K4 Mac or PC Does K4 Mac allows personal documents?

[jocampo]

This caught me by surprise. And I don't know if this has not been available before or I'm just doing something wrong.

I just bought a book from Apress, which is available on all formats. I sent it via Send To Kindle to my PW1 and later, I downloaded via wifi. So far so good. However. when I tried to send it to my Mac, I can't, the option is grayed out. I also tried to check my cloud content and I can't find it.

How can I send the mobi file to Kindle for Mac?

[HarryT]

You can't. K4PC and K4Mac don't support personal docs. Simple as that.

In a sense, though, it doesn't really matter, because if you have the doc on your PC or Mac, you can view it there anyway.

Complain to Amazon if you're not happy about it .

[jocampo]

Originally Posted by HarryT

You can't. K4PC and K4Mac don't support personal docs. Simple as that.

In a sense, though, it doesn't really matter, because if you have the doc on your PC or Mac, you can view it there anyway.

Complain to Amazon if you're not happy about it .

True!

And that makes sense!

I think that I know what happened. I usually open the PDF version on my Mac, instead of Kindle for Mac. I did not have the PDF on my Mac yet, so that's why I thought I could use the mobi version that I uploaded.

Not big deal though ;-) ...

Thanks for clarifying.

[susan_cassidy]

You should be able to copy the file from your PW to your Mac, into the right directory, and have Kindle for Mac be able to read the document. I've done that before with Kindle for PC.

[HarryT]

No need to copy a file anywhere with K4PC. If it's a Mobi file just double click it in Windows Explorer and it'll open in K4PC automatically.

[johnnyb]

It doesn’t and that’s a nuisance: of course, when you have the book on your computer, you can read it, but what about notes and highlights?
Please complain to Amazon!

Originally Posted by johnnyb

It doesn’t and that’s a nuisance: of course, when you have the book on your computer, you can read it, but what about notes and highlights?
Please complain to Amazon!

I agree that we should complain. I suspect it will do absolutely no good though. Amazon makes all of its revenue from the K4PC, K4Mac, K4Android, and K4iOS apps by selling books to read on them. The apps are free. If we don't buy Amazon books for these apps, then they don't make money. Therefore they have no monetary interest in enabling these apps to have the same feature set for non-Amazon books as they do for Amazon books. From a business stand point it makes sense to provide far fewer features for non-Amazon books. From our stand point it sucks.

[johnnyb]

Originally Posted by jswinden

I agree that we should complain. I suspect it will do absolutely no good though. Amazon makes all of its revenue from the K4PC, K4Mac, K4Android, and K4iOS apps by selling books to read on them. The apps are free. If we don't buy Amazon books for these apps, then they don't make money. Therefore they have no monetary interest in enabling these apps to have the same feature set for non-Amazon books as they do for Amazon books. From a business stand point it makes sense to provide far fewer features for non-Amazon books. From our stand point it sucks.

Kindle for Android and iOS alongside the Kindle devices support these features so they are not absolutely unthinkable for PC and Mac. But you are correct that Amazon would not profit from that, unless we point out other platforms that support this. The Mac-iOS combo does that and in pointing that out to Amazon CS I just got a less generic reply than usual. Think how the start of iBooks pushed Amazon into improving Kindle for iOS to include the richest feature set on all platforms... If they can be made aware that they now have to factor in the Mac as well, things might change for Kindle for Mac (and subsequently the PC as well). That because they are well aware that they cannot just be a book vendor but must provide a satisfying overall reading experience. They wouldnt make much money from Instapaper digests and PD books anyway, while potentially losing customers once they get used to other platforms...
I think all is not lost

[JFHey]

you can install Genymotion, an android emulator for Mac, and install the Kindle for Android App -> personal documents and whispersync on your mac.

In another post here I described the procedure:
-install genymotion
-install Android Developer Toolkit
-install "ARM Translation" on your VM
-either install google play on your VM or copy the Kindle.apk directly into your emulated Android tablet!

PS: The bluestacks emulator won't work, and if you have any questions, feel free to PM me!

[sumguy]

Originally Posted by jswinden

I agree that we should complain. I suspect it will do absolutely no good though. Amazon makes all of its revenue from the K4PC, K4Mac, K4Android, and K4iOS apps by selling books to read on them. The apps are free. If we don't buy Amazon books for these apps, then they don't make money. Therefore they have no monetary interest in enabling these apps to have the same feature set for non-Amazon books as they do for Amazon books. From a business stand point it makes sense to provide far fewer features for non-Amazon books. From our stand point it sucks.

I'm a former Kindle owner and I've written to Amazon to complain about this issue before - unable to sync highlights/bookmarks/notes or reading position to my laptop, for non-Amazon books - and posted several times in their forums. And you're right, it did absolutely no good.

From a business standpoint, I'd say there is a monetary interest in thinking of your customers as people who are happy to pay for a great product that works well, rather than selling them crippleware because you assume they're all criminals and pirates.

Amazon would certainly profit from me if I could sync highlights etc., on books I bought elsewhere, to my laptop, because then I'd buy a new Kindle, and doubtless more books from Amazon. As it is, I'm saving up for an iPad instead, because Apple gets it, and Amazon (and everyone else) still doesn't. I might buy a book from Amazon once in a while if they have a good price, but then you have to know how to unlock it and convert mobi to epub and so on, so if it's only an extra dollar or something I'll probably end up buying it somewhere else.

I really would prefer a Kindle, because I like the e-ink screen for reading. I even tried out JFHey's suggestion to install the Android emulator with Kindle app, to sync my Personal Documents on my laptop. (I put a little guide about how I did it here:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...9&postcount=42 )

It's amazing that it actually works at all, and weird to have a virtual Samsung tablet on my Mac. Unfortunately it's klunky and the text doesn't render well, so it's a bit irritating to read. But the main thing is that you can't copy/paste text from it. For most people that's not a problem I guess, but I do some studying and writing on my laptop, and if I can't easily grab a quote from a book I'm writing about, it's a pain. Of course the Kindle for Mac app is the same (if you're not an American), copy/pasting is disabled. I've found some guides with long explanations of how to make highlights and then go to the Amazon website and download them, but it's just stupidly convoluted. In iBooks, it's just: "1. Select text. 2. Press copy" - whether on Mac or iOS. And all your highlights, notes, and bookmarks sync to all your devices, even for non-Apple books, and even if you're not American :-)