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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."
Might as well buy a Kia and complain that it's not as polished of a driving experience as a BMW.
"Itâ(TM)s expected to sell well among parents who always buy the wrong thing." according to Seth Meyers from SNL
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
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.
"There is no privacy on the device; a spouse or child who picks it up will instantly know everything you have been doing."
I don't know the situation for the complainers, but my Kindle Fire has a passcode enabled.
Settings > Security > Lock Screen Password
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
The Fire arrives configured for Amazon One Click purchases, and the option to disable this does not work. Anyone who picks up your Fire will be able to order anything they like without any password, PIN, or other attempt to verify the purchase being made.
See here: Serious Security Flaw In The Kindle Fire
I give this post a score of 110 percent. (22% + 88%)
That word... I do not think it means what you think it means.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
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.
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.
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?
Then they shouldn't market it as a general tablet. Don't blame people for measuring it against the same yardstick that they market the device to in their ads.
The link for it is right not he main Amazon page, and the ad above is pretty clearly being marketed as a tablet.
http://www.amazon.com/
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.
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.
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.
Good at book reading? Sorry it takes a turn for the worse for book reading. The display has a horrible glare to it, it attracts finger prints like its the next big thing, and the page turning is atrocious. You have to very carefully hold the device on the edges to avoid turning the page because the slightest on screen touch could jump you pages, or depending where you press even chapters ahead. The volume control is definitely an annoyance as you have to obstruct your view of whatever your watching or pause it. I also hate the lack of "forward" button. Its easy to press back on accident and there's no forward. When your going through book collections it will not remember your last location in the list forcing you to rebrowse from the beginning after going into a book, plus for a book reading device there's no button to go to the book list other than the home button and then the book list. There's no directory structure or categories for books its all one big jumbo collection with no organization. The apps market place is restricted to amazon app store only and many apps are blocked for fire use for no good reason(like twitter, but i don't use that one). The android market place works perfectly fine on the fire but you have to root the device to get it on there.
The screen can be very sensitive but it doesn't always work, sometimes you have to press something 2 or 3 times, but the very slightest touch elsewhere will trigger something you don't want.