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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."
Was this article funded by Apple? It's very biased, as demonstrated by the fact that they cite the 22% of people who don't like the Fire rather than the 88% who clearly do. Even if _every_ one of those 22% gave it one star and _every_ one of the other 88% gave it only 4 stars, it's still a 3.75 rating. My wife got one a while back and she loves it. Sure, it's not an iPad, but it's also only $199, and it fits in a good-size pocket. It's a great little tablet for the price of two nice dinners. I sill prefer the real e-ink, but for getting all the additional tablet features, I'd say it's a pretty good compromise. Sure, it could use some improvements, but its the first generation, and it does what its advertised to do. Anyone used to Android should have no problem with it.
There's very little wrong with the Kindle fire that can't be fixed with software.
I owned one, and returned it. I returned it because I prefer the e-ink screen of the Kindle DX for reading. If you want a tablet, the Fire is fine.
The problem is that the operating system is not ready for release, it feels like it's in a beta state. There's no way to customize most of the things you look at and think "Hmm, I wish I could ..."
The volume button position is weird, but you can simply turn the device over and the screen flips. It's no issue. Some people bellyache about the external volume control, but so what? Does that kill a device that comes in a less than half it's competitors' price point?
The Silk browser was reportedly sped up greatly after the first software update - I returned mine before taking it.
The Kindle Fire was rushed out before the OS was ready. A couple updates down the road, it will be a very nice competitor to the iPad.
And what usage is the Fire intended for?
Answer: general tablet usage.
At which it fails, as shown by numerous examples, including this article.
The eInk Kindles, however, are fantastic ereaders, and also fit your analogy better.
I'm conflicted here because the Kindle Fire is not for me; the form factor and CPU are good but I'm going to wait for a 7" pad with an SD card slot. (Other than the overpriced Galaxy.) On the other hand, I used an iPad for a week and gave it back; clearly that overpriced and overhyped device is not for me either. I guess I'm not a fanboi.
I followed some of the links, trying to find where Amazon has called the Fire an "ipod killer", and the only place I can find that phrase used is by various media pundits. (For instance, one PCMag article cites an earlier PCMag article. Wow, we're not CREATING news, are we?)
It appears that Amazon was trying to create a reader on a code base that they don't have to maintain themselves, that was compatible with Kindle content and also had some browsing capability. (Someone will surely correct me if I'm wrong.) I personally think it doesn't have enough memory or expandability to be a serious contender in the tablet marketplace, but that isn't important.
The Nook Color has some issues too. If we had the processor of the Fire and the features of the Color running full Android 3+ including Marketplace instead of dinking around with crippled versions of the OS, at that price point, or even a little more, well, I'd buy one. Some day it'll happen.
The Fire will either succeed (with a much needed firmware update) or it will fail. It doesn't really matter, as there will be alternatives. Some day, someone will take Amazon's idea of not trying to compete with the iPad as a boutique item but actually make a usable tablet for a reasonable price, and it'll really take off. But it'll have to be, you know, usable.
But I'm uncomfortable with "X will be a Y killer" especially when "Y" has a near-hysterically devoted fanbase. Rather, I think there is room in the marketplace for multiple products, including ones for people who are looking for a certain set of capabilities, and ones for people looking for a certain logo engraved on the trendy stainless back.
(And yes, I'm being intentionally provocative, as I found the tone of the parent article irritating and fanboi-ish.)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
The most direct competitor to the Kindle Fire is either the B&N Nook Color ($50 more than Fire when Fire was launched, now the same price, lower hardware specs in general, but does have an SD card slot, and many reviews have the Kindle Fire performing worse on many common tasks) and the B&N Nook Tablet (released shortly after the fire, at a $50 higher price point, similar processor specs to the Kindle Fire, but more RAM, local storage, SD card slot, and most head-to-heads I've seen find it performs better overall.)
Neither B&N device has the power button placement issues or lack of external volume controls that the Fire has, either.
Amazon clearly wants people to compare the Fire to the iPad on price, because a not-quite-iPad at half the price sounds like a good value proposition, and the best chance Amazon has at succeeding with the Fire is if that's how people see it, but its closest competitors on price, form factor, and features aren't from Apple.
Absolutely. I returned mine because I can't read the New York Times on the Kindle Fire. Why? Because I didn't buy my New York Times subscription from Amazon; I bought it (long ago) from - ta da - the New York Times. Believe me, I tried, I rooted the device; I found an apk from someone's backup and tried downloading that. The New York Times app gets hi-jacked when you try to load it on the Kindle Amazon says, basically, "go away".
And don't get me started on the library books available for the Kindle (not to mention the interface - !!!!)
Yuck. Back it went.