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Originally Posted by BionicGecko
This is a weird gamble from Amazon; by forcing people to upload their documents to the cloud, they forfeit any chance of the Scribe being considered as a valid option by businesses instead of tablets. Also I thought one use case for such devices in the corporate world would be the secure, but actual, signature of documents; a player the size of Amazon might have been able to get into this market and call the shots, but those conversion shenanigans make this less likely.
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It makes sense to me that Amazon would use KFX format for the pen-based annotation features of the Scribe. Scribe development is under the Kindle arm of Amazon and the Kindle platform has always been about proprietary formats and platform lock-in. Kindle developers are already familiar with that format and development costs were likely less by making that the only format supported internally.
I see the Scribe as being created to look good in a checklist comparing the Kindle and Kobo product lines, to help make Amazon more attractive to new customers. I doubt that Amazon sees note taking as a lucrative business that they are going to invest many resources in. I expect them to produce only the minimum acceptable feature set with minimal ties to other platforms and formats.
I suspect that the features listed on the Scribe product page as being available in coming months (new brush types, copy/paste, notebook organization, and send from MS Word) were originally planned for the initial release but not ready in time. I would expect only minor changes to be coming after that. And I doubt that handwriting recognition will ever happen.
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One thing I am wondering about is how the Scribe will affect the availability of personal documents in KFX format on other Kindle apps and devices. Until now Amazon has reserved the Enhanced Typesetting features associated with KFX format in reflowable layout for only books they provide, not personal documents. This made sense for them as a way to promote purchasing from Amazon to obtain a better reading experience.
That restriction has now been relaxed, but apparently only for Scribe owners. I am curious whether the next general Kindle firmware release will make this available to all newer Kindles or whether it will continue to be a Scribe-only feature.
Also I am curious whether any Scribe owner has tried to look at sticky notes made on a Scribe within a personal document on other platforms, specifically Kindle for Android and iOS. If they work there that implies that KFX format is also being delivered to those apps for Scribe owners. (I know that as a non-Scribe user I do not receive personal documents in KFX on any platform so far.)