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Originally Posted by salamanderjuice
It's 2024. It's more likely for people not to have a PC/Mac than WiFi.
And doesn't the Kindle Desktop App let you sync books over USB too?
It's not great that it was removed but how many people were seriously using that feature because it's the only way they have to get books to the device?
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And most people are carrying around a mobile hotspot (smartphone).
The desktop apps do not sync books over USB. You may be thinking about the Send to Kindle app for Mac, which now includes a 'USB File Manager' that replaces Android File Transfer as a way of side loading content to Amazon's MTP Kindles (2024 Kindles and Scribe). (for some reason it does not work with Fire tablets, but they're pretty useless without WiFi)
Few people need to use D&T, and Amazon surely has usage metrics to prove this.
But it is more that they want to keep customers tied to the Kindle ecosystem. That probably suits the interests of publishers as well, since Amazon sells the majority of their books, is a relentless marketer, and that's unlikely to ever change. Maybe it also saves a little money if D&T usage declines.
As long as D&T is still available for older Kindles, I don't have much reason to start purchasing books from Kobo or Google (except for those in Print Replica format, which are not being made available for Kindles and D&T even though any of those still getting updates can read this format).