I read what you said
Quote:
Originally Posted by Laridae
I, like so many others, have a wariness about being locked in to the ecosystem of a particular company, no matter how good it is. I call it "digital claustrophobia".
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We all live on this spectrum -- safety at one end and freedom at the other. There's a 'right' place on the spectrum for each individual. You just have to find the device that sits closest to where you sit.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Laridae
We'll see how proprietary the new product is once it's announced. But if past experience is any indication Amazon's business model has been very successful for them and I don't expect it to change.
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Amazon's Fire products are near the middle of the spectrum -- offering safety to those who use it as it comes out of the box while providing a LOT of freedom and a safety net to those who wish to take a walk on the wild side.
In the case of Fire TV, the XBMC guys have managed to get their app on the device and you can even have XBMC open when the FTV powers on. I am not an XBMC guy, but I have side loaded some apps onto my Fire TV. It's not difficult.
The Fire tablet was just as open.
Will this be applied to a phone? Who knows. It would not surprise me if Amazon offered different service providers to support their global aspirations and side loading of apps, but I would not expect them to let you bypass their marketing and tracking apps. The trick, of course, is to make the consumer want to use these -- by price matching, using special offers, etc.