Amazon discontinuing support for older Kindles in May

[Sats]

Originally Posted by jhowell

Amazon gradually improved the conversion of books to KFX for years and were able to handle most of the back catalog. For some reason they stopped doing that a while ago. Perhaps they reached a point of diminishing returns.

I agree that they could just do something simple at this point such as ignoring unhandled formatting or rasterizing books that do not convert properly into fixed-layout. On the other hand the code to handle the older formats is already in place and it likely costs them next to nothing to keep it that way.

I defer to you knowledge in this regard. I guess my bias (that for me books are mostly just text+pictures and formatting be yeeted) shows here.
It is indeed often cheaper to keep a system than it is to dismantle it, if it can be kept unchanged.

Originally Posted by jhowell

It depends on the reading platform. Amazon recently added some new comic formatting options to KFX. Platforms that do not support those fall back to receiving older formats, another reason for them to keep those formats around for a while. (They could produce different KFX variants for those platforms but that does not appear to be done currently except in regard to image quality.)

Odd that their K4PC was not supporting those new formatting options, then. I guess they were already getting tired of it.

Edit:

Originally Posted by davedeacon

A few responses:
Amazon doesn't say it can't update the old devices does it?

I was specifically replying to the quote here. I do not believe it is from Amazon, no, and i find it ... odd. I am also pretty sure they have "backdoors" into old (well, all) devices, assuming they felt like messing with them and they were online.

Originally Posted by davedeacon

I find it hard to believe publisher are demanding they stop supporting pre-2012 devices because of DRM concerns. And even if they did, Amazon could simply not make those books available in their store and simply put a message "not compatible with any of your devices".

I doubt the publishers are demanding much (aside from textbook and Indian publishers that do demand stronger DRM). But when calculating profit, I think it might be better on average for Amazon to be able to claim "higher security". Spin-positive, so to speak, in addition to decreasing maintenance burden.

Originally Posted by davedeacon

Think you've missed the point somewhat when you talk about old monitors. Same for toasters, kettles, microwaves etc.

Monitor was a bit of an aside. I did have 2011 tablet and laptop until 2024-2025 though. And only my carelessness killed them.

Originally Posted by davedeacon

I'm sure devices exist which run on software now rather than being simple circuits but they're not going to require updates to keep up with the latest bread, water etc in the way that devices which exist purely to consume software/content do.

And that is why I like books in .txt format. No updates necessary. Or basic html/markdown, if going for fancy. Not that I get such often these days.

Originally Posted by davedeacon

I'm like you - keep stuff going until it literally doesn't turn on. I've used old windows laptops with broken monitors as linux file servers; I've happily used phone roms such as cyanogenmod when Google stopped supporting the phones etc.

I am not that diligent, alas. Still, I used most of my devices until they failed, aside, I think, from portable consoles.

Originally Posted by davedeacon

But the market doesn't work that way. You'd end up paying more for your 2026 Kindle if Amazon were forced to endlessly support every last Kindle just because it was technically possible to do so.

That is true. It would have been nice if they would say "we'll support it for 5 (10) years and then release last update that untethers it and makes it into an open Linux machine", but I guess there are no incentives for that.

[davedeacon]

Originally Posted by Yapyap

(I guess this is a bit different as it’s not devices directly interacting with internet, but my keyboard is from 2001, PC speakers are around the same era, I still use a HP LaserJet 1010 bought in 2003, and my PC monitor is from 2009. All this is just to say that it’s not necessarily everyone’s expectation that “tech” should just get replaced every few years.)

It's different because a laptop is a general purpose piece of kit - they used to be called "IBM PC Compatibles" - which isn't restricted - at point of sale, and by design - to a single software provider.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Yapyap

...

So last year I fiddled with it a bit, replaced the old 300 GB HDD with a 256 GB SSD, added a RAM stick, replaced the battery and put Linux Mint on it. It works. I mean right now it has just one purpose (my elderly mother likes to listen to the parliament sessions so it’s the kitchen device to run the stream on the browser when she’s cooking), but it seems quite useable. *shrugs* (I guess there’s the point to be made that it stopped getting Windows updates many, many years ago, but the laptop itself works and is fit for purpose.)

...

And people can still use thire Kindles to sideload?

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by davedeacon

I find it hard to believe publisher are demanding they stop supporting pre-2012 devices because of DRM concerns. And even if they did, Amazon could simply not make those books available in their store and simply put a message "not compatible with any of your devices".

It's not the publishers. It's Amazon, because they don't want people taking their exclusive content out of their ecosystem, including uploading it to illegal sites. The reason I'm sure about that is because it's all part of a pattern - they've been closing the holes for DRM removal for a long while now. Disabling the old pre-KFX Kindles is part of this pattern, not an individual act.

First they stopped all the old versions of the PC app from downloading newly published books (those versions can still download books published before the cut-off date perfectly well). Then they ditched the download & transfer, which allowed people to download copies of their purchased books to their computers. Then they disabled the old versions of the Android app which were used for DRM removal back then. Next, they improved the DRM for their eink Kindles. Then for the PC app. Again for the eink Kindles (because the previous version got decrypted). A few MR members predicted that the next, obvious step would be to disable all the old, pre-KFX Kindle models... and voilà, here it is! I'm pretty sure that the next step will be disabling the PC app altogether, because it can still be used to remove the DRM.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Sats

Odd that their K4PC was not supporting those new formatting options, then. I guess they were already getting tired of it.

Amazon has been hit or miss in keeping the PC app up-to-date with KFX features. At one point it lagged while Amazon was pushing the use of the Kindle for Android app under WSA (Windows Subsystem for Android). After Microsoft killed that approach they updated the app again for a while, but now it has fallen behind again.

It is likely they correctly see it as being used more for DRM-removal than for reading these days, leading to the apparent sunsetting of it as a "legacy" app.

[davedeacon]

Originally Posted by Sats

It would have been nice if they would say "we'll support it for 5 (10) years and then release last update that untethers it and makes it into an open Linux machine", but I guess there are no incentives for that.

Well, to be honest this is a perfectly sensible idea. Maybe not Linux - I'm not sure what OS, if any, the Kindles have; it could be one of those "just enough operating system" systems -but a selling point/legal requirement could be "if you're selling a product that's linked to a proprietary marketplace and this connection is severed at end of life you have to make it easy/possible for people to continue to use the device" by providing a tool/api/local webserver which allows you to manipulate books yourself.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by davedeacon

Well, to be honest this is a perfectly sensible idea. Maybe not Linux - I'm not sure what OS, if any, the Kindles have; it could be one of those "just enough operating system" systems -but a selling point/legal requirement could be "if you're selling a product that's linked to a proprietary marketplace and this connection is severed at end of life you have to make it easy/possible for people to continue to use the device" by providing a tool/api/local webserver which allows you to manipulate books yourself.

But Amazon doesn't want us to do that. They want us to depend on them for everything - to buy a new Kindle from them and to buy books only from them. It doesn't make sense for them to allow us to be independent from them - where would be the profit in that? Captive customer base is what's profitable.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by davedeacon

Maybe not Linux - I'm not sure what OS, if any, the Kindles have

It has been well known for a very long time that kindles run linux. In fact it is debian based and debian libraries an executables from the matcing debian release for the correct architecture will run on a jailbroken kindle.

Unfortunately only kernels signed by amazon will boot. In addition the bootloader was locked some years ago.

[Sats]

Originally Posted by j.p.s

It has been well known for a very long time that kindles run linux. In fact it is debian based and debian libraries an executables from the matcing debian release for the correct architecture will run on a jailbroken kindle.

And vice versa, most of the Kindle firmware executables would run on emulated Debian well enough, until they try to access hardware-specific data, at least. Unfortunately, one needs at least valid serial number and board ID to register with Amazon, and I think newer Kindles use some variety of hardware attestation.

[Yapyap]

Originally Posted by John F

And people can still use thire Kindles to sideload?

Yes, certainly.

It’s just that over the last few days I’ve seen frustratingly many people (on various social media sites - I don’t mean here!) pretty much mocking people for being unhappy, because it’s old tech and “it’s old enough to have a driver’s licence” and who in their right mind would still use technology from 2010-2012 and we’re apparently all meant to just replace anything every 3-4 years or whatever, especially as Kindles are “so cheap” and you can just trade in the old one (well, no, not all of us get that option!) etc.

And some of these people who have been unhappy are unhappy because they don’t sideload - they’ve used their old Kindles for Kindle Unlimited or (with US libraries) Libby access, neither of which is easily available with sideloading (and both of these are cases where DRM actually has a reason, and where one really shouldn’t be encouraged to remove it, I suppose).

[davedeacon]

Originally Posted by Yapyap

just replace anything every 3-4 years or whatever

"Whatever" doing a lot of heavy lifting there. 14-19 years would be more accurate.

[JSWolf]

These days, not everyone using an old Kindle can afford to buy a new one. Prices have gone up on essentials . This is a very bad time for Amazon to be forcing people who still use an old Kindle to have to buy a new one. Amazon should have waited until things stabilized. Amazon doesn't care about their customers. If they did, they'd not be doing this now.