[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The Business features are for their Government contracts and for the educational space. I expect their corporate units will ship with Mayday hardwired to a separate call center.

They might be for gov/ed in part, but Amazon's inclusion of business features for everyone -- and Office Suite -- and comments in the WSJ article that "more and more people are bringing their Kindle Fires to the office," suggest that the point is to make the KF a functional business device for users who aren't involved with such contracts or in "the educational space."

As for the "purity" of the OS, note that Amazon is calling it FireOS, not Android. It is now its own separate entity. Parse the descriptions and you'll see they aren't even claiming full Android compatibility, merely that it can run "most" Android apps.

Yes, I know that, FJ; the idea of the KF's OS being separate is exactly what I've been talking about. The difference between Samsung and Amazon is that Touchwiz is an easily disabled GUI overlay, not a significant change to the OS. HTC goes further than Samsung.

The fact Amazon's saying the KFs will run most but not all apps might suggest Amazon's working up its own suite of proprietary apps.

The problem with the KF is not that it deviates a little from standard Android. The problem is that it wants to diverge significantly, which makes Amazon's approach very different from Samsung's.

Amazon is doing the same thing Samsung is doing, only more extensively in de-Googling their system.

I disagree. Samsung is offering multiple options and their so-called user enhancements are easily removed.

Simple rule of thumb: if you want Android, buy Nexus. If you want an appliance and don't care what the plumbing is like, then maybe the Fire's will do.

That's a funny line, but is anyone unfamiliar with the gist of your point -- at this point? Whom are you talking to?

And, BTW, the tablets are not over spec'd -- there is no such thing as too much RAM, CPU-power, or GPU-power, for *gaming*.

I never mentioned gaming, supposedly excessive specs or anything along those lines. Again, to whom are you speaking?

What Amazon is doing is focusing on customer usage profiles (note the plural) and adding features to tickle the fancy of the corporate types. . . .

Which, again, shows they're becoming interested in business/entertainment convergence. To say how far they are or are not willing to go is to attribute motives that haven't been articulated to people we don't actually know.

In the NBCNEWS piece above, Bezos reiterates that they make their money when people use their gadgets not when they buy them. And that they are indifferent to upgrade sales. . . .

Yes, that's the conventional way to view Amazon: On the basis of their approach so far. What you might be underestimating is Amazon's reach when they decide (as they seem to have done) to embrace the corporate world's non-entertainment activities. For all we know, selling content could also mean selling productivity software.

The FIRE tablets are appliances, not computers. They are closer to Smart TVs than PCs.

Did you miss the post above in which I used the exact same TV metaphor you're now regurgitating back to me?

And that is the way their customers need it.

I don't know about you, but I don't consider myself a god who can inhabit the minds of all of Amazon's customers. I'm an Amazon customer who has enough trouble inhabiting his own mind. Discorporation is so tempting!

There's plenty of generic android tablets out there for those looking for purity. Amazon is looking for content and service consumers, not mobile computing users.

Not according to the WSJ, and not if they're making a point of including Office Suite on every Kindle Fire.