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Hopefully the market reacts accordingly. It can be hard to gauge public opinion from the HN echo chamber, but the apple case is causing national awareness of t

Hopefully the market reacts accordingly. It can be hard to gauge public opinion from the HN echo chamber, but the apple case is causing national awareness of this important issue. The real question is: will consumers make decisions in the next 6, 12, 24 months based on the information they hear about these devices? I'd like to say yes, but i suspect the answer is no.

kirykl 11y ago
If the government's message is strong enough, these no encryption devices might actually be sought after by consumers
guyzero 11y ago
Fire tablets are $50 devices tied to Amazon accounts that people buy so their children can watch videos on a borderline-disposable device. Tell me where encryption fits into that use case.
- theklub 11y ago
  Yeh, I was just about to post this. No one is buying these devices for security, or so they can keep files that would need to be encrypted.
  - jethro_tell 11y ago
    Mine has a couple apps and 12 gigs of 3 year old selfies.
- izacus 11y ago
  Whereever the user wants it to. You're essentially saying the users of those tablets shouldn't be able to protect them just because you can't see a usecase beyond "only children are using it".
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - bsamuels 11y ago
    who are you trying to protect your kids from? the government boogeyman?
  - guyzero 11y ago
    There are lots of other tablets. The Fire Tablet team has a finite amount of developer time to build features for their target users. Encryption is clearly not a feature they feel it's worth working on. With security features it's probably better to drop them rather than implement them poorly.
    - philjohn 11y ago
      FireOS is a heavily skinned Android. That's it. Supporting it is free as FDE is built into Android. As someone else said, this is probably becauase their hardware is somewhat lacklustre (it's a $50 tablet, after all) and therefore the performance hit was hurting the end user experience to an unacceptable level.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    Whereever the user wants it to. I think GPs is opining on user attitudes more than they are saying anything about what they should be able to do with their tablets. If people buying $50 tablets don't care about FDE, it not being available isn't going to have much impact in the market.

kirykl 11y ago

If the government's message is strong enough, these no encryption devices might actually be sought after by consumers

guyzero 11y ago

Fire tablets are $50 devices tied to Amazon accounts that people buy so their children can watch videos on a borderline-disposable device. Tell me where encryption fits into that use case.

theklub 11y ago
Yeh, I was just about to post this. No one is buying these devices for security, or so they can keep files that would need to be encrypted.
- jethro_tell 11y ago
  Mine has a couple apps and 12 gigs of 3 year old selfies.
izacus 11y ago
Whereever the user wants it to. You're essentially saying the users of those tablets shouldn't be able to protect them just because you can't see a usecase beyond "only children are using it".
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- bsamuels 11y ago
  who are you trying to protect your kids from? the government boogeyman?
- guyzero 11y ago
  There are lots of other tablets. The Fire Tablet team has a finite amount of developer time to build features for their target users. Encryption is clearly not a feature they feel it's worth working on. With security features it's probably better to drop them rather than implement them poorly.
  - philjohn 11y ago
    FireOS is a heavily skinned Android. That's it. Supporting it is free as FDE is built into Android. As someone else said, this is probably becauase their hardware is somewhat lacklustre (it's a $50 tablet, after all) and therefore the performance hit was hurting the end user experience to an unacceptable level.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Whereever the user wants it to. I think GPs is opining on user attitudes more than they are saying anything about what they should be able to do with their tablets. If people buying $50 tablets don't care about FDE, it not being available isn't going to have much impact in the market.