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I'm bothered by the fact that Amazon listened to people that were not going to upgrade their kindles due to lack of page turn buttons and keep their older devices. Why? Because they responded by introducing premium models whose stand out feature are page turn buttons. The Voyage and the Oasis are the result of a company listening yes, but then charging exorbitant amounts for cheap additions that used to be common place.
This is exactly what a company that monopolizes the market would do. Because they don't have to worry about truly innovating or being competitive. If they couldn't depend on milking ereaders by ever increasing prices for cosmetic changes they would instead of worked all the harder to have a liquivista screen working or produced some other stand out feature.
Just a couple of years ago I had soured on the Kobo experience. Coming back over the past few months I have to admit that their devices are superior in many ways. I can list off (which I did on the digital reader) many things the Aura H2O has going for it that the Oasis does not. And customer service has improved and software stability has also improved.
I hope that Apple and Kobo both continue to grow and force Amazon out of complacency.
For all those that pre-ordered with glee just because it was a new Kindle, shame on you for teaching amazon that it can get away with this. When you look back at previous premium kindle releases they each had improvements in at least 1 of these 3 things: screen, resolution, processing power. That way it looked better, was more responsive or had less ghosting.
In this release Amazon improved none of those three and greatly increased the price just for a cosmetic change. And all those that pre-ordered this device just sent the message that is all you care about. You've just made the future ereader market worse for everyone. Great job. Thanks. I really appreciate that.
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