progress!

I've gone back to physical books. Even if that means carrying huge hardcover textbooks that weigh more than a pound, the reading experience is much nicer than a Kindle if I can flip between e.g. an explanation and the corresponding figure easily back and forth. Which I can't with a touchscreen kindle with a "back" zone that's 5mm wide and easy to miss. And even then the back zone only works if I keep the finger perfe…

Kindles for extended backpacking trips, though ... a godsend. Unless you're one of the younger crowd that is somehow OK reading books on a phone (though that uses way more power).

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

#276

Post by fsflover »

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.

My 20-year-old laptop still runs latest Debian with all security and (optionally!) feature updates.

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

#277

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

kuschku wrote: post #263
u_fucking_dork wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep buying phones with headphone jacks and removable batteries then. They exist. If every social media user that whined about these things acted with their wallet maybe they’d be able to change something.

They are — all non-flagships do still have headphone jacks, even the Pixel A lineup kept them for many many years after the mainline Pixel phones dropped them. And the reason most phones keep these is because wireless headphones are in the end luxury. They're not necessary, they're not even significantly better, but they're in the end a class symbol.

Earlier this year, the Guardian had a piece about the way in which wired headphones were now the status signifier among a certain cohort ...

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

#278

Post by lomereiter »

dennismd wrote: post #41

I’ve been looking into getting an e-reader, but I’m scared to get one from Amazon due to things like this. Are there any decent hackable and/or trustworthy ones out there?

PocketBook is by far the most hackable, especially their b/w readers, which still run Linux 3.10 because of hardware limitations - for these, getting root permissions is trivial with an old jailbreak script based on Dirty COW. (That said, the hardware is rather slow for the price tag.) Most applications use modern Qt 6 / QML. You won't find much information online, but it's a lot of fun exploring all this stuff with Ghidra MCP and creating binary patches. Shameless plug: I created an emulator so that you can download firmware from the official support web page and try it out on a Linux desktop (https://codeberg.org/datyoma/pbemu)

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

#279

Post by 46493168 »

The problem Amazon has is that they already designed the perfect e-reader and released it in 2016. It's called the Kindle Oasis. All they had to do was keep making marginal improvements to this design (USB-C, faster processor) every few years. But that doesn't move units, need creation does, and convincing people that they need a new Amazon store front-end requires new form factors.

All these stories of people who have been using the same Kindle for 15 years is not an Amazon success story because those people have not been buying Kindles. It's true even though Amazon makes far more on the margin of sending special locked up text files that were written by someone else.

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

#280

Post by koliber »

Aloha wrote: post #187
_doctor_love wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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?

Supporting is a word that means many different things.

It’s ok to stop providing updates to old software and hardware.

It’s OK to not support ancient devices when writing news software.

It’s not ok to make old devices inoperable if they are using the old software and don’t need updates.

Will my old Kindle stop being able to show me the books I bought and downloaded to it? Or will it become impossible to buy new books? If it’s the earlier, it’s borderline criminal. If it’s the latter, I’m unhappy but understand realities.

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