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Amazon's attitude towards its Kindle device customers is one of lofty disregard. Every time they announce new Kindle products, half of the comments are like "I
by A_D_E_P_T 5mo ago
Amazon's attitude towards its Kindle device customers is one of lofty disregard.
Every time they announce new Kindle products, half of the comments are like "I hope they have buttons," "I hope they bring back the Oasis," etc.
But they appear to exult in dashing the hopes of their customers, or at the very least they don't care about them at all. They've doubled down on no-key devices with stupid pens, pointless and poorly-implemented color, and tiny or excessively large form factors with little in between. It's kind of crazy just how much they don't seem to care.
The subtext of the article indicates that the problem isn't discontinuing support alone, but discontinuing support without offering those customers a reasonable replacement for their old devices that had keys and buttons. (Even if it's just a couple of buttons.)
- paulcole 5mo ago> Every time they announce new Kindle products, half of the comments are like "I hope they have buttons," "I hope they bring back the Oasis," etc. WWII fighter plane with red spots on it dot gif. The vast majority of people who buy Kindles simply read books on them and don’t repeatedly cry online about features that are never coming back. I’ve bought about 10 of the things dating back to 2012 either because I wanted to have the latest model or because I wanted to give one as a gift. They are all amazing devices. I’ve never thought, “boy I better go online and complain about this one.” I’ve just been too busy buying and reading books on them!
- Insanity 5mo ago+1. It seems like there is just a vocal minority who complain about the missing HW buttons etc. I’m sure Amazon has enough actual customer data to make their product decisions based on what moves the most volume.
- ryandrake 5mo agoJust like the 3.5mm headphone jack, which a very vocal bunch of people are still complaining about, 10 years after iPhone got rid of it.
- onetokeoverthe 5mo ago[dead]
- anonymars 5mo agoI traded occasionally making my life more difficult, and in return I got what? My old phone was equally waterproof
- u_fucking_dork 5mo agoKeep buying phones with headphone jacks and removable batteries then. They exist. If every social media user that whined about these things acted with their wallet maybe they’d be able to change something.
- kuschku 5mo agoThey are — all non-flagships do still have headphone jacks, even the Pixel A lineup kept them for many many years after the mainline Pixel phones dropped them. And the reason most phones keep these is because wireless headphones are in the end luxury. They're not necessary, they're not even significantly better, but they're in the end a class symbol.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5mo agoEarlier this year, the Guardian had a piece about the way in which wired headphones were now the status signifier among a certain cohort ...
- expedition32 5mo agoYou can buy a Bluetooth headset at Action for 20 euro. I'm sure wireless was a status symbol once but it hasn't been for a very long time...
- anonymars 5mo agoThis very much depends on region Also I think the more serious issue is the SD card slot. The missing headphone jack is annoying, but you can work around it with an adapter. Not so for the card slot
- PunchyHamster 5mo agoDifferent way to think about it: Whatever failings device might have, people still buy it for Amazon service integration. Also "but people buy it anyway" is terrible way to disregard legitimate criticizm without thinking
- paulcole 5mo ago“But people cry about it” doesnt mean the criticisms are legitimate. To be fair, I don’t think the criticisms are illegitimate by your definition, I just think they’re pointless and from vocal crybabies.
- lynndotpy 5mo agoYou are only making complaints about criticisms (which you acknowledge as legitimate). If complaints from consumers about consumer devices are pointless and the consumers are "vocal crybabies", then how would you categorize yourself and your complaints about their complaints?
- paulcole 5mo agoI’m no better than anyone. I was using the other persons definition where it seems there is no illegitimate criticism. I honestly think anybody crying that there aren’t buttons on a kindle needs to come to terms with reality and move on with their life.
- lynndotpy 5mo ago"Crying" is needlessly dismissive and it doesn't strengthen your position. I'm happy there is a mass of popular sentiment that consumer devices are better with buttons. I think they're to whom we can credit the return (or addition of new) buttons to cars, to phones, and to all manner of appliances (induction stoves, thermostats, ACs.) In either case, it looks like the last Kindle with buttons disappeared only late 2024, a year and a half ago. This was a recent enough phenomena that these complaints make sense. Amazon still has a chance to get with the times and release an eReader with buttons.
- trueno 5mo agoif they want buttons just look at the various e-readers online there's like such a breadth of these things now its insane. i personally was fetched an xteink reader cause theyre tiny (literally magsafes to the back of my phone wtf) and i love that (they have buttons) and chucked this dudes custom firmware on it to make formatting and usability a lil bit better https://github.com/crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader https://github.com/crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader is it kindle, no but can i read a book on it yeah. easily.
- kuschku 5mo agoThe reason people complain is because the old kindles used to have buttons, and honestly the touch screen is really fucking janky if you're used to the page turning buttons of the kindle 4, or the onscreen keyboard is janky if you're used to the kindle 3g. And the sad part is that there's no best of both. You can't get a kindle paperwhite with buttons.
- paulcole 5mo ago[flagged]
- kuschku 5mo agoWhy 15 years? Why should I ever have to accept things getting worse? Isn't the point of progress that things get better? There's multiple touch zones (which aren't visible or marked), there's multiple gestures you can interact with, and it's so slow and janky enough that you never know what will happen when you touch it. Will it go forwards? Or backwards? By one page? Or a dozen? Will it open the settings? Or change the brightness? Or just close the book? You never know. I want to lose myself in the book, I want to forget the device even exists, not fight the device for half a minute whenever it decides to go forward by 11 pages, open the settings, change the font and brightness just because I wanted to go one page back
- umbra07 5mo agoI've never had this issue. And I use Koreader - which has much larger touch zones than the normal Kindle software. Are you normally reading in a moving vehicle or something?
- thrownthatway 5mo agoReading in a moving vehicle? Is this something people aren’t supposed to do?
- fragmede 5mo ago
- wiseowise 5mo agoUltimate consoomer. Eats whatever shit it’s being fed and doesn’t complain. Powers that be know better what is good for you anyway, right?
- u_fucking_dork 5mo ago[flagged]
- wiseowise 5mo agoAs opposed to what?
- u_fucking_dork 5mo agoAh yeah certainly there’s nothing else to be done. One must complain on social media about something that they have no control over yet is easily avoidable.
- paulcole 5mo agoWhy would I complain? I can start reading nearly any book I want to in a few seconds for around $10.
- smcin 5mo agoHow long is your expectation that you can access that e-book, after you pay $10?
- carlosjobim 5mo agoEven in the past, when the only thing people would purchase was livestock, you wouldn't expect them to last more than 12 years.
- Aloha 5mo ago14 years of support for a device is pretty incredible.
- e28eta 5mo agoI don’t know how I feel about it. I’ve been on one side, looking at usage numbers of older iOS versions, and arguing that low single digit percentages were fine to stop supporting with the new version. On the other hand, I view my kindle as an appliance, and I don’t need it to have updated functionality. I think this is true of many electronics: digital cameras, printers, misc USB peripherals, etc. I believe Amazon could easily support the APIs it uses, and keep delivering me books that I’ve paid for or borrowed. Financially, I suspect the kindle devices have a much longer lifetime than iPhones do, and Amazon is still making $$ off of old kindles. If there were TLS concerns, a partial disablement (ex: can’t buy books from the device) would be way more acceptable than a complete cutoff. I’ve seen suggestions that it’s a DRM issue, and if that’s the primary motivation, it’s pretty disappointing.
- Aloha 5mo agoI'm supporting a 30 year old product, the oldest one in the field are 20+ years old, we still support them. I'm just in the process of developing a lifecycle policy, being able to cut off support for a 12 year systems would make my life much more full of joy.
- happyopossum 5mo agoPresumably that “support” you officer is tied to a nice fat multi-year support contract, no? You can’t equate that to providing ongoing updates and support for a $100 hardware device indefinitely.
- Aloha 5mo agoIt is, but I cant build them spares (not even thru broker bought parts) anymore. At some point you have to force the customer to say goodbye.
- gambiting 5mo agoI also think they leave so much money on the table by not having the simplest of features - why can't I gift someone kindle books? I'd be buying so many for friends and family, but there is literally no way to do that on kindle. It's money they aren't getting.
- expedition32 5mo agoI bought a cheap Kindle 2 years ago (remember Amazon subsidizes these things) and never bought a single book from the Amazon store. They totally should disregard me.