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Originally Posted by ottdmk
I haven't actually gotten 2.5.2 yet. For whatever reason, it hasn't been deployed to my Touch yet. But I have a few thoughts on the titlebar issue.
The first thing to remember is that by and large any forum does not represent the majority of users. People who go online to discuss issues such as this one tend to be more heavily involved then the average user of a consumer device. We are a fringe element of the larger market.
Now, on to the titlebar issue. One thing we have to remember is that consistency of user experience is highly valuable to a corporation. The more consistent the experience is on a device or range of devices the less hassle (and hence less expense) it is to offer support to customers for that device (or devices.)
As a sidenote, this is one reason why Kobo forces firmware updates. Maintaining multiple versions of software raises complexity and hence costs.
Getting back to consistency of experience: Kobo went with two rendering engines for epubs. Access to handle their user metric enhancements to EPUB, enable their syncing mechanism & to implement several aspects of EPUB3. IE, kepubs. The second they licensed from Adobe to allow for sideloaded content, whether from other stores or from libraries, etc.
I'm very happy they did this. It gives me a lot of choice. I can buy from several e-retailers and the books will work on my Touch. I have library support, which I value highly.
However, two rendering engines = a differing experience between kepub and epub. And this is a problem. I can guarantee you that Kobo gets customer support calls from this. Sideloading is a more advanced activity then just buying from Kobo and syncing. For the average consumer, this is something they will do after buying from Kobo. And I guarantee Kobo has gotten calls saying "Why do my library books look different from the novel I bought from you last week?"
Now, obviously they can't make the epub experience identical to the kepub experience. Certain kepub features are partially meant as drivers towards purchase of books from Kobo (I'm thinking specifically of the advanced font options.) But I firmly believe that Kobo has been wanting to make the experience more consistent.
So, you have to ask yourselves, which engine demonstrates Kobo's vision of how epubs should be displayed? The answer, I think, is obvious: Access. And so when it comes time to make a change to make things more consistent, which way would the company go? Make the Adobe renderer more like Access, or vice versa? Again, I would say the answer is obvious.
So I believe this change was simply a matter of time.
Now, I can understand why people are upset. There is a belief that Kobo has taken away screen real estate with this change. I doubt that Kobo would see it that way. They committed the use of that real estate to a particular purpose a long, long time ago. This is simply getting Adobe to do things they way they think it should always have been done.
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I don't think it is to Kobo's long term advantage to force epubs to look like kepubs wheter the customer likes thi or not.
Some of those that don't like the title bar or lack of total book page numbers will associate this with Kobo readers and Kobo books and stop buying Kobo.
Of course those that like them will buy more Kobo.
But making it optional will please both factions.
As to the forced updates, I am against the use of force. It may make it easier on support staff and their programmer, but I am not convinced that this is true. It hardly seems fair to force poor quality updates on the unsuspecting public. It would be fairer if they allowed easy rollbacks for the non technical user when a new bug is introduced, which seems to be the case in most updates.
At present their ereaders are nice enough hardware wise I use them (along with my other readers) despite the increasing aggravation at the inability to give what is basic functionality in oter readers.
But for me the only advantage Kobo has is the unique sizing of the mini andthe Aura. Pretty soon one or more of their competitors will have similiar or better sizing, along with better functioality and I will be dropping Kobo like a hot potato, despite what I have spent.
And frankly Kobo's vision of how an ebook should be displayed is all well and good for KObo, but I much prefer Sony's and I have read a lot of booss on both.
Perhaps Sony is being inundated by calls saying please put headers on all your ebooks, and make the colletions take over a minute to open and remove the back button, because we like having to open the Kobo shelves again and again and again.
Helen