Touch Kobo Touch Firmware 2.0

[Danger]

@kumaryu... WOW.... I honestly can't say what I am thinking for fear of getting permanently kicked off this forum...

[volpo]

I've been trying to come up with a reason that so many 'identical' devices react so differently to these 'updates'. The only thing that I can come up with is (and I have absolutely no knowledge that this is true) that the manufacturer is not making identical devices. That there is some substitution of 'workalike' parts and that there are many different versions of the device on the component level. This for some reason is causing software errors that no one could ever predict. At the very least developers should be using actual KT samples and not developers 'environments' that mimic the KT (that's not to say that they don't but how else could one explain the rainbow of results generated by each 'update')

[robko]

Originally Posted by mXb

Instead of forcing feeding us the updates why don't Kobo "offer" the updates.

Would a system like this work ?

While I would agree that it would be nice to have that option, I can understand why they don't. Kobo customer service has a hard enough time with only 1 firmware in the wild, trying to support multiple versions with different interfaces would be very difficult. I would think any company would have a challenge with this, and Kobo's front line CS is far from the top of the heap.

[WillysJeepMan]

Originally Posted by mXb

Instead of forcing feeding us the updates why don't Kobo "offer" the updates.

In that way the adventurous ones can download them and try them out straight away, raising any probs they find.

The cowards like er... me can then wait to decide whether or not to dive in..

Kobo should also provide an easy way of downloading the previous update(s).

Would a system like this work ?

No, a system like that would be a nightmare to maintain. As modifications are made to the firmware to support features and fix bugs, it is important to get everyone who is accessing the Kobo bookstore with the same device to be running the same firmware.


I'm still running 1.9.10 firmware on my Kobo Touch. I've had absolutely no problems, no ads, clean homescreen. But then again, I just wanted a quality standalone ereader and wasn't interested in buying ebooks from any store. I never connected to their bookstore.

I understand the dislike for the ads and other marketing hooks that have been introduced with newer firmware versions, but I'm not sure that there is an alternative eInk reader that doesn't have those things.

[VirgoGirl]

It seems that posters here are firmly in 2 camps: those for advertising as it keeps the company going, thus enabling the future of our Kobo readers, and those against (like me) as it just bl**dy annoying to have advertising and marketing shoved down our throats.

The way I see it is this: if you want me to buy your books, make them (significantly) cheaper than paper books. Don't charge me $12 plus tax for something you don't have to print on paper, bind with glue, store in a warehouse or on a shelf in store and pay overhead to keep. Why on earth would I pay that $12 when all you're doing sticking it on a server and handing out copies? Particularly when often the paperback is $5 or $9.

Because you think you can, and many people will pay it.

And, if I *do* buy a book from you, don't squirrel it away some where hidden on my HD and make me go back to the store and redownload it as a stand alone epub. Send it to my computer as an actual book file, so I can add it on my micro sd card. (My only experience with Kobo books have been the free ones, which they don't offer as stand alone epubs)

This is why I've bought from Amazon, they send it down to my laptop as a file, not hiding it in gibberish, and I reformat through Calibre to epub. Even the free books.

Putting "Discover" and "Wishlist" and whatever else the links were to get me to part with cash on my main page where they clutter up the place will *not* get me to buy anything from you. It just annoys me.

The bottom line is, really the bottom line. If you want me to buy your books, make them cheap. No amount of advertising, customizing to my supposed tastes, having me create useless wishlists will make me spend $.01 on a book if I think it's too expensive.
Spend your time making the device work the way you said it should, they way we'd like it to (I don't hear customers clamouring for more ways to spend their money on books), they way we thought it would when I spent $150 CND plus 13% HST on the reader.

Disagree all you want with what I've said, but, as a user and customer, I have a voice that should be heard.

[Danger]

For those interested in how popular the KT is and the potential these problems would have had for people... Let's just say if they had all upgraded as soon as the upgrade came out and 2% of them had bricking issues... well check out my post and guess for yourself how many would have been affected:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...=184751&page=2

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by WillysJeepMan

I understand the dislike for the ads and other marketing hooks that have been introduced with newer firmware versions, but I'm not sure that there is an alternative eInk reader that doesn't have those things.

Sony T1 doesn't have ads.
Pocketbook 622 doesn't have ads.

And both don't cost much more than the Kobo Touch did cost when I bought it - when it was still ad-free.

[Danger]

Originally Posted by VirgoGirl

It seems that posters here are firmly in 2 camps: those for advertising as it keeps the company going, thus enabling the future of our Kobo readers, and those against (like me) as it just bl**dy annoying to have advertising and marketing shoved down our throats.

The way I see it is this: if you want me to buy your books, make them (significantly) cheaper than paper books. Don't charge me $12 plus tax for something you don't have to print on paper, bind with glue, store in a warehouse or on a shelf in store and pay overhead to keep. Why on earth would I pay that $12 when all you're doing sticking it on a server and handing out copies? Particularly when often the paperback is $5 or $9.

Because you think you can, and many people will pay it.

Fortunately this is one thing I can't hold against Kobo. This is what the publishers (the big 6) have set up. Basically they have told all those selling their books, either sell it at this price or you can't sell it at all. I think Kobo has done a pretty good job in this are where they ARE allowed to give discounts on those books from publishers that aren't part of the Big 6.

See here:
Antitrust Primer for the Publishing Price Fixing Lawsuit
DOJ Lawsuit Update: Where Windowing Becomes Important
Death of the agency model?
DOJ suing Apple over ebooks.
Barnes & Noble claims price fixing settlement will raise e-book prices
Amazon/B&N/Kobo can once again discount ebooks from the 3 Publishers starting June 10

[MacEachaidh]

Originally Posted by VirgoGirl

It seems that posters here are firmly in 2 camps: those for advertising as it keeps the company going, thus enabling the future of our Kobo readers, and those against (like me) as it just bl**dy annoying to have advertising and marketing shoved down our throats.

I'm sure that everyone on these threads wants to see the Kobo continue and prosper, but the flaw in the argument of the advertising apologists is that there's absolutely nothing to say that these changes to the Home screen are required for Kobo to flourish, and no guarantee that having them on our Home pages will achieve that end. The claims are doubtless well-intentioned, but they're ungrounded motherhood statements, and implying that people who don't want advertising on their Home screen don't want Kobo to be successful is an appeal to emotive bias, like calling an opinion you disagree with undemocratic.

[DNSB]

A couple of nits I've noticed since the upgrade.

1. The books displayed on the home page move around when I power cycle or paper clip reset my KT.

2. After I power off the KT, the power button does not respond instantly, either I flip it multiple times or hold it until the LED lights up.

3. The only device font on my KT that displays accented characters is the GothicMB101 font which is not my favourite font. Using David Weber who is fond of accented characters in his Bahzell series of books as an example, I get names showing as "Sh g " rather than Shīgū, "Toman k" rather than Tomanāk (hoping that the accents make it into the message. I sideloaded a couple of fonts to test and CharisSIL shows the accents but is a bit darker than I like while other fonts I've tried look very light on the KT's display.

I liked the Georgia font and have to ask WHY THE expletive deleted Kobo dropped most of the accented characters from their fonts.

[Suzanna]

I'm trying to find all these ads that are plastered all over the 2.0 home screen, and sorry, I'm just not seeing it. I do see three links that lead me to different aspects of the Kobo bookstore - links that are easily avoided - but no ads.

Mountain ... molehill.

I do find it amusing that so many people want to go back to having the shortlist on the home screen. The outrage when Kobo rolled that carousel out ... yeah, I'm not surprised they removed it.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by Suzanna

I do find it amusing that so many people want to go back to having the shortlist on the home screen. The outrage when Kobo rolled that carousel out ... yeah, I'm not surprised they removed it.

Am I being ignored in this thread or what?

People hated the carousel because it introduced advertising to a formerly ad-free device.

They switched to shortlist to avoid the ads.

They became used to the shortlist being on the homescreen.

Now it's gone.

"People be mad."

End of story.

Don't you see the advertising aspect of the homescreen? Three links to advertising opposed to one advertising carousel that could be set to shortlist thus hiding the advertising completely...

It's not that you can't avoid those links. Still it's annoying that they don't use the space for what's on my reader instead.

Why not at least separating "Reading" and "Discover" with two homescreens, like I said, that offer links to your content in Reading and links to things you may want to get in Discover?

Plus advertising takes up a lot of space in the internal memory, too. So it would be even better to be able to opt out of advertising on the Kobo. But at least it should be really separated from the reading experience and not take up space that could be used for other stuff.

And since there are two homescreen carousel tabs, why not completly switch the homescreen. I guess that would even help to interest people in trying Discover, people that are now to annoyed to even consider looking at them let alone buying books that are recommended that way...

[The Terminator]

Originally Posted by JD Gumby

Strange. On my desktop, there was the small advertising pane on the right-hand side of the library screen. You didn't need to click to get away from a full page of spam in order to see your books like you have to do now...

That hasn't been there for the last two updates.

Why can't you just be happy? They have said that it does not track what books you have side-loaded, only books you have bought, which they know you have bought anyway.

[Suzanna]

I'm not ignoring you at all, Jaden. I originally had a lot more written, but deleted much of it for the sake of brevity.

Yes, switching to the shortlist solved the complaint about advertising on the homescreen on 1.9.17, and I, too, liked having it there. Many people, however, still complained about it. We remember all the threads about advertising on the homescreen and the advice to switch the list to your shortlist. Many didn't like that advice and complained about it anyway because they felt it was too much work on their part to have to take that extra step to avoid Kobo's "advertising".

A lot of Kobo's customers sync their devices wirelessly or through the Kobo desktop software. I don't have numbers, of course, but I'd hazard a guess that most of their customers use kepubs and don't sideload their content. I have one sister who's an avid reader and that's what she does. (Well, I have two sisters who are avid readers, but one uses Kobo and the other Sony.) She likes the convenience of syncing directly with Kobo and can't be bothered with downloading the adobe epubs and messing around with Calibre. For all those customers, the device automatically reset the carousel to "recommended reads" *every single time* they synced it and they'd have to reset it to show their shortlist. That's advertising. A link? Seriously? No advertising is loaded onto the device because of a link. It's only loaded onto the device if one chooses to click that link.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by Suzanna

I'm not ignoring you at all, Jaden. I originally had a lot more written, but deleted much of it for the sake of brevity.

Who was it who said (s)he didn't have time to write something short? I sometimes feel that's me (plus English being my second language it's sometimes hard to be brief).

I wasn't all that serios, of course.

Yes, switching to the shortlist solved the complaint about advertising on the homescreen on 1.9.17, and I, too, liked having it there. Many people, however, still complained about it. We remember all the threads about advertising on the homescreen and the advice to switch the list to your shortlist. Many didn't like that advice and complained about it anyway because they felt it was too much work on their part to have to take that extra step to avoid Kobo's "advertising".

Oh, I remember those as well, and I remember that I often gave the advice to switch to shortlist. I also remember some people had the problem that the selection didn't stick.

Also it still didn't stop Kobo from loading more advertising to your Touch, even though you didn't see it - it took up space.

And it's frustrating to buy an ad-free device and have ads a few months later.

A lot of Kobo's customers sync their devices wirelessly or through the Kobo desktop software. I don't have numbers, of course, but I'd hazard a guess that most of their customers use kepubs and don't sideload their content.

I actually like the KePub format, so if I buy from Kobo, I use the Desktop to sync.

Otherwise I sideload.

I have one sister who's an avid reader and that's what she does. (Well, I have two sisters who are avid readers, but one uses Kobo and the other Sony.) She likes the convenience of syncing directly with Kobo and can't be bothered with downloading the adobe epubs and messing around with Calibre. For all those customers, the device automatically reset the carousel to "recommended reads" *every single time* they synced it and they'd have to reset it to show their shortlist. That's advertising. A link? Seriously? No advertising is loaded onto the device because of a link. It's only loaded onto the device if one chooses to click that link.

Well, yes, it's advertising. And the small covers you see? They are downloaded to your device.

And now there's even more that's downloaded to my device. I know that because I don't have WiFi at home, but have a lot of books with covers and descriptions on my Touch now (after sync and update). Not previews, those I'd have to download, but 20+ covers and descriptions in Discover alone take a lot of space... And there's the Recommended and Similar...

It's not that I personally care that much - but I think that separating the homescreens would be a good solution.

But first, of course, they should fix the slow epub page turns and the fonts.