Kindle Scribe

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by tomsem

It's pretty remarkable that something this obvious escaped into the wild.

Maybe remarkable, but not surprising.

Release in time for the winter holidays was probably a hard requirement and update out of the box is so normalized that it is part of the plan and that update is taking longer than planned for. Oops.

[John F]

Originally Posted by John F

Are you sure about this? ...

Originally Posted by jhowell

I highly doubt it. ...

Originally Posted by tomsem

Yes, I loaded an older personal document, ...

Looks like I was wrong. Thank you for the corrections.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

Maybe remarkable, but not surprising.

Release in time for the winter holidays was probably a hard requirement and update out of the box is so normalized that it is part of the plan and that update is taking longer than planned for. Oops.

I got an immediate update to 5.16.1 as soon as I set it up (4 days ago). I do not know how long that's been available, but there is no WHAT'S NEW notes for it so it appears that's what everyone has had all along (assuming they let the update happen) since Scribe started shipping 30 Nov 2022. There is no way they did not know 5.16.1 had this issue, yet they judged it 'viable' enough to release.

In parallel, the Send To Kindle services were being updated for the ePub and PDF to Print Replica conversions. That seems to have been ready to go, and mostly working as expected (we have some reports that some PDF nav links aren't being picked up, but otherwise the expected data exists in the download).

There was a decision point at launch time. They could have had the services deliver fully functional PDF (without Pen markup) until the issue was resolved, and add the Import and Markup PDF with Pen to the Coming Soon features.

But I'm guessing they did not imagine it could take this long to fix this issue, and here we are 6 weeks later, with no fix.

As a former Software Developer in Test, with some experience with embedded systems like Kindle, I appreciate how unpredictable software development is, no matter how capable the development team or how rigorously best practices are embraced or how simple any given task might appear before you actually start working on it.

But while I do appreciate, it's still difficult to believe we're still waiting.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jackie_w

I'm neither a Kindle user nor a note-taker but I find the user reactions to this Scribe very interesting.

Is it now acceptable to users that a company can take your money today for a device priced as a big screen annotating device whose annotating software isn't currently up to much but should be "better soon" without giving specific details of what "better" and "soon" actually mean?

Is there any company other than Amazon who could get away with this?

If only Amazon had smarter Scribe customers who would not fall for Amazon's nonsense then Amazon would not get away with such tactics of delivering a broken (gap) unfinished product.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by tomsem

we have some reports that some PDF nav links aren't being picked up, but otherwise the expected data exists in the download

There have been reports for a long time in the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) forums about links not working properly in Print Replica books published on Amazon. I took a look at it a while ago and if I recall correctly links tended to be non-functional unless there was nothing to the left of them on the page. So I believe that this is a long standing bug and not specifically related to the Kindle Scribe.

[tomsem]

Some people (like myself) are more curious by disposition than others. The fact that Scribe is unfinished and broken is a plus, not a minus. It's mostly why I got one. It didn't hurt that I waited for a better deal, and even got paid to get rid of a Kindle I didn't like in the process.

I'm even writing up a document detailing all of the flaws I'm finding and the user impact and recommendations for addressing them. Just as if I were still getting paid to be a SDET.

Scribe is the most exciting (one might even say Note-worthy) Kindle in years! Will it succeed, or will it fail? I've got a front row seat. Life is good.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by jhowell

There have been reports for a long time in the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) forums about links not working properly in Print Replica books published on Amazon. I took a look at it a while ago and if I recall correctly links tended to be non-functional unless there was nothing to the left of them on the page. So I believe that this is a long standing bug and not specifically related to the Kindle Scribe.

That makes sense. Perhaps now that Print Replica is about to see a lot more usage, it will be a much higher priority issue than it has been thus far.

It seems it would be trivial to write a test that just compares the number of links in the PDF with the number in the PR. I have to assume they are at least doing that. The hard part is gathering and managing the test data, and deciding how to handle non compliant PDFs.

[rem736]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

If only Amazon had smarter Scribe customers who would not fall for Amazon's nonsense then Amazon would not get away with such tactics of delivering a broken (gap) unfinished product.

have you considered the possibility that users may just want a large screen reading device from amazon and that annotations/notes are hardly a significant reason for the purchase? and if they don't care about writing, they would probably judge this device to be the best kindle ever.

[LDB]

Originally Posted by rem736

have you considered the possibility that users may just want a large screen reading device from amazon and that annotations/notes are hardly a significant reason for the purchase? and if they don't care about writing, they would probably judge this device to be the best kindle ever.

Nailed it. And the much better battery life is another plus.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by LDB

Nailed it. And the much better battery life is another plus.

How many books shown per screen in list view?

[Sonnenfee]

Originally Posted by rem736

have you considered the possibility that users may just want a large screen reading device from amazon and that annotations/notes are hardly a significant reason for the purchase? and if they don't care about writing, they would probably judge this device to be the best kindle ever.

Very well said!
Personally I bought this device only for one purpose: for reading and thats great on the Scribe.
My personal ranking of kindle devices: 1st: Scribe | 2nd: Oasis 3 | 3rd: PW 5 | 4th: PW 4/Oasis 2

For someone who will take annotations/notes with the Scribe I would recommend to wait a bit until this features are more figured out.

[rem736]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

How many books shown per screen in list view?

i count 8, plus a peek of a 9th entry.

[LDB]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

How many books shown per screen in list view?

7 in list and 12 in grid view with it set for large view. Add 1 if you use small view.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by LDB

7 in list and 12 in grid view with it set for large view. Add 1 if you use small view.

Hmm. This is my count:

Standard
List: 8 full plus 1 partial with title showing. Effectively 9.
Grid: 12 full, 4 partial, sometimes identifiable

Large
List: 8 full, 1 sliver with no title showing. Effectively 8.
Grid: Same as Standard

[LDB]

Originally Posted by tomsem

Hmm. This is my count:

Standard
List: 8 full plus 1 partial with title showing. Effectively 9.
Grid: 12 full, 4 partial, sometimes identifiable

Large
List: 8 full, 1 sliver with no title showing. Effectively 8.
Grid: Same as Standard

Interesting, I'm sitting here with mine and in standard view I have 8 and large 7 in list view. In grid view I have 12.2-12.25 in both settings.