Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl
This is unfortunately true. I would prefer that a company support its older products forever, at least when I own one of them. But companies don't do this, even if they can. Once again, it's mainly a numbers game, with possible damage to reputation thrown in. But in this situation, of course, Amazon continues to offer kf8 for its older devices. I can't see its brand suffering because it either cannot or chooses not to roll-out kfx on these older devices. Also, of course, Amazon wants its customers to upgrade. I would not be surprised eventually to see some very attractive upgrade offers on some of these earlier devices, which will ensure minimal damage to or perhaps even enhance Amazon's brand as these readers are phased out. Whether you want to accept the offer or not.
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I don't know the hardware requirements for KFX. It could be that the older Kindles cannot handle KFX due to hardware limitations. But for Kindles that can handle KF8, Amazon should make the renderer do the enhanced typesetting. The other KFX features, I don't think most people will know of them and thus won't miss them. They will notice the enhanced typesetting and be happy to have it. I know it would mean less upgrading, but it would also mean more happy customers and maybe more will buy Kindles knowing that Amazon supports older models so what they by now will be viable for a long time.
Take Kobo, from the Kobo Glo on up, they are officially supporting the new firmware that was just released. The three versions of the Kobo Touch has a newish firmware and the Kobo Mini has an older firmware (officially but the newish firmware is reported to work). So given if you have an older device, the main reason to upgrade is not that you want firmware features that you cannot get. It's because you want the newer hardware.
I know Amazon cannot do this because of the hardware, but they can do more then they are now.