Kindle Fire Is Sold Out Forever

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from geek.com: "Amazon has released a rather bizarre bit of news today. The Kindle Fire has completely sold out. You can no longer buy one, and the wording of the press release suggests there won't be any more manufactured. In nine months on sale Amazon claims to have secured 22 percent of tablet sales in the U.S.. With that in mind, Amazon will definitely be selling more Kindle Fires, however, the next one you'll be able to buy will probably have a '2' at the end of the name. Jeff Bezos said that the Kindle Fire is Amazon's most successful product launch so far and that there's 'an exciting roadmap ahead.' He also confirmed Amazon will continue to offer hardware, but there's no detail beyond that." Also covered on Slashcloud.

Comments

Re:Slow news day?

[Applekid]

To be fair, most companies keep selling the old one until the new product is actually available though. Some even continue to sell the old model afterwards as a budget model.

I remember there was a lot of grumbling when the Kindle 3 came out like a week after the Kindle DX (based on the Kindle 2) did.

Meanwhile, back in the days when Apple products were announced AND were available in stores immediately, any pending orders would get upgraded to the new models automatically, which was pretty cool of them.

Remote deletion

[CelticWhisper]

I'll consider the KF2 if Amazon can prove they've permanently removed the ability to remotely delete files from it. No "Sorry (that we got caught)," no "We really truly promise, cross our hearts and hope to die, that we won't use this remote-kill feature which we've conveniently left fully intact and operational on our store servers." I'm not settling for anything less than "We're sorry we fucked with your property, we were wrong to do it irrespective of any licensing disputes, and we've irreversibly crippled our own ability to ever do it again. Here's proof and here's the list of files to rename or delete on your own device to make sure that even if we change our minds, we won't be able to do it to you ever again." Otherwise, I'll keep steering people toward Nook, BeBook, Onyxbook, Kobo, and other brands. Except Sony, of course.

I'm unwilling to buy a device that I end up not truly owning and controlling. I consider the lack of WLAN connectivity on my BeBook to be a feature after what Amazon pulled with 1984.

Re:Remote deletion

[Sarten-X]

I'm not settling for anything less than "We're sorry we fucked with your property, we were wrong to do it irrespective of any licensing disputes, and we've irreversibly crippled our own ability to ever do it again. Here's proof and here's the list of files to rename or delete on your own device to make sure that even if we change our minds, we won't be able to do it to you ever again."

Because of course it's perfectly reasonable to expect Amazon to keep up with every licensing lawsuit running through the courts in every jurisdiction. It's apparently also perfectly reasonable to want Amazon to release source code "proof" for a proprietary product, and openly endorse users screwing around in the filesystem of a device they support, opening up their technical support to infinite variety and infinite complications.

Even if they did offer such proof that the original system was removed, any mechanism for remote code execution (whether intentionally present or not) could be abused to reimplement the same function, so the proof itself is meaningless. Even a promise not to do it again is meaningless, because a court order could trump that.

They don't even have a reason to be sorry for altering "your" property. There's a nice "terms of service" contract that you agreed to by using the product, and those terms let Amazon do whatever they want. They had your permission to do what they did, so why should they apologize for it now that somebody regrets that contract?

I'm unwilling to buy a device that I end up not truly owning and controlling.

And manufacturers aren't willing to support or in any way deal with the inconsistent administrative mess of letting you control the devices. Nobody really cares if you buy a device for the hardware, mod it 'til your heart's content, and never let the company know it was turned on. The moment your untrusted device starts dealing with their network, though, you become a threat. So go ahead, and use your offline reader. The companies that offer connected devices don't want to deal with your need for "control", anyway.

Re:They must have been subsidizing the Kindle Fire

[squiggleslash]

You can get a cheap, no-name, Android tablet with a capacitive touchscreen for less than $150 and the KF's specs were always fairly low. The CPU's OK, but the screen is 1024x600, there's stereo speakers but no microphone, there's no camera, and the only ports are audio out and micro USB - no video, no audio in. Oh, and it has a whopping 6G of RAM.

I suspect, actually, the KF does cost less than $200 to build. Not much less, but enough for it not to make a loss if someone buys one and never buys a single app or piece of music.

This development strikes me as a classic "Build anticipation for KF2" thing, not a "Phew, we got rid of the things. They were taking up space" type complaint.

Bear in mind that if the KF2 is a sub-$100 device, or alternatively is a $200 device with specs rivaling the N7, people who just bought a KF1 a few days before are going to be very upset with Amazon unless they issue free upgrades. Older Slashdotters may remember Amstrad's CPC664 fiasco where Amstrad replaced a 64K home computer with a 128K one over night, and the resultant bad press it got Amstrad! Consumers think they're being ripped off if a manufacturer makes their brand new device obsolete.

I'm very interested to see what the KF2 will be. Are Amazon going to go for cheap, or are they going to go for a Nexus 7 competitor?

Re:get a real car

[Dreamlandlocal]

Although I would nonchalantly agree with you, many people including my wife, would vehemently disagree. From her perspective, an automatic transmission is an obvious upgrade over a manual in so far as you don't have to know how and when to shift the gears yourself and don't have to worry about rolling back into the car behind you on "tricky" incline starts.

I recently tried to sell a 2001 vehicle with a manual transmission. For every interested buyer I probably encountered three or four who were no longer interested as soon as I mentioned that it had a manual transmission.

Re:get a real car

[Anonymous Coward]

The VW auto stick wasn't an automatic transmission. It was a manual with a torque converter and vacuum actuated clutch (it had only two pedals: accelerator and brake. The transmission released the clutch when you grabbed the stick).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autostick