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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

#81

Post by not_your_vase »

tim333 wrote: post #71
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 wonder if it'll actually work? At the moment you can pretty much go to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis and download whatever.

Probably it will have a very measurable effect. By every day it gets a bit harder to discover such services - if you know, you know. If you have to ask, you have already lost.

Also, AI chatbots outright refuse to give any answer that is remote related to piracy (or any adjacent topics). Since they take over the role of search engines, that's also a big factor IMO.

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

#82

Post by inquirerGeneral »

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.

[dead]

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

#83

Post by aaronscott »

mh- wrote: post #75
NetMageSCW wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would expect most of them have had their batteries fail long ago. Especially if they were disused for an extended period of time.

I replaced the battery on my kindle 4 not that long ago. It had the best UX for extended reading when compared to newer kindles.

The biggest downside was not having a frontlit display.

I recently switch to an xteink x4, and found that several others in that community migrated from kindle 4s as well. So there are still some number of users in the world that value the device.

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

#84

Post by mh- »

aaronscott wrote: post #83
mh- wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect most of them have had their batteries fail long ago. Especially if they were disused for an extended period of time.

I replaced the battery on my kindle 4 not that long ago. It had the best UX for extended reading when compared to newer kindles. The biggest downside was not having a frontlit display. I recently switch to an xteink x4, and found that several others in that community migrated from kindle 4s as well. So there are still some number of users in the world that value the device.

I'm sure there are, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. It's just that the numbers are relatively small.

I'm actually surprised that Amazon didn't offer to do a buyback of them.

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

#85

Post by snailmailman »

boneitis wrote: post #28
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…

"or use these devices in any way"? My jailbroken Kindle has been sitting in a drawer for a while, but I do go into phases where I am using it heavily for months at a time. But, what I'm really getting at is, I don't find myself having to undertake the procedure to root a Kindle on a regular basis. Could someone clarify for me -- if I nab another secondhand device from eBay after May 20, will I be able to jailbreak it…

Generally speaking, they auto update, and the latest firmware is always patched to not be jailbreakable. However airplane mode easily dodges the auto update process, and new vulnerabilities are found to enable jailbreaking eventually.

When I bought mine, it was updated to the latest firmware. I wanted to jailbreak mine, the method was “there isn’t one yet” so I set it in airplane mode. For a bit I manually copied all books over usb to the kindle, or disabled airplane mode to read new books if there wasn’t a new firmware version out yet anyway. A few months later, there was a jailbreak method. Now ive jailbroken. I can even connect it to the internet, and auto updates are prevented.

If the kindle is old enough it doesn’t recieve updates anyway though, then it should be very easy.

https://kindlemodding.org/kindle-models.html

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

#86

Post by lostlogin »

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…

Kobo, syncing with a home library (CalibreWeb) works well.

I do miss physical buttons a little, but that’s minor gripe.

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

#87

Post by DaSHacka »

fn-mote wrote: post #68
sbarre wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is there a tool for jailbroken Kindles to prevent this bricking from happening?

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

#88

Post by lostlogin »

vlod wrote: post #65
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.

Im in NZ, no issues.

Setting up syncing with a home library is a bit messy first time, but very doable.

The only other e-reader I’ve owned is a Kindle Paperwhite and it’s similar.

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

#89

Post by bee_rider »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #70
bee_rider wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The article appears to be about “Kindle for PC.” It does look like there’s a Windows 11 app, though, for folks who’ve switched to the post-QA OS.

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

#90

Post by snailmailman »

sgiratch wrote: post #14
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…

Both my Kindle Touch and my Kindle Paperwhite gen1 are still completely fine. And I havent noticed any typesetting etc that doesnt work. All of these discontinued devices support the AWZ4-format (which can be de-drmed and what im guessing this whole thing is about), but the newer ones use KFX which locks you perfectly into the Amazon and Kindle-ecosystem

It’s more difficult, but KFX drm is still possible to break.
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