5.3 Update for Paperwhite -- will it interfere with the jailbreak?

[Yolina]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Sadly it only takes a small number of "bad apples" to spoil things. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if the small number of people who are removing SO's without paying are the cause of Amazon's crackdown

Agree but then why don't they release an update locking SO Kindles but leaving the others well alone? I've never understood why they wouldn't let people use their own screensavers on non-SO devices anyway without having to JB

Seriously, if they keep going down that route, I'm going to have to consider *not* buying things from Amazon anymore - been using them since they only sold books, and get quite a lot of stuff from there now that you can find pretty much anything but I'm just getting really annoyed with their attitude...

I was going to wait a few months before getting a PW to see if QC was more consistent later on, but as things stand it looks like I won't then.

[bhaak]

Originally Posted by hawhill

The number of hackers who really work with it as an open device is pretty small, however. To be honest, I expected it to be bigger, and I expected much more potential, given the large number of devices out there.

But how many of those devices are jailbroken or how many of those devices are used for anything else than reading?

I'm also not sure if I'd recommend a Kindle if you'd want it for hacking away on an e-ink device (of course at the moment a newly bought KPW is completely unsuitable as recommendation). From what I've heard the Nook would be better suited but still not ideal.

This leads to a rather small group of people hacking away on Kindles.

[knc1]

Originally Posted by bhaak

This leads to a rather small group of people hacking away on Kindles.

The vast majority of automobile owners never open the hood but some owners do.

The vast majority of Embedded Linux devices probably never open the hood either.

But even taking those statements as general facts -
It is still no reason for the hood to be welded closed.

(Which is no longer the case (no pun intended), if you have serial port access and a bit of technical skill.)

[Tvangeste]

Originally Posted by knc1

(Which is no longer the case (no pun intended), if you have serial port access and a bit of technical skill.)

Heh Is there a whole procedure written somewhere? I'm getting a Kindle PW with 5.3.0 and would probably try it.

Since this is the only way to jailbreak 5.3.0 at the moment, it would be really nice if somebody knowledgeable could write the process down, step-by-step.

Thank you for your efforts, btw, much appreciated!

[remivanya]

Thought you guys might find this interesting. A poster on the Kindle subreddit has posted that the Paperwhite he/she purchased from Waterstones (a British retailer?) had the jailbreak you guys made installed. She/He infers this may be so they could put a custom Waterstones screensaver onto the Paperwhites they sell. Amazon told the customer that the Kindle is new and not refurbished. More info can be found here

[eureka]

Originally Posted by remivanya

Thought you guys might find this interesting. A poster on the Kindle subreddit has posted that the Paperwhite he/she purchased from Waterstones (a British retailer?) had the jailbreak you guys made installed. She/He infers this may be so they could put a custom Waterstones screensaver onto the Paperwhites they sell. Amazon told the customer that the Kindle is new and not refurbished. More info can be found here

It's funny because AFAIK data.tar.gz isn't even working on PW. (For 5.2.0 it should be named data.stgz.)

BTW, 5.3.0 added free access to Waterstone Wi-Fi.

[twobob]

Originally Posted by eureka

It's funny because AFAIK data.tar.gz isn't even working on PW. (For 5.2.0 it should be named data.stgz.)

BTW, 5.3.0 added free access to Waterstone Wi-Fi.

^ err exactly this. trollfodder?

[knc1]

Originally Posted by Tvangeste

Heh Is there a whole procedure written somewhere? I'm getting a Kindle PW with 5.3.0 and would probably try it.

Since this is the only way to jailbreak 5.3.0 at the moment, it would be really nice if somebody knowledgeable could write the process down, step-by-step.

Thank you for your efforts, btw, much appreciated!

The process will get written up by someone.

Just hang in here, it will just be a matter of time.
Everything here is being done by "Public Spirited Volunteers" - all that can be said for certain is that it will happen when it happens.

[NiLuJe]

What eureka said . (Although I'll add that, technically, a *signed* stgz package would work fine on 5.3.0, but then again, they have far better ways of putting stuff on your device than that ).

They don't need us to put custom screensavers on your device, in fact, they've been doing it for a while: it's called Special Offers .

[awh_tokyo]

Well, Amazon updated my device without asking. Just posting here to subscribe to this thread in case someone posts the instructions for fixing this via serial port.

I paid the $20 extra for the non-advert version, but I can't live without Kindle Collection Manager!

[bhaak]

Originally Posted by knc1

The vast majority of automobile owners never open the hood but some owners do.

The vast majority of Embedded Linux devices probably never open the hood either.

But even taking those statements as general facts -
It is still no reason for the hood to be welded closed.

Of course not and I didn't want to imply that it is okay to lock down the device.

But this might lead to hackers going to competitors where the hood is not as hard to open and therefore to less combined effort to take Amazon's devices to their full hacking potential.

[geekmaster]

Originally Posted by bhaak

Of course not and I didn't want to imply that it is okay to lock down the device.

But this might lead to hackers going to competitors where the hood is not as hard to open and therefore to less combined effort to take Amazon's devices to their full hacking potential.

Considering that amazon lost money this past fiscal quarter (for the first time in 9 years, I think), this temporary shortage of paperwhites to ship is probably not a good reason for them to drive away our portion of their customer base (and our friends, relatives, and others), who would have surely purchased future kindle products if not for this ill will directed our way from amazon. But the war they started with 5.3.0 clearly indicates that they do not desire for us to remain their faithful and loyal customers now or in the future. And that goes for a significant number of our followers as well.

Hey, Bezos, which of your competitors do you suggest that we migrate to for our future purchases?

[giorgio130]

I'll buy a kobo Glo with its internal sd card

[Jesse83]

Originally Posted by geekmaster

Considering that amazon lost money this past fiscal quarter (for the first time in 9 years, I think), this temporary shortage of paperwhites to ship is probably not a good reason for them to drive away our portion of their customer base (and our friends, relatives, and others), who would have surely purchased future kindle products if not for this ill will directed our way from amazon. But the war they started with 5.3.0 clearly indicates that they do not desire for us to remain their faithful and loyal customers now or in the future. And that goes for a significant number of our followers as well.

Hey, Bezos, which of your competitors do you suggest that we migrate to for our future purchases?

They run a business... all these new "stuff" on the paperwhite that they use to advertise like time left in the book, or cover mode etc. Hell even new fonts... new fonts that we could get via the jailbreak. If they make it easy for you, how do they sell their next devices ? I mean the paperwhite is a good product, they don't have an infinite room for improvement from there. They are not just selling hardware, if they were you wouldn't be buying it, would you?
Someday they might be like "hey look at our Kindle 10, with personalized wallpapers" adding the all old "you asked for it and we listened" to keep a straight face and there you go. What do you think. They could even sell wallpapers for all they care.
They sell millions of kindle every months. They are not gonna miss a couple of dudes that needs an e-ink computer.

[ixtab]

WTF?

Originally Posted by Jesse83

They run a business... all these new "stuff" on the paperwhite that they use to advertise like time left in the book, or cover mode etc. Hell even new fonts... new fonts that we could get via the jailbreak. If they make it easy for you, how do they sell their next devices ?

So you really think that we're doing this because we want to steal their fonts?!

I mean the paperwhite is a good product, they don't have an infinite room for improvement from there. They are not just selling hardware, if they were you wouldn't be buying it, would you?
Someday they might be like "hey look at our Kindle 10, with personalized wallpapers" adding the all old "you asked for it and we listened" to keep a straight face and there you go. What do you think. They could even sell wallpapers for all they care.

I'm buying it only for the hardware. And... come on, you really think there is almost no room for improvement? Just look at the stuff that I released for the Touch, and then repeat your statement. An actually usable way to manage Collections, patches that tremendously improve the usability of the reader (correct alignment, better dictionary lookup,...), to name just a few. These actually enhance the end user experience *a lot*, and the flaws that they fix are still present in the shiny new Paperwhite.

And the GUI launcher with all the different things that it allows to do, like... even playing games. A notepad...

They sell millions of kindle every months. They are not gonna miss a couple of dudes that needs an e-ink computer.

Well, since your assumptions are wrong anyway, it doesn't make sense to discuss this. No, they're not gonna miss us couple of dudes.

But if you take a look at the sheer number of debricks that were made to older devices - yes, especially the touch can simply "break" for no apparent reason, even without any jailbreak or customization; and that happens more often than you'd think - then we've actually saved Amazon money: we provided free customer support, and more than one Kindle that has been debricked using our help would have been sent back to Amazon for exchange otherwise.

So please, stop accusing us of being parasites. We're not. We're just trying to have a bit of fun for ourselves, and - as a byproduct - actually enhance the Amazon readers. And we're not trying to fuck with Amazon. Instead, for no particular reason, they decided to start fucking with us.