Amazon discontinuing support for older Kindles in May

[DiapDealer]

I have no doubt that DRM plays a big part, but I also have no doubt that maintaining a 2-format infrastructure and conversion/submission/delivery pipeline carries a pricetag that is not small. The demise of the mobi format was always going to happen regardless of DRM. Devices that can only use mobi were always going to get the axe some time. I'm actually surprised they stayed with it/them for as long as they have.

[Sats]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

I have no doubt that DRM plays a big part, but I also have no doubt that maintaining a 2-format infrastructure and conversion/submission/delivery pipeline carries a pricetag that is not small. The demise of the mobi format was always going to happen regardless of DRM. Devices that can only use mobi were always going to get the axe some time. I'm actually surprised they stayed with it/them for as long as they have.

Which would have been more convincing if they did not still send Mobi (or is it AZW3?) and, apparently, topaz to PC on some new titles. It is seemingly random, but it still happens, while the same book on Android might be KFX. I guess they might ax the other formats once they are done with older devices? We'll see. The older formats on PC, paradoxically, are somewhat harder to DeDRM on newest K4PC versions.

[Regina]

Its not just about the kindles. It is about the Amazon servers. If the servers have to support the kindles, the servers need to enable weak security authorisation. That is a problem for Amazon servers as they become a point of risk. A hacker can imitate a kindle and attack the weak server.

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by Sats

Which would have been more convincing if they did not still send Mobi (or is it AZW3?) and, apparently, topaz to PC on some new titles. It is seemingly random, but it still happens, while the same book on Android might be KFX. I guess they might ax the other formats once they are done with older devices? We'll see. The older formats on PC, paradoxically, are somewhat harder to DeDRM on newest K4PC versions.

Of course that still happens. They're not going be able to eliminate the mobi format until AFTER the devices that can only utilize that format have been phased out. Until mobi cannot be created/uploaded (either on its own or part of a dual format) by Amazon submission tools, and after mobi-only devices have been phased out, there will always be edge cases where mobis get delivered.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

Of course that still happens. They're not going be able to eliminate the mobi format until AFTER the devices that can only utilize that format have been phased out. Until mobi cannot be created/uploaded (either on its own or part of a dual format) by Amazon submission tools, and after mobi-only devices have been phased out, there will always be edge cases where mobis get delivered.

This!

Although Amazon no longer accepts the older formats from publishers there are still a lot of older books that to this day are only available in those formats. Amazon converted all of those they could to KFX but that was not possible for many of them. So even after the old devices that only handle those formats are gone Amazon will still need to support reading them, even in the newest devices. Otherwise previously purchased books will become unreadable.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Regina

Its not just about the kindles. It is about the Amazon servers. If the servers have to support the kindles, the servers need to enable weak security authorisation. That is a problem for Amazon servers as they become a point of risk. A hacker can imitate a kindle and attack the weak server.

That's nonsense. However if it was true, the simple solution is the Browser based downloads and then people transfer via USB. Which only ended (for no good reason) last year.