Slashdot Mirror
Many Early Adopters of the Amazon Fire Are Unhappy
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that the Kindle Fire, Amazon's heavily promoted tablet, is less than a blazing success, with many of its early users packing the device up and firing it back to the retailer. A few of their many complaints: there is no external volume control. The off switch is easy to hit by accident. Web pages take a long time to load. There is no privacy on the device; a spouse or child who picks it up will instantly know everything you have been doing and the touch screen is frequently hesitant and sometimes downright balky. Amazon's response was: 'In less than two weeks, we're rolling out an over-the-air update to Kindle Fire.' The only problem with that is many of the complaints are hardware related and no amount of software can fix one of the early blunders: 'The fire is shipped in a box that advertised on the outside of the box exactly what it is. "Hello, you, thief, please come steal me!"' wrote one would-be customer who, as you might guess, had her Fire stolen and was left with the box. This was supposed to be an iPad killer, with its much lower price point, but Apple is tough to beat because most of its mistakes are software-based."
Might as well buy a Kia and complain that it's not as polished of a driving experience as a BMW.
I picked up my kindle fire about three weeks ago. I will not even try to hide the fact that it has flaws. However, the feature list for the price is exactly what I wanted.
It's no iPad killer, but anyone who thinks they're going to get a 200 dollar product to replace a 500 dollar+ one is delusional.
it has been on every frigin tech news site. Sicker yet of all the frigin people complaining about a $200 dollar device because they think it should be as polished and as feature rich as a $500+ device. The Fire is awesome at what it was designed for, consuming media at a budget. I think it was all the hype about the "iPad killer" and everyone was expecting so much more.
Actually many hardware problems can be fixed with software.
You can not change physical switch position, but with software you can change how long you need to keep switch in specific position until it will do something. So you can fix most of the problems with software when problems are that device is turned off or put on sleep mode by accident touch.
Of course software can not add a external volume buttons, but with software you can bind some existing buttons to work as such (if there is such buttons). Or you can add a easy to access virtual button to offer those functions. It is more a hack but can work for many.
The sensitivity of touch screen can be fixed with software, as software rules again how the input data is being used. Better to have very sensitivite input touch screen and then slow down outpus what with software.
What comes to privacy, well, that can be fixed with software as well, place PIN code or something similar. Add lock to every application and make a easy way to delete history of web browsing or book history etc.
The best selling tablet doesn't have an SD card, so no, that's not one of the problems.
Just like the Hyundai Accent isn't poised to kill the Ford F-150... two different markets with two very price tags and two related but still quite different usages
It's not that you cannot prevent people from using the device (lock the device). The problem is that the device is not sharable (in the family). Here is why I returned mine: - No password protection for purchases - anyone can push the "buy" button for digital purchases (books, magazines, music, videos, apps) and it immediate gets purchased without prompting for password. There isn't even an "are you sure?" prompt. Imagine this in the hands of a 6 year-old. - Last browsed pages stay first in the carousel, with page preview - anybody can see, right there on first page, what I browsed last. All this can be fixed with software, and I may buy it again when it gets fixed, but until then iPad rules the home.
There's very little wrong with the Kindle fire that can't be fixed with software.
You state that as though good software is so easy to write, it can be treated as an afterthought.
Sadly, many hardware makers share your view, which is one of the major reasons why every. single. iPad "killer" has failed miserably.
The eInk readers would be motorcycles in the analogy :P
I'm not sure Amazon ever claimed the Fire to be an iPad killer. It was likely only the media. And many supposedly sophisticated tech users took the bait for this imaginary conflict.
When I read consumer reviews, it's always the negative reviews that have the most useful information. And FWIW, 22% dislike rate is pretty damn high. Over one-fifth of the purchasers are unhappy with their purchase? Ouch. That's quite a hit to brand reputation.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Apparently you don't recall their launch event. Of course, Amazon probably never used the term "iPad killer", but it's obvious that's the exact market it's targeted at.
And it wasn't only the media. It was countless individuals, like poster here on Slashdot, Gizmodo, Engadget, and any other tech/nerd site, who proclaimed this would kill the iPad this Christmas, due to the fact that it's $200 and (the funniest recurring theme of them all) that it's "open".
This was bolstered by the fact that the Fire was heavily modified, so it shed the stigma of being "just another Android tablet", and became "an Android tablet, redesigned around the user experience".
As usual, the focus has shifted after yet another failure. This time it's about the software update that Amazon is working on. As though somehow this will play out different than every other time we've seen this pattern.
Purchasing stuff from Amazon?
Only you have it exactly backwards. iOS isn't about locking you into Apple's services. The services are about adding value to the hardware. That's why the Fire is a budget device and the iPad is not.
I don't quite get the fuss. I own the Fire. I knew the limitations when I bought it, and expected it to have a few bugs, which it does. I use it all the time, and pretty happy for my 200 bucks worth. I didn't expect it to keep up with a quad core box, or even the iPad, I expected it to display books, show movies, do light surfing, play casual games, all of which it does ok. It *does* need some updates to the software to work the bugs out, but every computer I have ever bought needed both hardware BIOS upgrades and OS upgrades, so the idea that a new to the market tablet has a few bugs shouldn't come to a surprise to anyone.
If anything, people were oversold on what the tablet was. It was exactly what I expected, and I'm guessing it was exactly what most people expected since the majority of owners are happy with it. What I'm finding is several publications talking bad about the tablet, but the owners I know are all happy. Go figure.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Yes, the latter has been successful. So are high heeled shoes, which fail every objective test for the usefulness of a shoe. Just saying.
And the iPad is, objectively, the most useful tablet out there. Your analogy is absurd.
You are a nerd. Your analogy should be sneakers vs. boots. Boots are more useful in specific contexts, but not useful in general situations the way sneakers are. You are like a lumberjack saying sneakers (the iPad) are merely successful because people are stupid and blinded by shiny. When the reality is that your needs are not common, and therefore neither is your opinion.
At least have the decency to not denigrate people just because they don't have your nerd cred and like different things than you.
I got a 1st gen iPad a few months ago. Already having an iPhone, not to mention a laptop and a media pc at home, plus a plethora of devices at work, I wasn't sure how much value it would be to me, but I was getting it at a price where I could easily resell it at a profit, so it was a risk free experiment.
Just a few month later, it's become my primary information access device. Be it reading news, streaming ripped DVDs, renting movies, responding to slashdot posts, this is the device I use. It's form factor is great, has battery life to die for, and, as much as I hate the non descript adjective, it "just works"
Mind you it's not a device to get work done on. For that I will always prefer a keyboard and mouse. I've run into nothing that ive thought it should be able to do that it can't, including removing in to servers at the office in a pinch. So, I'd say you should try using it as its meant to be used before knocking it. To say its too locked down to me means you haven't even given it a try before bashing it.
But don't worry, you'll figure it out sooner or later, as Android tablet manufacturers will eat Apple's lunch.
They sure will.
The only problem for them is that Apple has already moved on to dinner.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley