Older Kindles losing store access in August

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

So basically, Amazon took the only format that handles things pretty well and made a new format that sux poopoo and made it their primary format. Well done Amazon.

I blame Apple for giving Amazon really awful, "inside the walled garden" ideas.

Of course, I blame Apple for lots of things, so you have to take my comments with a grain of salt. Ever since, way back in the early days of the iPad, I bought a $1600 iPad, first-gen, that was supported for about 3 months AFTER I bought it and then turned into a big-ass, expensive doorstop when--typical Apple--the iOS was no longer supported, I have not had much luv for Apple.

I've seen what they (Apple) do to my clients, with iOSes, software, nuking programs that people love/adore, etc. all in the name of "selling more units" (what was that program, Garage Band or something like that?) and...no matter how vexed I get with Amazon, I know that they supported that damn K2 for what, 14 or 15 years now? From 2008-ish to now? Even though it was a relatively cheap device?

Hell, I'd rather deal with the annoyance of having to make KF7 versions of books and all that, and know that out there, all those hundreds of thousands or even millions of people, aren't being abandoned left, right and center, just so Amazon can earn $100 on a tablet or Kindle, than have what to me would be the luxury of NOT making KF7 book versions and thinking about everybody that has to buy a new device, that may not have the dough.

Granted, Kindles don't cost what iPads did. No argument. But...a Fire is a pretty remarkable tablet, for very, very VERY little money and I'm glad that even the very first one works yet, happily clumping along. Just...I hate seeing Amazon's book formats go the way of iAuthor and frankly, they should look at WHY Apple abandoned iAuthor. Lessons to be learnt there.


Hitch

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I blame Apple for giving Amazon really awful, "inside the walled garden" ideas.

Of course, I blame Apple for lots of things, so you have to take my comments with a grain of salt. Ever since, way back in the early days of the iPad, I bought a $1600 iPad, first-gen, that was supported for about 3 months AFTER I bought it and then turned into a big-ass, expensive doorstop when--typical Apple--the iOS was no longer supported, I have not had much luv for Apple.

I've seen what they (Apple) do to my clients, with iOSes, software, nuking programs that people love/adore, etc. all in the name of "selling more units" (what was that program, Garage Band or something like that?) and...no matter how vexed I get with Amazon, I know that they supported that damn K2 for what, 14 or 15 years now? From 2008-ish to now? Even though it was a relatively cheap device?

Hell, I'd rather deal with the annoyance of having to make KF7 versions of books and all that, and know that out there, all those hundreds of thousands or even millions of people, aren't being abandoned left, right and center, just so Amazon can earn $100 on a tablet or Kindle, than have what to me would be the luxury of NOT making KF7 book versions and thinking about everybody that has to buy a new device, that may not have the dough.

Granted, Kindles don't cost what iPads did. No argument. But...a Fire is a pretty remarkable tablet, for very, very VERY little money and I'm glad that even the very first one works yet, happily clumping along. Just...I hate seeing Amazon's book formats go the way of iAuthor and frankly, they should look at WHY Apple abandoned iAuthor. Lessons to be learnt there.


Hitch

How do you handle differences in iBooks/Books? The iPad one was a terrible hardware design. It was underpowered with not enough memory. Even with some programs that were supposed to run on whatever iOS the iPad 1 used, some would crash or just not run.

You did however break the cardinal rule regarding Apple. NEVER EVER BUY ANY 1ST GEN THING FROM APPLE AS IT'S GARBAGE! Even when it works, it still doesn't work. The AirPods did work sort of. The battery was way way too underpowered.

iAuthor is gone. How do we get rid of Vellum? How do we get rid of KFX? How do we get rid of the wide margins and wide line height Amazon forced on Kindle users? How do we get rid of publisher staff that have no idea how to make will formatted eBooks?

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

How do you handle differences in iBooks/Books? The iPad one was a terrible hardware design. It was underpowered with not enough memory. Even with some programs that were supposed to run on whatever iOS the iPad 1 used, some would crash or just not run.

You did however break the cardinal rule regarding Apple. NEVER EVER BUY ANY 1ST GEN THING FROM APPLE AS IT'S GARBAGE! Even when it works, it still doesn't work. The AirPods did work sort of. The battery was way way too underpowered.

iAuthor is gone. How do we get rid of Vellum? How do we get rid of KFX? How do we get rid of the wide margins and wide line height Amazon forced on Kindle users? How do we get rid of publisher staff that have no idea how to make will formatted eBooks?

Dude, I own Booknook. It was what, 2011? 2010, 2012, somewhere in there? I couldn't very well ignore the first-gen iPad. I wish I coulda, but...people thought iBooks was gonna be the next Amazon, and they wanted the books tested on it...I really had very little choice.

I should add that my 2nd iPad was a used 5th-gen or 10th-gen or something like that, for about $185.00. Or maybe $225. Either way, I feel pretty good that I got decent value for it and more importantly, Apple got Zero of my ducats. I can't control what the seller does with my money, as the moment the transaction is done, it's their money not mine, but at least I didn't bloody pay Apple and increase their avarice for device-buying fools.

Vis: iBooks versus Books, versus iPad versus Books Reader. I don't. My attitude is that it's meant to work on the iPad in the F/K/A (formerly known as) iBooks app. If it doesn't work in both, (Books Reader on ipad, Books Reader on Mac), they get to choose WHERE they want it perfect, versus where they don't. We'll do what we can, but I won't drive myself to drink over it.

I learnt that lesson a long time ago, when people would come in, get their eBooks, open them on some obscure, I-never-heard-of-it eReader that they downloaded from Freebie-Apps-R-Us.

We design for Amazon, B&N, KoboBooks, and iBooks (iPad). I don't guarantee Hinky Reader #5 from the Bozo App Planet. Can't do it. It would be like guaranteeing that an ebook would be "perfect" in Moon reader. Phllbbbfffft....

Hitch

[mrevent]

Update: It turns out that registering older Kindles is still possible. Disregard my messages below --useless unless someone else having the same difficulties would like to read about how one mistaken user ended up solving them thanks to the suggestions received here.

Originally Posted by rcentros

I wonder if this means you won't be able to register older Kindles after August 22nd?

Well, that's exactly what happened in my case. I tried to switch the registration of an older device to an alternative account and, well, it cannot register to either account now. Strangely, I had read the post about the end of support in August months ago -- as it turns out, I completely forgot about it...

Luckily, I had stopped transferring much content to that now "lonesomely" unregistered device for a while over wi-fi -- but, yes, older devices cannot register to the store anymore, for sure... (no problem with deliveries etc. for older devices that remained registered)

[Spinningwoman]

Originally Posted by mrevent

Well, that's exactly what happened in my case. I tried to switch the registration of an older device to an alternative account and, well, it cannot register to either account now. Strangely, I had read the post about the end of support in August months ago -- as it turns out, I completely forgot about it...

Luckily, I had stopped transferring much content to that now "lonesomely" unregistered device for a while over wi-fi -- but, yes, older devices cannot register to the store anymore, for sure... (no problem with deliveries etc. for older devices that remained registered)

I’ve just registered two old NT4 kindles to my account no problem. They sent a code to my email for the initial login, which the kindle itself doesn’t warn you about, so I think that may mislead people into thinking they cannot register them. You can’t now use the store, but items bought via the website or a newer kindle still sync ok. Using the store was awful on the old kindles anyway so that makes no difference to me.

[mrevent]

Originally Posted by Spinningwoman

I’ve just registered two old NT4 kindles to my account no problem. They sent a code to my email for the initial login, which the kindle itself doesn’t warn you about, so I think that may mislead people into thinking they cannot register them. You can’t now use the store, but items bought via the website or a newer kindle still sync ok. Using the store was awful on the old kindles anyway so that makes no difference to me.

That's great news indeed! I still am not able to re-register. K5 though and have been in contact with the customer service, hoping that the technical department would be able to register the device -- no luck yet for about a week.

In my case, the device does not accept my login credentials ("no such account" type of error) -- consequently, no key in my emails either.
In any case, many thanks for pointing out that registering older kindles is still possible. My issue is an individual one, then..

-----
Update Next Day: Registered! It turns out that they were sending OTP's (One-time-password) to the phone as a text message. I have been missing them completely: Here is what happens (still, i'd say, it's somewhat peculiar):
When attempting to register/ login with the Kindle 5, the device says that the username/ password do not match, they couldn't find an account with those credentials...
Yet, while saying that amazon was sending an OTP to the mobile too -- and that one-time password worked on Kindle 5, as you said...
----

It's thanks to your post that I noticed those messages --I wasn't paying any attention to them at all.

What I still cannot figure out is how one would be able to register the device to a new account with no linked phone number. Glad to hear that the OTP's were e-mailed in your case...

[Spinningwoman]

Originally Posted by mrevent

That's great news indeed! I still am not able to re-register. K5 though and have been in contact with the customer service, hoping that the technical department would be able to register the device -- no luck yet for about a week.

In my case, the device does not accept my login credentials ("no such account" type of error) -- consequently, no key in my emails either.
In any case, many thanks for pointing out that registering older kindles is still possible. My issue is an individual one, then..

-----
Update Next Day: Registered! It turns out that they were sending OTP's (One-time-password) to the phone as a text message. I have been missing them completely: Here is what happens (still, i'd say, it's somewhat peculiar):
When attempting to register/ login with the Kindle 5, the device says that the username/ password do not match, they couldn't find an account with those credentials...
Yet, while saying that amazon was sending an OTP to the mobile too -- and that one-time password worked on Kindle 5, as you said...
----

It's thanks to your post that I noticed those messages --I wasn't paying any attention to them at all.

What I still cannot figure out is how one would be able to register the device to a new account with no linked phone number. Glad to hear that the OTP's were e-mailed in your case...

Actually now you say this, it was a text not an email. Apologies for misleading you - I’m glad you got there despite that!

[mrevent]

No worries; on the contrary, as I wrote, it's thanks to your post that I could finally register the device: Many thanks again!

[tomsem]

On my KT4 (a recent addition to my collection of Kindles), I needed to append the OTP to the password to complete registration.

[MichaelKindle]

Seems so. I cannot register my Kindle Touch.