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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

#281

Post by chocochunks »

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.

It's not. It's really not. It's 14 years of you can still access the store and buy stuff. That's not that good. You can buy a DVD and it'll still work on 25+ year old players. You can still buy digital content on an almost 20 year old PS3, you can use iTunes purchases on an original iPod from 25 years ago. Even in the eBook space you can get a new DRM'd purchase on a Sony PRS-500 from 2006 with Adobe Digital Editions.

These Kindles were not getting firmware updates (outside of maybe security certificates), they weren't getting new features or patches. You could just get new content.

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

#282

Post by wiseowise »

u_fucking_dork wrote: post #229
wiseowise wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimate consoomer. Eats whatever shit it’s being fed and doesn’t complain. Powers that be know better what is good for you anyway, right?

[flagged]

As opposed to what?

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

#283

Post by gambiting »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #268
gambiting wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think they leave so much money on the table by not having the simplest of features - why can't I gift someone kindle books? I'd be buying so many for friends and family, but there is literally no way to do that on kindle. It's money they aren't getting.

You can do that, in the US at least.

Can you?? It's never been an option here in the UK. Damn.

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

#284

Post by chocochunks »

ladyanita22 wrote: post #191
al_borland wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems they’ve gone out of their want to make them useless. They could have ended official support, while still allowing users to download ebooks from the store and side loading them through a computer. However, before killing support, they eliminated the ability to download ebooks to the computer.

But you can still sideload them, right?

Only if they are DRM-free. And only if they are in a compatible format. It's a solvable problem for techies in a lot of instances but for mainstream users it's pretty close to bricking.

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

#285

Post by bborud »

swores wrote: post #215
bborud wrote: post #212

What I don’t get is why the publishing industry never got its act together, listened to customers and got its act together. Yes, like many industries I have worked in I can imagine that they are unable to cooperate because of petty greed and short-sightedness: they would rather have the whole market taken away from them than endure the possibility that some of their direct competitors get a small, temporary advantage…

I'm not very familiar with anti-cartel laws (in any country), but I wonder if there would be legal issues preventing publishing companies from working together in such a way even if they otherwise had wanted to? (Though even if that is the case, I'd still think they could have at least agreed on open standards to use, to prevent anyone like Amazon from creating vendor lock-in.) But Amazon had advantages from its size…

Collaboration need not be subversive. In fact, it can be the opposite. As you point to, by using open standards.

Devices are not a real problem. You don’t need scale to get hold of affordable readers in bulk. There’s lots of them available and if the market were to grow, there would be even more devices. Today these devices are not very useful as putting content on them is awkward and fragmented. If that pain went away, there would be a huge market.

I think the problem is that Amazon would retaliate. And the publishing industry are too afraid of challenging them. Because they have never been able to get their act together before.

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

#286

Post by carlosjobim »

wiseowise wrote: post #176
paulcole wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. WWII fighter plane with red spots on it dot gif. The vast majority of people who buy Kindles simply read books on them and don’t repeatedly cry online about features that are never coming back. I’ve bought about 10 of the things dating back to 2012 either because I wanted…

Ultimate consoomer. Eats whatever shit it’s being fed and doesn’t complain. Powers that be know better what is good for you anyway, right?

Even in the past, when the only thing people would purchase was livestock, you wouldn't expect them to last more than 12 years.

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

#287

Post by WaitWaitWha »

Best path for Amazon would be to unlock and maybe even "open source" ways to flash with third party firmware publicly (I am aware there are methods to do this already). It would gain good will with the techno crowd (important for hire, dev, sec, etc.), and with general fans & consumers (increased likelihood of switching to newer version).

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

#288

Post by carlosjobim »

awakeasleep wrote: post #237
mackross wrote: post #220

moved to kobo (the nice one with colour screen) with calibre web running behind a cloudflare tunnel, getting books direct through smallest publishers/authors. Adds the tiniest bit of friction in book acquisition but reading experience, battery life, everything else shits on my kindle experience (and I’ve owned every one).

Please mention that color e-ink has significantly lower contrast than black and white. I thought I did enough research, but was bitten by this caveat- I would trade basically any feature for more contrast. On the plus side, with your setup, you can have the lowest friction ebook experience possible on planet Earth by installing koreader, and then the z-library plugin.

Color (Kaleido) eInk screens can't show pure white, because the color filter is in the way. That makes the display significantly darker, and negates the entire purpose of eInk.

I sold my color eInk device after trying it for two days, and went back to B&W.

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

#289

Post by [deleted] »

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]

[deleted]

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

#290

Post by anonymars »

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.

This very much depends on region

Also I think the more serious issue is the SD card slot. The missing headphone jack is annoying, but you can work around it with an adapter. Not so for the card slot

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