Why no SD cards?

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by kaufman

Of all the silly complaints, this is the winner. What exactly would you like the ereader to connect to via bluetooth? A smartwatch? A phone? A car? Noise-canceling headphones?

OK, text to speech was a bust, partly because the user experience sucked and partly because some so-called author spokesgroup and publishers violently opposed it. But it is a desirable feature and after some r&d will eventually work OK. So, it is reasonable to "like to be able to connect" a bluetooth headphone to an e-reader.

Originally Posted by kaufman

Given that its an ereader, what possible use could there be for a bluetooth connection?

Keyboard. This would already be supported by the kernel.

Please note your phrase "what possible use" above. I could live without annotation features at all. But they are there and apparently get used. Given that, a keyboard could come in handy.

Originally Posted by kaufman

Remember before you answer, that any connection is going to require a fair amount of software on the kindle for a really obscure use-case. Its not about turning on the bluetooth, its about all of the software support after it is turned on.

Not necessarily, e.g. keyboard.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by kaufman

Of all the silly complaints, this is the winner. What exactly would you like the ereader to connect to via bluetooth? A smartwatch? A phone? A car? Noise-canceling headphones?

An external bluetooth keyboard would be my guess. It would be nice to be able to connect to your smartphone or tablet and be able to share eBooks as well.

[Rizla]

Dos Amazon ultimately ultimately intend to do away the USB port too? Is its current only essential purpose charging? Amazon patented a Tesla-like wifi charging / power-supply technology a while back. Removing the USB port would reduce costs and wall-in the device.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Dos Amazon ultimately ultimately intend to do away the USB port too? Is its current only essential purpose charging? Amazon patented a Tesla-like wifi charging / power-supply technology a while back. Removing the USB port would reduce costs and wall-in the device.

That would be cool. Also, they should get rid of the headphone jack and make everyone use expensive bluetooth headphones and speakers.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Amazon writes the OS for the Kindles, so in order to use the Bluetooth functionality, they'd have to include a Bluetooth stack in that OS. Deactivating the Bluetooth (at the OS/software level) simplifies the development process.

Even unsupported features increase support costs, because there are always people who call for support on those features, and telling them the feature isn't supported still incurs the costs of the support call.

Finally, it's not active because it's not needed for the Kindle's designed purpose.

From Amazon's perspective the cost/benefit analysis came up in favor of leaving it deactivated.

Well argued.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by kaufman

But all of the fairly obscure use cases for a book reader (SD card, more than 4 GB of storage, TTS, audiobooks) and now this silly one are all just a distraction that do no help to us if Amazon happens to be monitoring this forum.

Really?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by kaufman

But all of the fairly obscure use cases for a book reader (SD card, more than 4 GB of storage, TTS, audiobooks) and now this silly one are all just a distraction that do no help to us if Amazon happens to be monitoring this forum.

If these sorts of options are so obscure, when then did Amazon once upon a time have TTS and have an SD card slot? Why did Amazon update the PW2 to 4GB from 2GB?

Amazon seems to be playing around and not in a good way. Amazon has taken away useful features in place of features that are not so useful like cloud collections instead of allowing collections to be managed from the computer.

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Amazon has taken away useful features in place of features that are not so useful like cloud collections instead of allowing collections to be managed from the computer.

All the more reason for removing the USB port. Charge wirelessy. It's counter-intuitive to organize books from a computer. Isn't the USB port the component that fails the most?

[RDaneel54]

Almost from the day I bought my first Kindle I have had books on it that are not part of the supposed walled garden. And Amazon continues to make it easier to add books from other sources. Currently, by the usb port, by download from their cloud of non-Amazon books emailed to the Kindle, direct from a PC through Wifi by the Send to Kindle option.

If you don't have any Wifi capability, you can get a 3g model to have access to all your content. You can convert from other formats by using Calibre (not an Amazon program, obviously)

I have found these options to be much better than what I had to go through to get books on my Sony PRS-505. Which didn't have an SD card option as I remember. But it was a great reader for what it did.

I am not saying that many folks don't need an SD card option, just that Amazon has come up with many other options.

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If these sorts of options are so obscure, when then did Amazon once upon a time have TTS and have an SD card slot? Why did Amazon update the PW2 to 4GB from 2GB?

Amazon seems to be playing around and not in a good way. Amazon has taken away useful features in place of features that are not so useful like cloud collections instead of allowing collections to be managed from the computer.

I think Amazon moved away from different features for different reasons.

Amazon moved away from TTS because authors and publishers had a cow about it, and it was easier to build readers without the feature than to deal with the support calls when people found out that most bestsellers didn't support it.

As for the SD card slot, the first generation Kindle only had 180 MB of user-accessible storage, so it really benefited from expandable storage. However, since all subsequent models had at least 6 times as much user-accessible storage, Amazon stopped including the SD card slot on new models. New Kindles didn't need one to meet Amazon's design goals.

Replacing computer collections with cloud collections was a deliberate choice to make the Kindle more useful as a standalone device that didn't require a computer.

Kindle exists to enable people to purchase and consume Kindle content; Amazon prioritizes features that better serve those design goals over those that don't.

They're not playing around, they're building a device to serve a purpose. It may not serve your purposes, but that's a different matter entirely.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by Lemurion

Amazon writes the OS for the Kindles, so in order to use the Bluetooth functionality, they'd have to include a Bluetooth stack in that OS.

No, they modify an already existing freely available OS which already has a bluetooth stack.

[kaufman]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Keyboard. This would already be supported by the kernel.

Its an ereader. Its not a notebook. The vast majority of people don't use the built in keyboard at all, and of those that do, the vast majority don't type enough to need anything more than the built in keyboard.

Note that I don't really know that that those statements are true, I just made them up. I believe them to be true, and there is some evidence that a keyboard isn't important because Amazon took out the keyboard.

[kaufman]

Originally Posted by Rizla

Really?

Sure. Because if they are reading this and seeing a bunch of requests for obscure option that they believe no one else would ever want (sd cards, tts audiobooks), then they are going to think that we are all part of the fringe and not representative of the general public. That will make them less likely to pay attention to threads asking for things that would be more generally useful (margins, fonts, etc).

[kaufman]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

No, they modify an already existing freely available OS which already has a bluetooth stack.

Are you really arguing that Amazon should switch to a new OS for their ereader so that they can support bluetooth?

[Rizla]

Originally Posted by kaufman

Sure. Because if they are reading this and seeing a bunch of requests for obscure option that they believe no one else would ever want (sd cards, tts audiobooks), then they are going to think that we are all part of the fringe and not representative of the general public. That will make them less likely to pay attention to threads asking for things that would be more generally useful (margins, fonts, etc).

So you think we should stop speculating and discussing features we want / don't want because you think Amazon will read them, decide we're all marginal fringe folk, and therefore ignore all future opinions expressed herein. Right then. Let's all stop.

And Amazon, if you're listening, please dump the USB port and introduce wireless charging. You know it makes sense, and it really does.