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Count me out - I was a launch-day customer for the Kindle Fire 1, and I will frankly never trust Amazon again when it comes to devices. I still have a hard time

Count me out - I was a launch-day customer for the Kindle Fire 1, and I will frankly never trust Amazon again when it comes to devices. I still have a hard time believing that Amazon willfully and knowingly shipped such an awful product. With excellent 7" tablets like the Nexus 7 out in the wild, I have a hard time seeing why someone will buy a crippled, less featured, less responsive, slower device with god-awful usability.

vijayr 14y ago
I bought it too the day it was released. Returned it the very next day - it was horrible. May be they'll do a better job this time. They are surely aware of newer/better competition.
eLobato 14y ago
True that, the original Amazon coated Android sucks a lot. But I couldn't be happier with JB on my Kindle Fire, it is AMAZINGLY fast, and I have never experienced any kind of lagginess whatsoever. I had mine as a hackathon prize and if I had to buy one I'd buy a Nexus 7, but heck, when I got mine there were no $199 tablets as good as the Kindle Fire.
jd 14y ago
I agree that the Kindle Fire is awful, but the Kindle 4 (the small one without the keyboard) is brilliant. And I'm eagerly awaiting next year's version. And if buying a dud upsets you, why buy fancy new gadgets on launch day in the first place? Just wait a week or two for the reviews to come in. That's just common sense.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  IMO the Kindle Fire dropped below the generously low bar for a dud - I've bought plenty of dud devices before without feeling too raw about it (the iPad 1, for example, which didn't really find a solid use until the second iteration). My issue with the Kindle Fire is that the "dud-ness" of the device seems willfully negligent as opposed to merely missing the mark. It's like buying a video game that just didn't turn out to be very fun, vs. a video game that's no-fun and crashes every 5 minutes. One is disappointing, the other is infuriating in its unprofessionalism and lack of respect for their own product.
  - Simucal 14y ago
    Can you expand on your comment about how the iPad didn't find a solid use until the second iteration? Not sure what that means.
    - potatolicious 14y ago
      jskopek covers a lot of it - it was a little too heavy, a little too bulky, a little too unresponsive, that you just didn't want to carry it around everywhere - and without having it on you, you'd never really get to use it. It also took quite a long time for most apps you'd care about to release iPad-compatible updates, by which time the iPad 2 was out and was lighter, smaller, and much faster. The browsing experience was particularly painful on iPad 1 - loading things took a long time, and the new, bigger screen practically begged for multi-tab browsing, except there's not enough RAM to hold even two tabs at once, so switching tabs was just constant reloads. Lots of little things that aren't huge problems by themselves, but contributed to not using the device.
      - hnriot 14y ago
        Calling the iPad 1 a dud is just plain ridiculous.
  - jskopek 14y ago
    I owned an iPad and an iPad Retina, and I can also attest to a huge jump in use between those versions. The first iPad was excellent, but it was just a little to slow, little too heavy, and little too big. Those issues added up to a product that was fun to use, but less so than a laptop. Truth be told, I think the iPad still suffers from a size/weight issue. If the iPad mini ever becomes a think, I expect my usage of it will change drastically
  - jd 14y ago
    Those are fair points, but I don't agree with your general point of view. After all, it doesn't matter much if the product is just slightly lousy or awful. You don't end up using the products so the money is equally wasted in both cases. Let's suppose 30% of all products are duds (i.e. you wouldn't buy them after playing with them for 10 minutes or reading a few reviews about them). So when you buy a product a launch day you pay a premium for getting your hands on it 2 weeks early. The kindle fire was a $199 device, I think, so you're then paying a $60 premium for having it a week or two early. Whether you want to take on that risk is entirely up to you. I personally wouldn't take on the risk, because I know myself well enough to predict I'll feel disproportionately bad when I waste money on a gadget I don't use. It looks like you're the same way. Most people aren't suited to gambling like this. So you have to take a look at all the anticipated consequences of buying early. And the sour taste of ending up with a dud is part of that. By blaming Amazon for a lousy product you lose sight of the more important conclusion: that this outcome was completely predictable and avoidable.
- FireBeyond 14y ago
  I love Amazon, have a Kindle 3, Prime, spend thousands a year there... but I'm getting pissed at their handling of firmware. The Kindle Keyboard is getting regular steady updates, font rendering, smoothing, functionality and features.... none of which are getting shipped to the 3... seems as soon as the Keyboard came out, they decided that was it for anything older.
  - xxpor 14y ago
    The kindle 3 and the keyboard are the same thing...
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- Daniel_Newby 14y ago
  > ... why buy fancy new gadgets on launch day in the first place? Because the Kindle launch day was years ago and it had matured into a solid, capable product. Amazon appears to have taken working code and deliberately broken it on purpose. Their engineering management seems to have lost the ability to even reverse engineer their own existing products.
  - sswezey 14y ago
    You do realize that the Kindle and the Kindle Fire are two completely different products right? Are you talking about them crippling e-ink Kindles? Because if so, you are blatantly wrong - the newer versions are faster, crisper, lighter, better in just about every regard. If you are talking about the Kindle Fire, then there is probably little to no overlap in the software running between them.
    - Daniel_Newby 14y ago
      Completely different? No. The core e-reader features should have been identical. Searching an Amazon e-book, for example, should have simply reused to code they already had. Instead e-book searches on the Fire are not indexed, so there is no way to search your device for words or phrases. You cannot even use the fucking dictionary because it takes many minutes to do its linear scan. The same thing is true for organizing books into collections. This was a solved problem. Even if Amazon could not reuse the GUI code, they had the existing collections GUI as a functional specification of what needed to be done. But no, instead my Fire gives me a giant pile of hundreds of unsearchable, unorganized e-books. Or what about the synchronization feature? It lets you synchronize your notes, highlights, and last page read across all your Kindles. Amazon had solved this problem. They had working code that at the very least could have been used as a cheat sheet fore the Fire. But no, they managed to break that too. The techmical execution of the Fire is the second most bot hed software product I have ever experienced, the worst being a video game from the 90s that I picked up remaindered for $2.
nivla 14y ago
I agree, Kindle Fire wasn't a pleasing product. It was slow, the browser crashed even on Amazon's site, got a defective one the first time (colored lines running along the screen), the customer service wasn't up to the par (had to wait a week to get the replacement), the market place was lacking. I hope they get it better this time!
Goronmon 14y ago
While I don't dislike my Kindle Fire, Amazon trying to fork their own version of Android was a huge failure on their part. I know the easiest way to get to me to ignore the Fire 2 is to slap in another old, custom version of Android in there.
davidw 14y ago
I've got a Kindle Fire, and while it's not great, it's not that bad either. The biggest problem, like someone else says, is that they don't use 'real' Android, so you don't get all the nice Google apps like Gmail and Maps. Also, input seems limited to English, whereas my Samsung and Nexus 7 can both switch easily between English and Italian. With the existence of the Nexus 7, which is just about completely superior to the Fire, there really isn't a reason to get the Fire. Let's hope the Fire 2 ups the game some.
adestefan 14y ago
I'm so disappointed with my (now second) Nexus 7 that I'm pretty much jaded on all Android devices, including the Kindle Fire. The software is okay, but the hardware is terrible.

vijayr 14y ago

I bought it too the day it was released. Returned it the very next day - it was horrible. May be they'll do a better job this time. They are surely aware of newer/better competition.

eLobato 14y ago

True that, the original Amazon coated Android sucks a lot. But I couldn't be happier with JB on my Kindle Fire, it is AMAZINGLY fast, and I have never experienced any kind of lagginess whatsoever. I had mine as a hackathon prize and if I had to buy one I'd buy a Nexus 7, but heck, when I got mine there were no $199 tablets as good as the Kindle Fire.

jd 14y ago

I agree that the Kindle Fire is awful, but the Kindle 4 (the small one without the keyboard) is brilliant. And I'm eagerly awaiting next year's version. And if buying a dud upsets you, why buy fancy new gadgets on launch day in the first place? Just wait a week or two for the reviews to come in. That's just common sense.

potatolicious 14y ago
IMO the Kindle Fire dropped below the generously low bar for a dud - I've bought plenty of dud devices before without feeling too raw about it (the iPad 1, for example, which didn't really find a solid use until the second iteration). My issue with the Kindle Fire is that the "dud-ness" of the device seems willfully negligent as opposed to merely missing the mark. It's like buying a video game that just didn't turn out to be very fun, vs. a video game that's no-fun and crashes every 5 minutes. One is disappointing, the other is infuriating in its unprofessionalism and lack of respect for their own product.
- Simucal 14y ago
  Can you expand on your comment about how the iPad didn't find a solid use until the second iteration? Not sure what that means.
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    jskopek covers a lot of it - it was a little too heavy, a little too bulky, a little too unresponsive, that you just didn't want to carry it around everywhere - and without having it on you, you'd never really get to use it. It also took quite a long time for most apps you'd care about to release iPad-compatible updates, by which time the iPad 2 was out and was lighter, smaller, and much faster. The browsing experience was particularly painful on iPad 1 - loading things took a long time, and the new, bigger screen practically begged for multi-tab browsing, except there's not enough RAM to hold even two tabs at once, so switching tabs was just constant reloads. Lots of little things that aren't huge problems by themselves, but contributed to not using the device.
    - hnriot 14y ago
      Calling the iPad 1 a dud is just plain ridiculous.
- jskopek 14y ago
  I owned an iPad and an iPad Retina, and I can also attest to a huge jump in use between those versions. The first iPad was excellent, but it was just a little to slow, little too heavy, and little too big. Those issues added up to a product that was fun to use, but less so than a laptop. Truth be told, I think the iPad still suffers from a size/weight issue. If the iPad mini ever becomes a think, I expect my usage of it will change drastically
- jd 14y ago
  Those are fair points, but I don't agree with your general point of view. After all, it doesn't matter much if the product is just slightly lousy or awful. You don't end up using the products so the money is equally wasted in both cases. Let's suppose 30% of all products are duds (i.e. you wouldn't buy them after playing with them for 10 minutes or reading a few reviews about them). So when you buy a product a launch day you pay a premium for getting your hands on it 2 weeks early. The kindle fire was a $199 device, I think, so you're then paying a $60 premium for having it a week or two early. Whether you want to take on that risk is entirely up to you. I personally wouldn't take on the risk, because I know myself well enough to predict I'll feel disproportionately bad when I waste money on a gadget I don't use. It looks like you're the same way. Most people aren't suited to gambling like this. So you have to take a look at all the anticipated consequences of buying early. And the sour taste of ending up with a dud is part of that. By blaming Amazon for a lousy product you lose sight of the more important conclusion: that this outcome was completely predictable and avoidable.
FireBeyond 14y ago
I love Amazon, have a Kindle 3, Prime, spend thousands a year there... but I'm getting pissed at their handling of firmware. The Kindle Keyboard is getting regular steady updates, font rendering, smoothing, functionality and features.... none of which are getting shipped to the 3... seems as soon as the Keyboard came out, they decided that was it for anything older.
- xxpor 14y ago
  The kindle 3 and the keyboard are the same thing...
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
Daniel_Newby 14y ago
> ... why buy fancy new gadgets on launch day in the first place? Because the Kindle launch day was years ago and it had matured into a solid, capable product. Amazon appears to have taken working code and deliberately broken it on purpose. Their engineering management seems to have lost the ability to even reverse engineer their own existing products.
- sswezey 14y ago
  You do realize that the Kindle and the Kindle Fire are two completely different products right? Are you talking about them crippling e-ink Kindles? Because if so, you are blatantly wrong - the newer versions are faster, crisper, lighter, better in just about every regard. If you are talking about the Kindle Fire, then there is probably little to no overlap in the software running between them.
  - Daniel_Newby 14y ago
    Completely different? No. The core e-reader features should have been identical. Searching an Amazon e-book, for example, should have simply reused to code they already had. Instead e-book searches on the Fire are not indexed, so there is no way to search your device for words or phrases. You cannot even use the fucking dictionary because it takes many minutes to do its linear scan. The same thing is true for organizing books into collections. This was a solved problem. Even if Amazon could not reuse the GUI code, they had the existing collections GUI as a functional specification of what needed to be done. But no, instead my Fire gives me a giant pile of hundreds of unsearchable, unorganized e-books. Or what about the synchronization feature? It lets you synchronize your notes, highlights, and last page read across all your Kindles. Amazon had solved this problem. They had working code that at the very least could have been used as a cheat sheet fore the Fire. But no, they managed to break that too. The techmical execution of the Fire is the second most bot hed software product I have ever experienced, the worst being a video game from the 90s that I picked up remaindered for $2.

nivla 14y ago

I agree, Kindle Fire wasn't a pleasing product. It was slow, the browser crashed even on Amazon's site, got a defective one the first time (colored lines running along the screen), the customer service wasn't up to the par (had to wait a week to get the replacement), the market place was lacking. I hope they get it better this time!

Goronmon 14y ago

While I don't dislike my Kindle Fire, Amazon trying to fork their own version of Android was a huge failure on their part. I know the easiest way to get to me to ignore the Fire 2 is to slap in another old, custom version of Android in there.

davidw 14y ago

I've got a Kindle Fire, and while it's not great, it's not that bad either. The biggest problem, like someone else says, is that they don't use 'real' Android, so you don't get all the nice Google apps like Gmail and Maps. Also, input seems limited to English, whereas my Samsung and Nexus 7 can both switch easily between English and Italian. With the existence of the Nexus 7, which is just about completely superior to the Fire, there really isn't a reason to get the Fire. Let's hope the Fire 2 ups the game some.

adestefan 14y ago

I'm so disappointed with my (now second) Nexus 7 that I'm pretty much jaded on all Android devices, including the Kindle Fire. The software is okay, but the hardware is terrible.