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Old 10-21-2011, 02:04 PM   #91
tomsem
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There's a huge difference between those products though.

The Kindle Keyboard (3) is by far the most successful product Amazon has ever sold (not just Kindles).

The Kindle DX is the least popular Kindle product they've sold.

From the point of view of Amazon and the publishers, supporting the Kindle Keyboard should be a no brainer.

They'll instantly get a HUGE market for the new format, and that's the important thing - not whether or not people "upgrade".

Saying to the vast majority of Kindle owners:

"This book will work on your device, but it wont look very good" is not a great sale tactic.
I agree it would be a tremendous upgrade. Even if it didn't include SVG or embedded audio, or fixed page layout. Just the improved CSS capabilities would be great. Especially if books in one's existing library were upgraded to the new format at no charge.

Again, this is where kindlegen's archiving of source files comes into play, since they can just run that same source through the new kindlegen automatically and the same book will now have improved layout (if it was ePub source).
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Old 10-21-2011, 02:31 PM   #92
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I guess it confuses me that Amazon primarily is a book seller, but they choose a format incompatible with every other device out there (other than multi-purpose tablets and smartphones with the Kindle app).
Because they chose the format before the competing one (ePub) existed, and there were very few other devices.
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Old 10-21-2011, 03:33 PM   #93
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What I see happening is that publishers will make their eBooks in ePub and then convert that to KF8. I don't see many eBooks using KF8 exclusive features as it would mean even more work for the publishers.
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Old 10-21-2011, 04:37 PM   #94
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I am happy to sit and wait for "Alf plus in a can" for de-infestation purposes.
^This. And if our friends at Alf's Place can't do anything, then I will have to buy my books someplace else.

I wonder if they will offer a choice of formats when buying/downloading a book, .azw or .kf8.
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Old 10-21-2011, 04:53 PM   #95
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I wonder if they will offer a choice of formats when buying/downloading a book, .azw or .kf8.
No chance. But if you kept an old version of Kindle for Mac/PC around, you could probably arrange to download the Mobipocket version.
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Old 10-21-2011, 05:02 PM   #96
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Two observations about people's current = latest assumption and the demands of the format being supported:

First, Amazon's* still selling the KK doesn't make it the latest model even though it is, as people are saying, "current."

It's possible they're being unintentionally vague about the distinction, but I'd suspect them of being cagey before assuming they hadn't carefully thought through what they chose to say to customers about a change in format and backward incompatibilty.

Second, the leap in power and capabilities seems more pronounced between the new Kindles and the KK than between the KK and the K2/DX. Am I right about that?

We all know Amazon will continue to make new books available to all Kindles, especially to their most popular model to date, which they happen to be selling even now. After all, the very first Kindle was designed to be a funnel for exclusive content and I can't see them blocking potentially profitable versions of that funnel until they must.

But why would KF8 be significantly easier to run on the K3 than the K2/DX? Apart from having more RAM and being able to play audio content, isn't the K3 closer to the K2 than it is to the newest generation? If so, why would Amazon disinclude the Kindle 2 if their most important business is still selling content and both iterations could be made to handle the new format?

I agree it's possible they'll fully support the Kindle Keyboard with KF8, but somehow, I wonder. Given the subtle ambiguity of their statements so far and the similarities between the K2 and the K3, it's also possible they might not offer the features of KF8 for the KK but will make post-KF8 purchases on all previous Kindles as painless as possible, and will focus on conveying the painlessness of it all to Kindle Keyboard owners.

Given the size and immediate antecedent of the KK's user base, I wouldn't expect Amazon to be anything less than attentive and even fulsome to KK customers. But I wouldn't be surprised if there turned out to be little difference between K2 and KK compatibility with KF8, all public relations aside.

======================

* Formulation looks ungrammatical until you notice the gerund.

Last edited by Prestidigitweeze; 10-21-2011 at 05:30 PM.
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Old 10-21-2011, 05:03 PM   #97
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Not too fussed with the HTML side of things - some extra tags are fine. Actual CSS will be quite nice tho . I've never understood why people want JS, tho I guess a JS+SVG combo does have its place for kids books or whatever - I'd still hope it would be an extremely limited subset.

The only real worry is the storage it will be in. I am optimistic that the support will also be released for K3 - but I have a nagging suspicion about the lack of 'x-ray' from the K3's latest firmware - since this format would be ideal for dealing with that.

And on a lesser note : I'd love to know the missing numbers from the scheme, I cant help but envisage some guy tinkering away at a TeX/dvi render.

Last edited by Serpentine; 10-21-2011 at 05:05 PM.
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Old 10-21-2011, 05:18 PM   #98
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Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze View Post
But why would KF8 be significantly easier to run on the K3 than the K2/DX? Apart from having more RAM and being able to play audio content, isn't the K3 closer to the K2 than it is to the newest batch?
The software on the Kindle (the new, non-touch version) is very similar to the software on the Kindle Keyboard.

The only difference is the on-screen keyboard and some additional menu entries to accommodate things that you need the keyboard for (e.g. changing the text size).

Hardware wise, the newer Kindle models do have a newer processor, but I can't think of anything in the new format that wouldn't work on Kindle Keyboard.

The Kindle Keyboard has a very powerful web browser that is able to support far more HTML5, CSS, SVG and JavaScript features than KF8 plans to support.

I think that could be the key - I wouldn't be surprised if KF8 used the WebKit browser found on Kindle Keyboard/Kindle (non-touch) and Kindle Touch.

Last edited by Daveoc64; 10-21-2011 at 05:23 PM.
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Old 10-21-2011, 05:19 PM   #99
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And on a lesser note : I'd love to know the missing numbers from the scheme, I cant help but envisage some guy tinkering away at a TeX/dvi render.
OK, NOW we're onto something! That'd be awesome! :-)
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Old 10-21-2011, 05:37 PM   #100
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Hardware wise, the newer Kindle models do have a newer processor, but . . . [t]he Kindle Keyboard has a very powerful web browser that is able to support far more HTML5, CSS, SVG and JavaScript features than KF8 plans to support. . . . I wouldn't be surprised if KF8 used the WebKit browser found on Kindle Keyboard/Kindle (non-touch) and Kindle Touch.
I really hope you're right about that.

I've never used the K2, which is why I was unaware its 3G network capabilities were far more limited than the KK's, with its ability to handle Wifi and web surfing.

Last edited by Prestidigitweeze; 10-22-2011 at 12:14 AM.
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Old 10-21-2011, 05:54 PM   #101
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I guess it confuses me that Amazon primarily is a book seller, but they choose a format incompatible with every other device out there

Two points to consider on this:

1- As pointed out, epub did not exist when amazon was designing Kindle and they started to build their product catalog. So it is factually incorrect to say they chose an incompatible format: Rather, they chose not to entrust control of a critical value-add element of their existing business to somebody else when epub was annointed as a "standard" and chose not to *pay* adobe for the "privilege" of being a generic client of *their* propietary ebook ecosystem. Note the fate of Sony, who before Kindle had the most mature ebook system on the planet and gave up *their* proprietary ecosystem to join the herd.

2- Amazon is primarily a bookseller, yes; but their goal isn't merely to sell a few extra ebooks today. Rather, they play for the long haul so they don't settle for selling a book and instead use the books and the gadgets to sell *themselves* to the consumers. By selling consumers on their entire ecosystem (gadgets, apps, cloud services, whispernet, customer support, etc) they sell ebooks now and tomorrow. Another way to put is they aren't interested in securing a short term ebook sales relationship as much as in securing loyal customers for a long-term relationship. Not everybody wants to make such a long term commitment, which is fine. Different strokes and all that.

One size does not fit all, nor does one business model suit all companies or all buyers.
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Old 10-21-2011, 05:57 PM   #102
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I've never used the K2, which is why I was unaware its 3G network capabilities were far more limited than the KK's, with its ability to handle Wifi and web surfing.
How is the K2's 3G network capabilities more limited than the KK's 3G capabilities? This is the first I've heard of it. You can websurf on the K2's 3G network. The webkit browser on the KK is newer (and a little faster) than the K2's browser, but I've never found anything that can be done with the KK's browser over 3G that can't be done with the K2's browser over 3G.

Unless you're simply referring to the K2's lack of Wifi? And then, well... yeah.
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Old 10-21-2011, 06:24 PM   #103
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No chance. But if you kept an old version of Kindle for Mac/PC around, you could probably arrange to download the Mobipocket version.
Am running 1.80 now but have some older versions saved. If needed they can also be had from old version sites.
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Old 10-21-2011, 06:29 PM   #104
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It wouldn't take much for Amazon to simply block old versions of the Kindle Apps (I'm surprised they don't do this already).

There's going to be a time when they have to do that - for compatibility with new formats or DRM.

The updates are free, so there's no reason for the user to not upgrade (outside of cracking the DRM) - not exactly something Amazon would want to enable.
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Old 10-21-2011, 06:58 PM   #105
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It wouldn't take much for Amazon to simply block old versions of the Kindle Apps (I'm surprised they don't do this already).

There's going to be a time when they have to do that - for compatibility with new formats or DRM.
Not necessarily. Especially if they're moving to a system (as it seems they are) that transparently delivers the proper format to the proper device/app. The DRM scheme has already changed since the K1 came out, but you can still get brand new books delivered to those K1's with the old DRM that's based on a device PID. I don't see much difference between that and K4PC version 1.0-beta still chugging along. They haven't had any trouble maintaining and preparing for backward-compatibility yet, so I see no need for them to suddenly start. The new features alone are often enough reason to get people to upgrade all on their own... so there's really no reason to force those upgrades with a heavy-handed approach.
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