I thought it would be useful to create a new thread for this, as the 'Paperwhite 2 First Impressions' thread has become about anything but that, it seems to me. And I think we're missing the bigger picture in there.
iOS
First up are Cloud Collections for the iOS Kindle app, which appeared a few months before the new Kindles got them.
Here's how they work:
- the Home screen menu can display All Items, Books, Newsstand, Docs, and Collections.
- you can add items to a collection (or create a new collection) from the first four of those categories by long tapping to bring up a menu (yes you can add individual newsstand issues to a collection)
- Collections view shows thumbnails for each collection which show tinier thumbnails of up to six of the items they contain, and a count of items therein. You can sort these by Recent or Collection Name.
- Opening a collection displays thumbnails of the items therein. There's no list view. On-device items have a checkmark icon overlaid. You can Add items from anything in your library (including Docs or Newsstand issues) without regard to whether they are on the device (in fact you cannot tell whether they are or not). There's a Filter where you can type in a keyword (part of the title or author name) and the list shrinks to match what you've typed. You can toggle selection status by tapping, it keeps track of how many are selected, tap Done when finished.
- long tapping on an item lets you Remove from Device or Download (depending on whether it is on the device or not), Add [another] Collection, or Remove from [the current] Collection.
- download is automatic if you tap on something that is not on the device.
- items are added to the end of the list, but you can manually change that to whatever you want by tapping an 'edit' icon and dragging them to where you want them.
- when you are reading the book, tapping Library/Home returns you to Collections view, showing the list of Collections in the sort order you've specified.
Critique:- the lack of List view to show full Title/Author can make it difficult to determine what a given item is.
- one might well want the option to sort a collection by Recent or Name (though being able to establish a Custom order is useful)
Next up: the new Fires