Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#51

Post by ziml77 » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 5:36 PM UTC

chromacity wrote: post #45

shrubble wrote: post #26

After Anthropic wholesale pirated millions of books, and got only a slap on the wrist and no jail time, and Meta did almost the same, I've decided that "Anna's" plus used physical books plus printed new books are the right combination.

It's kinda poetic that in the entire process, authors get screwed thrice. First, by the publishers and retailers, who keep 80% of the revenue. Then, by the hacker culture that enables widespread, institutionalized book piracy for the sake of "information wanting to be free". And finally, by the same hacker culture gone corporate, where "grown-up" geeks conclude that, since we already have all these pirated works out…

Don't forget the 4th way they get screwed which that the AI trained on the books is spitting out a flood of new books that push the real authors out.

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#52

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 5:37 PM UTC

beej71 wrote: post #24

Multicomp wrote: post #6

I never bought into Kindle because of this lockdown attitude. I buy audiobooks from audiobookstore and ebooks from google play books when lazy and itch and the other usual independent sites that sell drm free files when I'm not doing a jit in time purchase. I have a kindle I USB sideload or put files on sd card, because it has a physical keyboard. But with the state of digital goods disrepect for the customer and loc…

The Kindle isn't a bad device on its own. Personally I use a Kobo. But I never pay for any ebook that I can't keep indefinitely one way or another. I also have an old Kindle 4 that needs to be jailbroken before the May 30th deadline. Maybe I'll do that today. Gets you out of the ecosystem. And old Kindles can be found pretty cheap.

[deleted]

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#53

Post by asveikau » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 5:39 PM UTC

UltraSane wrote: post #42

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #5

Combined with the announcement that they're killing the old Kindles as well...this is 100% about preventing people from liberating DRM from their books. Full stop. They are closing each and every remaining hole.

Which is silly because you can easily just use OCR and screenshots to create DRM free versions of Kindle books.

What OCR do you guys use? I have only seen OCR that makes a lot of errors. Having it be usable requires tons of manual review. I probably wouldn't trust an LLM to do that review because it may introduce its own errors.

Edit: downvoters, would you like to answer my question? I would genuinely like to know. I thought based on the confidence of the comment above there must be a super accurate OCR I've never heard of, but after seeing the sibling comment I'm going to guess there isn't.

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#54

Post by cyberpunk » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 5:40 PM UTC

wrxd wrote: post #12

I’m so happy I downloaded all my Kindle books when I still had a chance and then moved to the Kobo ecosystem, which albeit not perfect is much much better

I was kinda amazed to find out how hard it was to buy a kobo libra colour in .de -- apparently there's some kind of cartel thing going on where amazon somehow convince entire markets not to sell their competitors products. I had to order it from Hungary or something iirc.

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#55

Post by lovelearning » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 5:40 PM UTC

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #9

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #5

Combined with the announcement that they're killing the old Kindles as well...this is 100% about preventing people from liberating DRM from their books. Full stop. They are closing each and every remaining hole.

Not necessarily? There was a post just a year ago on how somebody jailbroke the kindle books from the web UI. I think the more plausible and likely explanations are: 1. Kindles take a beating when people actually use them instead of putting them in a drawer. Not many older kindles are still in circulation that are old + used. How good is a 14 year old lithium battery at best doing? 2. Added to the above, how is a 14…

> Nobody uses it. It will not be missed.

Well, I happen to use it everyday. I honestly don't know what exactly is "terrible/horrible/awful" about it. I'm neutral about its UX - neither memorable nor despicable. It may be missed if the new app's UX turns out to be worse on whatever metrics you're using.

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#56

Post by sbarre » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

jm4 wrote: post #48

UltraSane wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is silly because you can easily just use OCR and screenshots to create DRM free versions of Kindle books.

Not to mention it’s as easy to download books from Anna’s Archive as it is to buy them from Amazon. It’s weird going through so much effort to lock down books people already paid for. I wonder how much this is about making it difficult for people to migrate to another platform. I recently switched to Kobo and the reader is far superior to Kindle. I had a hell of a time moving my library though.

I suspect at least some of this comes from publisher pressure. An acquaintance works for one of the big global book publishers and his general sense from upper management is that they still hate having to sell digital books.

It feels like the last major media industry that is holding out against a "future" that has been here for a long time already.

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#57

Post by cyberpunk » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

stryan wrote: post #50

Zanni wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to feel this way, but I reconsidered my threat model. You know what format is "locked in"? Physical books. Can only exist in one location at a time. If you loan it out, you can't read it until it's returned. Subject to theft, fire, rot, bugs or simply being lost. There are aspects of Kindle I don't love--the constantly changing cover art for books I've purchased--but I've never run into an actual problem. I've…

You can copy physical books for storage/otherwise personal use IIRC so it's not quite as locked down as a DRMd book. Not sure what the legal state of hand copying a book and then loaning it out as it probably doesn't come up much.

I mean really? Oh I can't see someone heading down to the copy shop to scan every page of war and peace and then print it out when you can get a used one for less than the paper cost..

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#58

Post by asveikau » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 5:42 PM UTC

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #5

Combined with the announcement that they're killing the old Kindles as well...this is 100% about preventing people from liberating DRM from their books. Full stop. They are closing each and every remaining hole.

I stopped doing Kindle purchases in the last few years because I sensed they were going in this direction. There are tons of vendors that will give you an epub of most titles. They often come with Adobe DRM but the UX of breaking that is even easier than how it used to be with Kindle.

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#59

Post by sbarre » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

chatmasta wrote: post #49

sgiratch wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got this April 8th: "Dear Customer, Thank you for being a longtime Kindle customer. We're glad our devices have served you well for as long as they have. Starting May 20, 2026 — 14 to 18 years after their initial launches — we are discontinuing support for Kindle devices released in 2012 or earlier. Here's what this means for you: You can continue to read books already downloaded on these devices, but you will not…

wtf. I’ve had my kindle since 2011, the battery still lasts weeks, it works perfectly, and I frequently praise Amazon for this. wtf. Will I be able to load books via USB? Or there is some new DRM the kindle won’t be able to decrypt?

Yeah this is my question. My Kindle has been in airplane mode since the day I bought it.

As long as I can still keep loading books on it over USB, and it's just their DRM ecosystem that will stop working, that's fine with me.

But if they are aggressively bricking the units, if I accidentally turn on wifi by accident and it just completely stops working, I will be extremely pissed.

Re: Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

#60

Post by sbarre » Sat, Apr 18, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

abnercoimbre wrote: post #30

n8henrie wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I strongly disagree. If it's doing well enough for the owner then it's doing well enough. I don't understand how one can tell someone else that their computer is unacceptably slow for that other individual's personal use. This is a really unfortunate move by Amazon. My next e-reader will be one that I own (instead of just rent). Glad that I took the time to jailbreak and pause updates on my 2017 kindle paperwhite whi…

I'm pleased with OBOOK5. It runs Obook OS which is a Linux OS. Never nagged me to connect to WiFi or anything, I simply plugged a cable to transfer my local stuff. Also hearing good things about XTEINK X4.

I have an XTEINK X4. It's quite small, but if that's ok with you, then it's a fantastic little reader.