Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Kindle Fire Surfaces
MrCrassic was the first of several submitters to write in about the Kindle Fire: "It looks like another competitor has joined the fight for tablet market share. Amazon released specs and pics of its newest offering, the Kindle Fire, which is bound to turn heads at $199. However, I wouldn't sell your Nook Color or iPad just yet. From the article: 'The Kindle Fire doesn't have an embedded camera or a microphone. The device offers Wi-Fi connectivity, though not 3G access, and comes with a 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime, the company's $79-a-year membership service that includes streaming video and free two-day shipping.'"
Don't forget Kindle touch wifi for $99, about $30 less than nook touch wifi.
Einmal ist Keinmal. What happens but once might as well not have happened at all.
So this is just a $199 color Kindle? Without 3G.
Was I the only one who read the headline and thought it was about exploding lithium batteries?
I'm already sick of hearing people bitch about how it doesn't have a camera and how you can't make Skype calls with it. It's not intended to do that. Amazon is selling it purely as a media consumption device to get you to use all their media services (video, audio, books, etc).
Links:
Kindle Fire porn via SlashGear: http://androidcommunity.com/amazon-kindle-fire-hands-on-gallery-20110928/
Enjoy!
If you buy one of everything (wifi models only) that Amazon announced today, it is cheaper than the low end iPad.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
I'm really curious why nobody has brought another 9" tablet to the market. AFAIK, Apple is the only name-brand manufacturer to bring out a 9" 1024x768 tablet. Everyone else is pushing 5/6/7" tablets. Surely screen size is something most people consider when comparison shopping? It's not like screens are terribly expensive any more. I read somewhere that the iPad screen is less than $50 in bulk.
moox. for a new generation.
Can I root it and put the Android App store on it? I know not yet but hopefully someday.
The Silk browser sounds very Opera like from the mobile days.
OMAP 4! That is a pretty hot CPU folks.
Lack of a front facing camera is a negative. Come on this is pure skype candy folks.
My wife as a rooted viewsonic Gtab and it is really nice but it is too big for for an ereader.
The iPad2 is too pricey and too big.
Even if it isn't hackable at $199 I may still get it just because it would be so handy.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Here's the link to the product page on Amazon if anyone is interested.
Interesting article.
The new Fire seems like a great addition to the tablet wars. The new Kindle e-readers look very cool too.
Thing is, lets face it, the people who own tablets don't read books. Of all the people I know with tablets, they never mention reading on it. They may read websites, possibly magazines, but not long form. The readers I know own Kindles. That's why Amazon was smart not to ignore it's core audience, the heavy reading Kindle users (like myself and my wife).
Now the Fire will let Amazon get at a new audience - the people who want to cheaply consume video, and music. But they also keep their fans of shopping and heavy reading.
Perhaps they're bitching that it's yet another device that can act as a roadblock for people who want to climb from consumption to creation. Some people will end up owning only devices for consumption; if they want to create, they'll have to either pony up for something else or just do without creating. And if the market for devices capable of creation shrinks, prices for such devices will likely rise due to loss of economies of scale.
Given the headline, the article was pretty disappointing. Not a bad article (I didn't finish reading it once it became clear no actual flames were involved), just not what i was hoping for...
s/[stupid comments]/[intelligent discourse]/gi
I think the device is pretty decent, but the thing I thought would really have them selling like hotcakes was coming with prime... but I thought it would be more like a year, not 30 days. I don't think 30 days is enough time to really appreciate Prime and get used to random things being practical to get from Amazon because they come so quickly...
I think it should have been at least 90 days.
With it being a 7 inch tablet, and a short Prime trial I'm not sure how it will fare. I think it probably has a much better shot than other Android tablets so far though.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It could run on small insects fed on sugar drops and users wouldn't care - so touting it as an Android-powered device seems to be something Amazon is trying to avoid, this is purely a media consumption device... the same goes for the spec, users don't care as long as it feeds them content well. http://www.cmswire.com/cms/mobile/amazons-199-kindle-fire-to-spark-the-tablet-market-012847.php
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
That's a feature, not a bug. I don't need a built in camera.
"comes with a 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime,"
Which any Amazon customer can get anyway. Do they take any money off for those who already subscribe to Prime?
Most important for me, does it have memory expansion via SDHC or microSDHC ?
One interesting differentiator with respect to other Android devices is the Silk browser. I'd like to get one in my hands to verify that allegedly reduced page loading time. That's what's killing me when I use my mobile devices.
To do list for Windows
This device lacks a camera and a microphone. As far as I know it still has access to an app store, so if you want to create on it you can use any app that allows you to do so (that doesn't require a camera or a microphone). If you desperately want to create photo based or audio based content there are plenty of cheap options to do so.
Jherico
What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"
Isn't the iPad 10"?
Or did you fall for the marketingspeak used on the "11-inch" MacBookAir that's actually more of a 12" device?
I'm really curious why nobody has brought another 9" tablet to the market. AFAIK, Apple is the only name-brand manufacturer to bring out a 9" 1024x768 tablet. Everyone else is pushing 5/6/7" tablets. Surely screen size is something most people consider when comparison shopping? It's not like screens are terribly expensive any more. I read somewhere that the iPad screen is less than $50 in bulk.
Power requirements, need a bigger battery. Then higher res means need a bigger CPU. The CPU requires a bigger battery. Eventually you end up with backyard paver brick statistics.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
No Skype, Fring or anything (no mic, no camera). No Google apps, so no navigation, no email (without third-party apps) and calendaring. No mobile internet at all.
Surely not a bad media-tablet and surely cheap, but a tablet computer this is not.
Looks to me as if it would require some major tinkering to turn it into something fun and useful and you'll still have no 3G, no camera and no microphone.
I'm going to wait to see if things can be sideloaded onto this. I have a few custom applications that it would be nice to run without having to publish them in Amazon Appstore. I see rumors, but waiting to see if it's true.
I don't see the need for a >7 inch tablet. The ideal for them is that they are portable, even 7 inch is pushing it in complete portability. I want something that is easy to take with me anywhere, but not tiny like a cell phone in a tablet device. If I want a mobile computer I have my 17 inch laptop, so the market is for a device that is larger than a 'smart' phone (which I don't own) and yet smaller than a laptop.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
I mean really. Who's buying the iPad for the high quality camera and microphone.
And for the extra $300, you can buy a digital tape recorder and a digital camera, and have enough left over for dinner. I'm sure there's a site that can help you find those (except for dinner).
=================
Unix is very user friendly, it's just picky about who its friends are.
Sure, we'll give you web access....through our prefect system.
Then there's the hardware spec. 1024x600 screen, 8 gigs internal storage (free cloud storage for *amazon* content) and no camera.
The dual core tegras are nice, but that's about it. I told someone earlier today. This isn't Hiroshima or Nagasaki, it's more like 6:00am on the Normandy (or Dieppe) beaches. The iPad is still going to dominate for a long time, but there might finally be a legit contender on the horizon
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
As far as I know it still has access to an app store, so if you want to create on it you can use any app that allows you to do so
Does it also support sideloading through "Unknown sources" or "adb install"? If not, your ability to create is subject to the application acceptance policy of Amazon Appstore.
FWIW, I own a color nook and read on it all the time.
It could run on small insects fed on sugar drops and users wouldn't care - so touting it as an Android-powered device seems to be something Amazon is trying to avoid
Average user off the street, like my android phone using sister in law:
Android = expensive little smart phone = have to sign a two year contract = minimum extra $100/month bill to own a "Android Kindle Amazon thing", right?
Two year contract at over $100 plus a couple hundred to buy means its gonna cost around $2000 to have one of these things before loading anything on to it; is it worth two grand?
Also Android = smart phone = battery only lasts a couple hours = gotta charge it every day. Its enough of a PITA to charge my phone every day, now I gotta charge my e-reader every day too?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
IR touch input on the touch Kindle. So really you shouldn't have to touch the screen at all. FWIW the matte display on the original Kindle isn't exactly a fingerprint magnet anyway, and it's all tap-based rather than smear-inducing swipes.
The ads are culled from Amazon's local ads system.
People stereotypically read books on holiday. Amazon's target market is people who read books. Do the maths.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
It doesn't look like this thing has bluetooth, which limits its usefulness. While it *does* have a USB port, there's no mention of what types of devices are supported via USB.
Can I plug in a flash drive? A USB keyboard? A printer? -- heck, can I attach this tablet to a USB hub and access all my regular peripherals? Or is the USB port just for charging up the tablet?
See, I'm looking for a nice portable terminal to SSH to my servers -- and while a tablet seems like a good idea for this role, it needs to allow me to plug in a good keyboard, and use this keyboard.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Perhaps they're bitching that it's yet another device that can act as a roadblock for people who want to climb from consumption to creation.
I have a hack saw and its getting in my way from cutting through a 6x6 </sarcasm>.
People aspiring to climb from consumption to creation should be savvy enough to get equipment that enables them to do so instead of getting equipment such as this which is not intended for that purpose. Fascinating idea, I know!
Exactly. There are a few times where I wish I had a 10" screen, but being able to palm the nook in one hand really is a feature. As a new dad, I end up doing a lot of the "walk around with the baby on your shoulder till she falls asleep." I can safely hold her with one arm, and read on the nook, flipping pages with a thumb-press on the other. I could not do that with my hardback copy of Dance With Dragons.
Cruchpad idea and price point stolen!
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
No, it doesn't require you to be chained to a crappy cellphone in order to use it.
PDFs. None of the ways to get PDFs to fit on a 7in screen work very well.
Previous articles would suggest that Apple simply has all of the 9.7" IPS display production already, hence everyone else making other sizes.
I want to know if you can sideload it and such. the Nook has been good about allowing this.
I've pre-ordered a Fire regardless - even if you can't load your own custom OS, it's worth it to me to have a wifi tablet for surfing for only $199.
The other funny part, is true to form, the amazon web page has the tired and stereotypical "woman reading at the beach" photo. Its hard to predict, but if there's one thing this era will be laughed at for, it MIGHT be the "we're gonna get rich by only selling e-readers to women at the beach".
Last I checked, the biggest-seller by far on Kindle was romance novels. So I think it's safe to say that a large fraction of the Kindles sold are used by women on vacations.
You cant make a tablet that matches the Touchpad in specs and sell it for $199 and still make a profit.
Good-bye
Agreed - no one seriously needs a camera or a microphone, and at $200 it is affordable. A good move by amazon.
It's pretty clear it was aimed to compete with the Nook Color... comparing it to the iPad/iPad2 is just stupid. http://thisismynext.com/2011/09/28/amazon-kindle-fire-vs-ipad-2-vs-nook-color-numbers/
"Customized" in the same sense as the Apple App Store is "customized" (I.e. "Shut up and give us your money!"). Expect Amazon to take their cut of everything installed.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
There are some 10" tablets like the Xoom but haven't sold well. I suspect the problem with the screen isn't demand but supply. There are rumors Apple cornered the market by being first and locking down their supply. Every manufacturer after had to either spend more money or get less supply. Or make 7" tablets until more manufacturers were ready.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Lame.
It brings us all sorts of great stuff and it keeps getting cheaper.
In other news health "insurance" has gone up 9% in the past year.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
you can't load your own content directly on it. You first have to upload that to 'the cloud' where it will be inaccessible the moment you lose connectivity. (Yes, I know, every slashdotter has a wifi hotspot in their car and backyard. You all have no objections to paying $10/hour for really slow wifi on an airplane, either.)
Unlike the Nook, you can't put in extra storage with a mircoSD card.
Best Slashdot Co
Drop the frills like GPS and camera. Maybe not enough horsepower for gaming and video. How much of a market will there be for a half-price device?
Its like giving away the razor to sell the blades. Both Apple and Amazon make about 30% on content. They expect to double their return within years with content sales.
If Apple can do it, all of these other companies can too. It blows me away that there are so many tablets being released lately with worse battery performance than Apple's original iPad.
Thing is, lets face it, the people who own tablets don't read books. Of all the people I know with tablets, they never mention reading on it. They may read websites, possibly magazines, but not long form. The readers I know own Kindles. That's why Amazon was smart not to ignore it's core audience, the heavy reading Kindle users (like myself and my wife).
Now the Fire will let Amazon get at a new audience - the people who want to cheaply consume video, and music. But they also keep their fans of shopping and heavy reading.
I own a tablet and I DO use it for reading books.
I'm fine with a 7 inch screen. I just want a way higher resolution. Something with a similar DPI as the iPhone.
Same as Home Depot. I bought some things in Home Depot in Charleston, SC and they didn't even try to collect the sales taxes for the state and county I live in (Texas). Bastards!
One of the reasons I like buying from them is that they are fighting internet taxation.
How is Apple able to do it, then? The iPad is crazy thin and has great battery life.
To answer the parent, HP's Touchpad was 9.7", and we all know how that went. (Which is a shame; I really like my Touchpad.)
My problem with Amazon right now is that their announcement almost feels like a bait and switch--they say the new, non-touch Kindle is $79, but don't say up-front that it's ad-supported. You have to go to the product page to see that. Same with the $99 touch Kindle. The price of Kindle eBooks are, from what I've seen, something of a ripoff (this goes for iBooks as well; haven't looked at Nook), but I'd buy a Kindle for $79...if it didn't have ads.
(To the pedants: I realize it isn't actually bait-and-switch, but more misleading.)
If you can't convince them, convict them.
Ok, I understand the price point is very good, but this device doesn't even compete with the iPad 1. It basically just competes against the Kindle and the color Nook.
* No video output that I can see (vs the ipad's composite output)
* No TV box streaming solution (vs airplay)
* Is there even any blue tooth for wireless audio?
* No 3G, it is wifi only
* Only 8G of storage (vs max of 64G for iPad 1/2)
* GPS? Accelerometers? Compass? Microphone?
* Short battery life when wifi is enabled. 8 hours is only with wifi turned off. The kindle is made for off-line reading and is great with wifi turned off, but this device is worthless with wifi turned off.
Let alone compete with the iPad 2 with it's front and rear facing cameras for video calls. And both the iPad 1 and 2 have cheap ($25/mo for 2G) 3G data plans for when you aren't in wifi range. I usually don't use more than ~200MB outside of wifi range but it's damned convenient. Even with just my android phone I run Pandora and Google maps in the car all the time, and on longer trips with passengers having the iPad with google maps and internet surfing is great fun.
I use my iPad every day and I guarantee you that while the video might be nice on these devices, you really really want video output solution like Apple's AirPlay and Apple's composite outputs when you want to sit down and stream a show from your pad to your home TV.
Amazon has a ways to go.
-Matt
On second thought, the Prime that comes with this device is not so much about people experiencing shipping aspects, as it is enjoying the free video Prime offers. In that sense 30 days seems like a long enough period of time to decide if you want to pay for Prime to continue getting some free video content.
And more than 30 days might lead you to run up against the limited video content of Prime...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
All the prices I have seen are taking into account the lower priced versions with the on screen advertizing. Is that new to the kindle?
I read all five Song of Fire and Ice novels and the Herman Khan biography on my iPad this summer.
Stanza and the Kindle app are two of the most used apps on my tablet.
I've a Nook Color and considering its behavior after rooting, I have to think that B&N went out of their way to make their software jive well with rooting. I rooted mine as soon as I could and it's worked well but for a few app compatibility snags with random crap from the Android market....whaddyagonnado?
If Amazon has half a brain they'll play nice with rooting. I'm sure they'll lock down their own apps and cloud access, but why not let their apps run on someone else's Android build? They have to know that as soon as this thing has an easy root, plenty of folks will buy Kindle Fires so they can have a brilliant Android tablet for $200...and they'll still buy Amazon products, because it'll be easy as all get out....just like rooting the Nook Color...unless they're stupid, which doesn't fit their track record.
I'm fine with a 7 inch screen. I just want a way higher resolution. Something with a similar DPI as the iPhone.
Yes, this. I have a 7" Galaxy Tab. The resolution is only marginally higher than my phone (the Motorola Atrix). The 7" form factor would be perfect if it only had a really high resolution, where I could fit tons of stuff on the screen and have it be readable.
I just got the Kindle app for my phone and I read them on there.
From what I've read, this is version 1 of the Kindle Fire. It was outsourced to the same folks who did the Playbook. It was rushed to have something out by the holiday season. Meanwhile, they're working on a version 2 which should be much nicer and out in Q1 2012.
Part of me says to wait for the second version, but part of me is drooling over the Fire. No, it's not an iPad and it lacks a lot of the great features that the iPad has, but it doesn't look like it was designed to compete with the iPad. Instead, it looks like it was targeted towards people like me: People who would love to own an iPad-like device but don't want to pay $600+.
I'll wait for the first reviews when people get their hands on the released versions of the Kindle Fire, but I'm definitely keeping an eye on this tablet.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
"iPad Killed"
Nope, the iPad will do just fine. Amazon will do just fine.
Microsoft, Samsung, HTC, RIM, and all the other iPad-wannabe's...
They just got screwed. Apple, Amazon, and everyone else a distant, distant, DISTANT third.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
It was reported that this device was running a forked version of Android, that was heavily skinned. What if that is not the full case. What if it were more of a custom compatibility layer that allows android apps to run on the Kindle OS, similar to how the Playbook does things. Unlike the Nook Color, the Kindle Fire does not have a storage expansion slot and is limited specifically to the Amazon App store. I understand why they are doing this, but I'm wondering if everyone who assumes this will become a rooted device will be disappointed down the road if they find out it's not running a full Android OS underneath the hood like the Nook Color. I think this is an interesting device, and for Kindle owners, the new e-ink models are nice upgrades. I do believe that those people expecting the Fire to be a top of the line Android tablet that can easily/quickly be rooted will be disappointed. The Fire is a media consumption device, nothing more.
I've got a lot of books that would suck if they were squeezed down to 7". The Landmark series of the ancient historians, anything with extensive footnotes, anything with lots of images. Hell, just about anything but mass-market, recent fiction is kind of crappy that small. Lots of works that make use of the two-pages-at-a-time format of paper books would do far better with a larger screen, maybe turned to landscape mode (e.g., parallel dual-language texts). I'd guess that maybe 1/3 of my 1000ish books would suffer significantly from having to fit on a single 7" screen.
Comic books. Those are even bigger than the 10.1" screens on many Android tablets, and that's just for a single page--again, they often take advantage of the bound print format to do two-page spreads.
Children's books, for the same reasons.
It's really an e-reader, a way for Amazon to sell books. In time, they'll probably give those away.
Get the basics right (UI, wifi, app store, media store) first.
Next year it gets the camera/microphone, tempting people to upgrade.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
I've read the Harry Potter books, the Arthur C. Clarke 2001 series, the Discworld series, the James Bond series, the Stephen King books, the Lord of the Rings series, the Foundation series, the Zombie books (zombie survival guide and WWZ), the Tom Clancy Jack Ryan books, Harry Turtledove's Civil War series, HP Lovecraft, Pern books, various other singletons, and I'm on the first book of the Wheel of Time series (although I may bail on it).
I have 16 gigs of gaming PDFs that I read and use constantly; Shadowrun, All Flesh Must Be Eaten, Pathfinder, Eclipse Phase, CthulhuTech, Call of Cthulhu, Hollow Earth Expedition, Dark Heresy, Deathwatch, Rogue Trader, My Life With Master, Paranoia, and Deadlands along with various PDFs I pick up from the 'net.
All on my iPad, backed up to several systems.
I think you have far too small an audience to be able to say people who own tablets don't read. Try, people you know who own tablets next time.
[John]
Shit better not happen!
It has a micro USB port, and that's beautiful about it (and the price, of course). That makes it infinitely more expandable than the device it will inevitably be compared against. Who knows, maybe even a camera+mike combo could be connected to it, so you can make Skype calls after all. And connect a nice external storage with thousands of movies. Etc. etc.....
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Sounds like same specs as the B&N nook color. The stock price on that is $250....but can be found on craigslist or ebay for like $150. Easy to root and put cyanogen mod7 on it, and have a full blown Android tablet.
I'm gonna be VERY interested to see this amazon kindle get rooted, how long it will take and a comparison.
I'm also wondering, if on future Amazon kindle releases, if they'll offer the lifetime 3G on the unit...and also if 3G and wireless on a larger unit about the size of an iPad.
It would be sweet to get one of those with lifetime 3G...and then root it, and have a lifetime connected android tablet, at a nice price!!!
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
This new Kindle has a 2-stage browser : when you request a web-page its content is accessed by an Amazon server that modifies the text and images to be 'easier' to view on the kindle. Doesn't this mean, in practise, that Amazon provides a filter through which all your surfing choices must pass.
Its only a small step away from Amazon (or Government/Big Business/etc) being able to block content that they don't want you to see, especially if you can't root it or install another browser.
Have an Acer Iconia Tab a500, read on it all the time via the Kindle app. In fact, I hardly read books at all until I got the tablet, oddly enough.
Once I have that knowledge, I'll use the proper tool (usually a computer) to create content.
The point is that people are likely to end up not even owning a computer. Have you read the recent Slashdot stories about an alleged "post-PC" marketplace?
You have broken my already tiny, coal-black, heart Amazon, just broken it in half...
And the lack of 3G and a pricy wireless plan is a problem because...?
Personally not paying for a built-in phone with yet another wireless plan when WiFi and tethering options abound strikes me as a great idea to keep the price down. If 3G was a necessity then the iPod Touch never got the memo. Your typical 3G iPad w/AT&T service is a $1000 tablet very quickly. Compare that to $199, or even $199 + $79, and Amazon fills a niche totally ignored by Apple.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
So can the Kindle Fire do full-res video at H.264 Main Profile?
I'm not sure why the summary puts such importance on the camera and mic.
I have more cameras than I know what to do with since every freaking device thinks it has to have a camera. A mic has a very small target audience. It should be an add on not something standard.
I say way to keep the cost down. Tablets are finally starting to cost what they should. Other than cool and trendy I've never understood why these devices cost more than a laptop or netbook that they are vastly inferior to.
I find being offended by me offensive.
That's because if a solution handles more edge cases, it probably handles the common case more robustly as well.
That is the classic definition of "feature creep", and usually means it is too complex for most people to use or simply does nothing well.
Handling more edge cases means you spent less time worrying about core functionality.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"It's not even an Android tablet competitor..."
If you're looking specifically for an Android tablet, no. But it is an Android tablet competitor, in that it will take marketshare away from them.
And they didn't have all that much to start with.
Apple. Amazon... and everyone else is screwed.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Desktops and Laptops are for creating.
And so are tablets. Get used to it; this is the very definition of "post pc" and is already upon us to some degree. I already prefer drawing on a tablet over a computer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Am I the only one that half-wishes the Kindle Fire has overheating problems?
i really wish it had a GPS - i hope it at least has Bluetooth and support for com devices..
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
No camera in the first generation? Smells familiar. Early adopters beware.
Streamed movies, TV shows, a full browser, email, their own Android market with games and apps (yes, including Angry Birds), intelligent magazines designed for the tablet form factor ...
Just a touch more than your typical e-reader. But hopefully you're right about the giving away ...
Still waiting to hear if the USB port can handle e.g. a hub, webcam, keyboard ... if so, and if it had video out options ... FTW, Amazon!
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
But doesn't RIM's Playbook use it's own OS?
I heard one of the issues they had was attracting developers to it to create content.
This new tablet will use Android so it should already have a bunch of content for people to use.
You may not be able to transmit video off the device, but if you have Prime you can simply watch the same video on a computer connected to your TV (not sure if there are other devices that support the Amazon media services yet).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Thing is, lets face it, the people who own tablets don't read books. Of all the people I know with tablets, they never mention reading on it.
Me: Hi, my name is Mike, and I read books on my Dell Streak Tablet.
Tablet Readers Anonymous group: Hi, Mike.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
There were several back in 2010... I'm sure there are more now.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is not the android tablet you are looking for.
My Android phone is $40/month, no contract (with 800 voice minutes, and unlimited text/data). Here's a hint: try one of the smaller companies, such as Virgin Mobile, Boost Mobile, or MetroPCS.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
How well are those "Android tablets" that you mentioned doing again? Have Honeycomb sales just blown everyone away?
I'm of the idea that perhaps throwing eight billion things into 'ereaders' is pretty stupid. But this isn't really an ereader.
In fact, in my universe, ereaders all have eink screens and no sound or bluetooth capabilities. (If I want to listen to music over bluetooth, I already have a cell phone. Why are people walking around with their ereaders and not their cell phones? No, the fact that 'audio books' exist does not mean there's crossover.)
Tablets, like laptops, are multimedia devices. Sound, video, text, etc. Just like laptops, sometimes they will come with features like microphones and cameras, and sometimes not.
Ereaders are unimedia devices. They get a screen optimized for reading. They get text, and occasionally some B&W graphics. They have slow refresh, because that's still faster than physically turning a page.
I've got nothing against tablets (I'd probably get a laptop instead, but whatever.), but find this weird overlap where we've decided to call cheap tablets 'ereaders', and then bitch and moan because they have the features of ereaders, and not tablets, very confusing. If there's a 'low-end tablet' market, let's call it that instead of 'ereaders', which is just silly. Ereaders are already a thing.
And, yes, sometimes people read books on tablets...and they sometimes read books on laptops, or cell phones, or whatever. Ereaders are just a thing designed to only read books(1) on. The second it starts really being designed for anything else, let's just call it a tablet, and stop this confusion.
1) Well, and things besides books. Access to Wikipedia or even web sites in general makes sense if it has net access, as does offering a store to buy books or a place to subscribe to magazines. Or even an RSS reader. The important thing is the device is for 'reading', and people are not expecting to, for example, visit youtube or use Skype or write novels or whatever.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
-they say the new, non-touch Kindle is $79, but don't say up-front that it's ad-supported.
Given that ads are only displayed on the lock screen and on the book shelf, but not while reading (i.e. 99% of the time you're using Kindle you won't see them), it sounds like a reasonable deal to me.
But, yes, they should have made it more explicit.
If people have need of a tablet more than a reader, they tend to get the tablet and use it as a reader unless they can afford both. That said, I would agree that people who primarily need a reader prefer e-Ink displays such as the Kindle and certainly, if someone can afford both, the e-Ink based devices provide a much more pleasant experience for long form reading.
Your only real mistake was to forget that there is a substantial market of people who want a media consumption device and don't want (or can't afford) to get both devices. I say this as a person with 2 desktops, a server, 4 laptops (though only 2 I regularly use), a Mac Mini (for iPhone development), an Asus Transformer tablet, 2 Android smart phones, a currently unconnected Windows 6.5 smart phone, all 3 game consoles (two PS3s), an AppleTV, a TV with streaming media support, two Sony e-Readers (e-ink based from before the Kindle even existed) and a Pulse smartpen. I'll also be getting another e-Reader or two once the first color e-ink displays hit the market.
All of these devices fill a niche. They all have different strengths and weaknesses. They each have their uses. Many of them can go across multiple uses and most of them play nice together to make life easier if you know how to get them to play together. Amazon was brilliant in making the Kindle apps for computers and smartphones/tablets. The ability to have a book on your phone with you when you have a few minutes free at lunch, but being able to pull out an e-Ink reader at home for reading longer form or on trips was truly brilliant when combined with the power to bring a large library of books to market.
AJ Henderson
It's very clear that this is not an iPad killer, and not intended as such. What this is, is a Nook Color killer - it can do pretty much everything that thing does (even when rooted), has better hardware, and is $50 cheaper to boot.
Tell that to the 30 or so books I've bought from Amazon on my iPad so far.
I own a Kindle, and avoid the device for a host of reasons, mostly the fact that I read in the evenings and have to turn on lights, and the myriad keys on the front are annoying and distracting to me. I bought an iPad, loaded the kindle app, and use that for reading nearly every day.
The Fire looks nice, and the Kindle Touch also eliminates one of the annoyances that I had with the original Kindle - namely the keyboard and the fact that I'd hit keys while reading and there never felt like a comfortable way to hold it because i was afraid of pressing a key. From what I've seen so far, I think these will sell pretty well, because Amazon has a built in library of content to offer for these devices - books, movies, music, tv shows, and their own Android store - a "walled garden," if you will, which will greatly appeal to people looking for a cheap and functional alternative to an iPad. Of course, I fully expect that Amazon will continue supporting other devices as much as possible - after all, they sell content, and the hardware is a teaser to get you buying all those books and movies.
I think Apple has a design patent in Europe on black rectangles with those dimensions.
I fully expect a Cyanogenmod port for this within the coming weeks. I'll buy one as soon as a stable release is out.
As do many others. They're just not devices made for reading. The traditional kindles are.
As the GP said, now Amazon has both.
Paperback dimensions are the following: A) 4.33" x 7.01" B) 5.12" x 7.8" C) 5.32" x 8.51" E-Reader leaning tablets try to be in the above ballpark. The focus is on novels. More specifically, the focus is on genre fiction like romance, science fiction, and mistory. The Ipad is more focused on magazines and newspapers than it is on novels.
512Mb
So Amazon shouldn't try to slim tablet features down to hit a $199 price point
That's not what I meant. If it came off that way, I apologize. My comment was in fact aimed at the whole "post-PC" mentality, where people will decide not to own a computer, instead relying exclusively on tablets like this.
Should economy cars not be built because they are a barrier of entry for those that want a rear view camera and a high fidelity sound system so they can park in a tight spot while their ears are delighted?
Cars are a lot more moddable than tablets. Features like these can be added to a car with aftermarket parts, just like features can be added to an aftermarket PC. If you want a car analogy, it's more like the pundits are claiming that people are going to buy and own only a motorcycle, and people will just accept that they won't be hauling groceries home. There are limits to modding a motorcycle: if you want to carry a trunkload of groceries, you'll have to buy a whole new car, just like people who own only a tablet will eventually have to buy a whole new computer.
I think they claim that the "community" the live in does matter. That is the entire basis for their sales tax dodge. That they should only collect taxes for the "communities" they live in. They collect sales tax in about 8 states where they have a physical presense.
I think the big out-of-the-box feature is integration with Amazon's other services... music, video, etc. That's kindof an Apple-esque offering.
I guess you could say it really puts the Fire somewhere between the Nook and the iPad though. It's not quite aimed at either. The market seems to have decided it's more of a nook killer though, as Apple jumped $2.25 on the news while B&N fell off a bit.
Why does this 7" screen $199 device get SO MUCH comparison to Apple's 10" $499 device, but not 1 iota to it's $229 4" device? Seriously. I mean, if you can compare a Fire to an iPad which is nearly twice as big why not compare it to a Touch which is half as small, but at roughly the same price? Yes, I know the Touch is the bastard forgotten step child of the iPhone, but there is almost nothing it can't do at less than half the price of the iPad. I even make phone calls with it all the time over WiFi. And it has a camera, which also does video, and a mic. I never use it with the headphones b/c I never listen to music with it, just email, browsing and games. But I see no reason to upgrade from a Touch to Fire. And I'm not an Apple fanboi, this is my only Apple device, but it works, and it's relatively inexpensive compared to an iPad. And it fits in all my pockets. I'm not bragging, but I haven't seen anybody mention the $229 iTouch all day, and I think it's a better comparison to a 7" $199 device.
I just bought a kindle for somebody who is trying to re-learn reading after a stroke. I didn't see any mention of text-to-speech capability in the new Kindles.
A bit of a fringe use, I'm sure, but it is REALLY nice for this application since the text and the speech are synced. If it weren't for that one feature I'd certainly have gotten a Nook, which at the time was better in pretty-much every regard that mattered.
Premium and Cheap. In this market those are the only ones to choose from.
Premium sure you are going to spend more money for it but it is usually worth the extra cost.
Cheap you are not paying a lot out of pocket, so if you dislike it, it isn't a big loss.
The iPad wannabes are neither premium or cheap. In order to be an iPad killer you either need to be generations ahead of the iPad, or same quality but much cheaper in price.
But because iPad is taking the Premium spot, you need to be cheap to make it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I have a Kindle and a Xoom. I prefer the Xoom for indoor use, and I've read several novels and one textbook on it so far. I've also seen many posters here who say they read on their tablet. So it seems to be one of the primary functions of most geeks' tablets at least.
which is totally what she said
According to Engadget, it has a 1GHz TI OMAP dual-core CPU. It's not underpowered by any measure.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/09/28/amazon-fire-tablet-unveiled-7-inch-display-199-price-tag/
It's not an e-book reader primarily, it'll play back any movies, music, and Android games/apps just fine.
I like a lot of things about Amazon.
But I don't buy from them because they think the "community" they live in doesn't matter
This is so tiresome. Amazon is not dodging taxes, its customers are. At worst, Amazon allows deadbeats in the "community" to avoid paying taxes if that is what they want to do. Responsible people report and pay their "use tax" for items bought from Amazon.
That's why it's called Kindle :)
which is totally what she said
Same, except I refer to my Streak as a phone. People think I'm crazy! The Streak is a decent eBook reader when in landscape mode, but I do prefer larger devices if I have them to hand.
which is totally what she said
The only reason to get this would be is if it has a easier to read e-ink screen otherwise it's a low grade half assed ipad.
Apple owns the copyright to 9" devices. Anyone audacious enough to put one out will get sued into the nether.
Yeah I know. But srsly, can I load Ubuntu on it? With a 32GB SD card it might make a nice machine.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
From the product page:
"System Requirements None, because it's wireless and doesn't require a computer."
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Grr, I hate this. I'm in Canada, and the Fire is unavailable here. And it may *never* be available here because Amazon hasn't negotiated movie and audio rights north of the border.
You may not see any reason to buy it for yourself. But you're not everyone, and others may view things differently for themselves. For example; not everyone has a fancy smartphone and/or an iPad. I really don't understand why you seem so upset about an ordinary consumer electronics device like this. After all, nobody is forcing you to buy it.
Whew! For a second there I thought you said you were "going to go off" and I flinched. You got me good.
What about handling secure (https) connections?
We will establish a secure connection from the cloud to the site owner on your behalf for page requests of sites using SSL (e.g. https://siteaddress.com/ ).
So essentially, they become the man-in-the-middle so they can better cache your HTTPS content? And their browser is programmed to show this is acceptable/secure... What kind of privacy implications does this introduce? Even if their privacy policy says they won't use the data maliciously, cloud computing isn't a bullet-proof system (i.e., leaks, hacking incidents, etc.). Call me paranoid, but if I read this right, this sounds like a frightening idea.
The fact that they are selling these for $199, and it does most of the stuff that people see other tablets perform, a lot of people are going to give this a shot. I predict that this will be the number one electronic holiday gadget by a mile. Most people want to surf the internet, play some games, listen to music, and watch movies. This thing seems to do all of those thing quite well and has an attractive price point. Plus the fact that Amazon Prime has started to leverage itself as a Netflix alternative with cloud storage is going to be seen as pretty cool, that's why they are giving Kindle Fire buyers Amazon Prime free for a month (the first taste is free) to get them on board.
Holy crap! Your battery lasts long enough to get through a whole book?
Not for cheaper though. Or even the same price. Apple tied up a lot of the manufacturing capacity for parts that go into iPads. So if you want to build lots of devices and you want to do so at a competitive price, it's best to pick things like screens that couldn't otherwise be used for iPads.
No argument there. I just think that any 7" tablet should have significantly better battery life than Apples 10" screen. That doesn't seem to be the case though.
No, of course you don't sell my iPad, because it is mine. The correct phrase is "I wouldn't sell my iPad just yet if I were you". Logic used to be better here back in the days...
Any word on whether a new DX is on the horizon? The Amazon website almost acts like it doesn't exist any more!
I really like reading on the larger screen, but when I compare the weight to my SO's regular Kindle, the DX feels like a brick.
The Fire doesn't really appeal to me, I'd rather stick with eInk.
You're using the wrong tool. You should sleep train your baby instead; after this you will have much more time to do whatever you want without her slumped on your shoulder. And b.t.w., to achieve that you only need accommodating neighbors and a couple of pairs of mufflers...
After I read about Silk, I began wondering if the Fire is actually just a trojan for Silk.
Imagine the power of knowing every click. Knowing what Adverts are clicked, every product that is viewed. Amazon can target the client in a way that will make Google jealous. Will they start selling adverts next? Will they add or change adverts on your page?
Silk is indeed scary.
Streak 7 or Streak 5? IIRC, the 5 *is* a phone. The 7...not so much.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Do they mention the porn?
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Ah, mine is a 5. It convinced me that eBooks are worth it, so I bought a Kindle. I still use the Streak if I'm bored and haven't had the foresight or occasion to bring my actual Kindle.
which is totally what she said
Depends upon the book :)
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
...And I love it.
I consider my books basically sacred. I never underline or write on their borders, unlike many people.
I do a lot of note-taking with my (regular, 3G, keyboarded) Kindle. It has really changed my way to interact with a book - So much that it even prompted me to write a program (or do you prefer the Debian package?) to be able to more easily use my annotations from the computer.
To each his own.
I was just discussing tablets in general with a friend, and he was commenting on how he wished the iPad was 7 inches.
I wouldn't want the iPad to be smaller, but I wouldn't want my kindle to be larger
You see the word "Android" once - when referring to Amazon's App Store for Android, and that's far down in the page.
http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Color-Multi-touch-Display-Wi-Fi/dp/B0051VVOB2/ref=amb_link_357575542_7?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=gateway-center-column&pf_rd_r=00NAMFF4675KA3CSQ3SB&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1321408942&pf_rd_i=507846
Funny thing is, you see "iPad" in the first feature.
Amazon is following the Apple playbook here: Focus on customer experience, and put your brand first.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
I've read the Harry Potter books
Don't let JK hear you... those aren't due out until next month. Probably should post anonymously when admitting to mass copyright infringement.
Apple? Maybe a few sales, but there's enough differentiating factors (camera, 3G, etc), and some people would buy a rotting rat carcass if you stuck an Apple logo on it.
Who really suffers? Samsung, Motorola, etc. All those living in their happy little fantasy world where they can sell an iPad alternative for iPad dollars.
In a year, I'd be surprised if the market of Android tablets isn't cut in half.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
The other funny part, is true to form, the amazon web page has the tired and stereotypical "woman reading at the beach" photo. Its hard to predict, but if there's one thing this era will be laughed at for, it MIGHT be the "we're gonna get rich by only selling e-readers to women at the beach".
Actually, I think that is one of the key differentiators of an e-ink device compared to and LCD tablet device - one works perfectly in direct sun, and the other works fine in a darkened room.
I love my Kindle for reading in general, but originally I bought it for vacation trips - all the books I need for a beach vacation in a slim device that doesn't bulk up my luggage. And I can read it while sitting on the beach. So I think the reading on the beach picture is a good advertising image for them. Much like a backlit reader might show someone reading in bed while their spouse sleeps.
Apple has something like 85% of the pad market. Most of the android tablet vendors have volumes in the 500,000 - 800,000 range (each) whereas Apple's volumes are in the ten's of millions.
The market is something like 12 million pads this year and expected to be something like 40 million pads next year, if I remember correctly. It's a very big pie.
Both the Nook and Amazon appear to have moved away from liquid paper for their color displays. I don't have a nook but I gotta say that the Amazon B&W Kindle w/liquid paper is really wonderful when reading outside in bright sunlight, and just fine everywhere else. It's the ONLY reason why I have a kindle. I bring it along on vacations and don't even bother to bring a charging cord.
If these color devices don't have wonderful visibility in bright sunlight then I have no interest in buying them relative to buying an iPad. It's the only reason why I read books on the kindle in the first place!
Amazon might want their new gadget to compete in the Nook space, and I'm sure it will do well in that space, but if it is large enough to be considered a pad and yet can't compete in the Pad space, and its display isn't as readable as their B&W liquid paper display, then their volume improvements will only be incremental at best.
Customers often view products very differently than companies would like them to, and I think that is going to be the case for the Amazon pad.
-Matt
I own an iPad and in the 4 months I have had it I have read over 80 books on it (including 69 Agatha Christies).
I know that the plural of anecdote isn't data, but do you seriously believe that no tablet users use them to read books?
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
iBooks supports the standard epub format, so you are not restricted to soley buying books through the Apple iTunes store to load books onto your iPad/iPhone and read them using iBooks.
The only thing I'd be inclined to add to iBooks is a 'reading list' tracker so that you can mark what you have read recently/are currently reading as a short cut if you have moved off the book from the main library listing.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Yeah, I think this a direct attack on the Nook Color. Considering that amazon has access to way more media, I'm not sure what chance the Nook has.
Welp; I did not have the actual display size of an Apple iPad memorized -- should I turn in my nerd card now?
moox. for a new generation.
No no, I was genuinely interested in whether Apple's inability to round properly was catching on :p
Solution: don't publish PDFs. Pressure the sources of stuff you read not to publish PDFs.
Reflowable formats should be the default choice.
If I ever get a tablet, I want one that behaves functionally identically to a laptop. I want to be able to run it as a command-line terminal, behave intuitively with Emacs and run a non-crippled browser. It doesn't look like this is going to materialise any time soon, so I'll stick to using my computers for what they're good for, and use dead-tree books for reading.
One day I'll own an e-book reader, but I don't want to be locked into downloading stuff only from Amazon. A while back, I gave my wife a Sony PRS 650 for her birthday, and it looks awesome.
No shit. The first iPad came out over a year and a half ago and everyone cried about the no camera. Now Amazon comes out with a smaller display, less on-device storage, and the apple-haters all say "no camera, no problem." Pshaw!
they upgrade their equipment when/if they do make the leap to something more than what they do now.
Provided they have the money to make such a leap. Children in high school, for example, often do not. So do the working poor who bought a tablet for the family because it was cheaper than a PC.
I know that Amazon will be coming out with a 10" one soon, butI don't think that Amazon is going to make the 10" model as competitive on the price front.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Apple put a lot of work into their batteries and it's paying off across their product line. Since they started making unibody notebooks they've been using batteries custom designed to fit the available space, squeezing out every bit of capacity. Everyone else was still using generic AA-sized cells in a custom box in their notebooks. Now that they've moved to tablets where you can't use AAs, Apple's got the lead.
OK: I get that this is a "media consumption device" as a general thing: Amazon wants you to buy stuff from them, with this as the end-point. That's fine, and causes me no moral misgivings.
HOWEVER: I would like to buy one, if it had more options to actually extend it later. I believe there are now chipsets with GPS, bluetooth, and Wi-Fi on one additional chip, and even a cheap camera would be enough for a lot of the coolest apps that a tablet of this size / power would be perfect for. Sort of like the Nook Color -- if it had a few extra bits, I'd happily pay for it, even if only to reflash.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Exactly. Everybody knows what to do, but they aren't doing it.
By the way, I think the cells are typical 18650's, not AA's.
Yeah, I said AA-sized because more people are familiar with it, and the actual cells are pretty close to the same size. Either one wastes essentially the same amount of space and weight.
Children in high school, for example, often do not.
And they shouldn't (unless they work part so that they can buy their own shit.) Parents and/or schools are the ones to provide equipment for them.
"I already bought you a tablet/smartphone/game console. Why do you need a computer too? Do I look like I'm made of money?"
content creation, which is only an edge case of the much general case of content usage.
The fact that this is the case, the fact that the industrialized world has become a consumer culture as opposed to a participatory culture, is my primary complaint. But I'm willing to drop my complaint about this particular tablet the moment that I know that it has "Unknown sources".
By the numbers I'm hearing, I'm guesstimating that the Fire will be up to the 4-5 million unit range by the end of the year. And that's not even counting the $79 and $99 eInk devices.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
What does this has to do with hardware manufacturers
Hardware manufacturers make the choice as to whether or not to cryptographically lock down the products that they sell. There are several devices marketed for consuming that would be capable of being used for creating if not for such lockdown. Hardware manufacturers also make the choice as to how they segment the market and price their products. Video game console manufacturers, for example, charge an order of magnitude more for the creation device than for the consumption device. At prices like these, nobody at home will be able to afford tools for creating; therefore, nobody at home will have tools to create.
Nice how you ignore the possibility of a HS kid going to work part-time
I declined to mention this possibility because high school freshmen, sophomores, and juniors are under age 18 and therefore have severe state-imposed restrictions on how, where, and when they can work. Many states allow no employment at all for children under 16.
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