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Amazon is discontinuing Kindle for PC on June 30th

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

#61

Post by Larrikin »

unethical_ban wrote: post #22
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I still own my voyage from 2014 era. Amazon forcing new formats is their choice. Deprecating old kindles is a choice. This is all about ending people's ability to remove DRM from books they bought. I'll never own a kindle again. Does anyone know which platforms work with Calibre De-DRM? Or do we need to build a screen cap tool for transforming books to an open format?

Kobo seems to be the current leader. You can also load KoReader and Tailscale on it

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

#62

Post by atherton94027 »

sbarre wrote: post #56
jm4 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This applies to newspapers too — if you compare the print version to the online version of a newspaper you notice that there's a lot more attention paid to the paper version. Whereas the online version has all kinds of aggressive banners and ads.

I think it's a generational thing, for a lot of publishers the internet is this newfangled thing

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

#63

Post by exe34 »

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.

For me it's the other way round - I used to buy from them when I could dedrm, and ensure that they can never pull this kind of bait and switch on me. Every ebook I've bought can be read on any device I own. I will not accept any other level of service.

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

#64

Post by exe34 »

sgiratch wrote: post #10
echelon wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they're killing the old Kindles as well Wait, what? What's the scope, and when does it happen?

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…

> To minimize any disruption, we're offering a promotional code for 20% off select new Kindle devices B4PT5XAJ74 as well as a $20 eBook credit that will be automatically added to your account after purchasing a new device (valid through June 20th, 2026, 11:59pm PST - Terms and Conditions apply).

That does minimize the disruption for me. In fact I will never buy a new kindle nor buy an ebook from amazon ever again.

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

#65

Post by vlod »

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

Would you mind elaborating on the problems you have with the Kobo? I'm thinking of getting one of these once my kindle dies.

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

#66

Post by fooqux »

asveikau wrote: post #58
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.

Sadly the Kindle Unlimited program has gotten so popular that if you wish to read anything independent, you basically can't without using Kindle.

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

#68

Post by fn-mote »

sbarre wrote: post #59
chatmasta wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Jailbreak it now to avoid the risk.

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

#69

Post by alexgieg »

n8henrie wrote: post #20
gjsman-1000 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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'd suggest cheap Android-based Chinese e-Ink e-readers if you want flexibility. My current one is a Bigme B6, which was for sale in my country a few months ago.

Their main advantage is providing access to all e-reading apps available on the Google Play Store, including Amazon's own Kindle app, as well as sideloaded ones such as KOReader.

On the downside, the battery life on those isn't as good as that of dedicated Kindles, Kobos, or other lightweight e-readers, but they still hold a charge for four or five days if one turns off their antennas, which is plenty of time to recharge them.

As for the ebooks themselves, I switched to purchasing from Kobo and other ebook stores. Some sell DRM-less ePubs, which is nice, while those that come with DRM can be easily liberated. And for the occasional Kindle-exclusive that is struck with (temporarily) unbreakable DRM, the Kindle app, although annoying, works well enough.

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

#70

Post by NetMageSCW »

bee_rider wrote: post #46
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…

It’s sort of funny that this kind of thing could be, not just something that they will probably just get away with, but totally uncontested and not even surprising really. Just sorta like, yeah, obviously you don’t own your library and they’ll cut off access to it whenever they want!

Access to your library continues to be available with free apps on phone, or Windows, or a newer Kindle as well as any browser, so the loss of support of 14 year old mobile devices doesn’t seem like huge news. There can’t be too many still in use even.
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