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Originally Posted by whitearrow
Nonsense. They're simply not going to take that capability away from loyal users who've had it since the first Kindle.
Also this is substantively wrong. They could have had USB charging without ever allowing the device to connect like a flash drive for purposes of file transfer.
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Unlike the epub reader manufacturers, Amazon probably has a good idea of what percentage of Kindle owners are using sideloaded material based on the number of users who are "sideloading via Whispersync". If Amazon decides the average user never sideloads anything, and that it causes more support issues than it's worth, they might discontinue the service. B&N dropped the SD slot and the ability to download books to the PC, and I'm sure they decided that they could do both without a great impact to the bottom line. The SD slot makes it more likely that the customer will buy some books from alternate retailers, and what retailer wants to encourage that? Maybe if you're the only retailer with that feature, it's worth it.