Kindle, You Could Have Been Even Greater

[mjfriedman]

I dropped some thoughts on the development of the Kindle platform at https://michaeljayfriedman.substack....n-even-greater. Kindle remains an excellent platform for reading eBooks, but the original vision was for a personal text repository....

[Sirtel]

IMO Kindle is a piss-poor platform for reading ebooks these days. I gave up on them several years ago. Of course that's my personal, subjective opinion; I'm well aware many people still love Kindles and their ecosystem.

[John F]

I think the Kindle platform is superior to Kobo's, but I find the Kindle Eink ereader software sub par. I don't use either "platform" and just read on my Kobo ereaders..

[cvkemp]

I have been using Kindle since the early key board days. I have tried other e-ink devices and never really cared for them. Most of my reading is from Kindle Unlimited. Sure there could always be improvements. .But I don't take notes, I seldom look up definitions. I just read the book and return it. Yes I have a number of books I have bought and having them in the Amazon cloud is the best way. I don't keep a database full of books on my computer. I don't have a computer. I read on my Kindle. I have an android phone and tablet. Kindle is great gor my purpose.

[Desertway]

It really is individual. I have an Oasis and a Clara. As we all know, the Kobo UI is vasty superior to Kindle. I mean, it could hardly be worse than the total Kindle UI chaos which is clearly not built for large libraries. And the formatting options of Kobo are also far better. But I DO rely on whispersync for sideloaded send-to-kindle books and sometimes for Audible books as well. Giving that up would be too much of a loss for me. And after 15 years of Kindle, everything is set up in such a way that I don't have to think about UI anymore.

[DiapDealer]

Pay for book, read book, pay for another. It's all I care about these days. Dedicated ebook reading devices have been dead to me for a long time. The amount of time I spend engaged in a UI to begin reading a new book is so minimal to be nearly meaningless to me.

[JSWolf]

What I find wrong with The Kindle is that there is no real customization. Amazon wants you to read with margins that are too large and a line height that is also too large. Also, because we will maybe no longer be able to break Amazon's DRM, we will be stuck with whatever crappy formatting the eBooks have. Most eBooks do have poor formatting. That is for ebooks only sold on Amazon that you want to read.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Also, because we will maybe no longer be able to break Amazon's DRM, we will be stuck with whatever crappy formatting the eBooks have. Most eBooks do have poor formatting.

No, we won't. Because we will be buying our books elsewhere (those of us who are not going to put up with crappy formatting).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

No, we won't. Because we will be buying our books elsewhere (those of us who are not going to put up with crappy formatting).

I left out the part about this being for Amazon exclusive books.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I left out the part about this being for Amazon exclusive books.

Well, I'll not buy them if I can't edit the formatting.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Most eBooks do have poor formatting.

Either you're reading the wrong ebooks, or your definitions of "most" and/or "poor" are wildly different than mine. I can't remember the last ebook I read where the formatting even crossed my mind.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Either you're reading the wrong ebooks, or your definitions of "most" and/or "poor" are wildly different than mine. I can't remember the last ebook I read where the formatting even crossed my mind.

I could give you a list of the things that are usually wrong with the formatting of a lot of eBooks. But that would be a lengthy list.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Either you're reading the wrong ebooks, or your definitions of "most" and/or "poor" are wildly different than mine. I can't remember the last ebook I read where the formatting even crossed my mind.

I've disliked the default formatting of nearly every ebook I've ever read. So I guess our definitions are, in fact, wildly different. Why is that surprising? People's definitions of "poor" are wildly different in almost everything - books, movies, music, food, weather, you name it...

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I could give you a list of the things that are usually wrong with the formatting of a lot of eBooks. But that would be a lengthy list.

Correction: you could give me long list things that tend to conflict with your own exacting personal preferences. I find nothing inherently wrong with that, but that is vastly different from what I would call "wrong with the formatting." It would be nice to hear you own up to the fact that there's a difference between "poorly formatted" and "not the way I prefer it to look." Even just once.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

I've disliked the default formatting of nearly every ebook I've ever read. So I guess our definitions are, in fact, wildly different. Why is that surprising? People's definitions of "poor" are wildly different in almost everything - books, movies, music, food, weather, you name it...

I remember when I read The Martian way back. I had to remove the embedded fonts because they were awful. Free Serif, Free Sans, and Free Mono were embedded. All were way too light for an eInk screen. Free Mono was the worst and the book did make proper use of a monospace font. So in order to be able to read the book, the fonts had to go. Most ebooks with embedded fonts. Back then that was before the release of the Kobo Aura H20 and I was using a Sony Reader.