Register Guidelines E-Books Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read

Go Back   MobileRead Forums > E-Book Readers > Amazon Kindle

Notices

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread
Old 09-03-2023, 04:42 AM   #1
johnnyb
Cloud Reader
johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 1,118
Karma: 4000066
Join Date: Aug 2010
Device: Kindle Oasis, Kindle Scribe, iPad Pro 11
New Kindle for Mac app announced

I just received an email from Amazon telling me that a new ‘and improved’ Kindle for Mac app will be coming in September and that the current app will stop working in October and will be discontinued. They promise reading and library management improvements for the new app.
They explain in detail how to transfer collections from the old app to the new one (start them side by side for the transfer to initiate) but there's no new app in the Mac App Store yet (where it should be ‘starting September’).

My guess is that they will finally bring the iOS app to Mac (like they did with Prime video), which should bring a few welcome improvements in terms of library management and should also be a snappier experience overall.
johnnyb is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-03-2023, 05:50 AM   #2
jhowell
Grand Sorcerer
jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
jhowell's Avatar
 
Posts: 6,753
Karma: 86500093
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Charlottesville, VA
Device: Kindles
There have been mentions by others here of testing the new Kindle for Mac app.

Would someone who has received this email please post a copy here? I am curious about the exact phrasing of the statement that the "current app will stop working in October".
jhowell is offline   Reply With Quote
Advert
Old 09-03-2023, 08:09 AM   #3
hrm
Junior Member
hrm began at the beginning.
 
hrm's Avatar
 
Posts: 8
Karma: 10
Join Date: May 2021
Device: Kobo Libra 2, Sage, & Forma, Kindle Oasis & Paperwhite SE
Quote:
Originally Posted by jhowell View Post
There have been mentions by others here of testing the new Kindle for Mac app.

Would someone who has received this email please post a copy here? I am curious about the exact phrasing of the statement that the "current app will stop working in October".
Dear customer,

We are replacing the current Kindle for Mac with a new and improved app, which will include an enhanced book reading and library management experience. Support for the current app will be ending by October 2023. The new Kindle for Mac will be available to download from the Mac App Store in September 2023.

To copy any collections you created in the old app to the new app, please complete the following steps:
Update to the latest version (1.40.1 or higher) of the current app.
Open the latest version of the current app. This will trigger the transfer of your collections.

Thank you for being a Kindle customer.

Regards,
The Kindle Team
hrm is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-03-2023, 10:43 AM   #4
jhowell
Grand Sorcerer
jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
jhowell's Avatar
 
Posts: 6,753
Karma: 86500093
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Charlottesville, VA
Device: Kindles
Thanks for that.

So it says that support will be ending for the old version. It says nothing yet about whether or not it will continue to function or for how long.

Also, it does not say that both the old and new apps have to be open at the same time to transfer collections. Just that opening 1.40.1 or higher will trigger the transfer of collections.

The old Kindle for Mac app did not support cloud collections shared across apps and devices. The new one, being Kindle for iOS, does support them. So the extra step done by opening 1.40.1 is to transfer the local collections into the cloud.

That transfer of local collections has the potential of creating duplicate cloud collections so some cleanup of cloud collections may be needed afterwards.
jhowell is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-03-2023, 02:35 PM   #5
tomsem
Grand Sorcerer
tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 6,766
Karma: 26974049
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: USA
Device: iPhone 15PM, Kindle Scribe, iPad mini 6, PocketBook InkPad Color 3
I've been running beta for 7 months on my MacBook.

As I stated on other thread, there probably will not be a DMG download any longer. App Store only.

Will Intel be supported? It doesn't say it isn't. The beta only works on Apple Silicon.

I also want to check if it will open anything from file system. And figure out where it stores files.

Interesting that it transfers collections. I don't have any to migrate. I plan to deregister, remove content, uninstall old version and then install the new one (assuming Intel is supported).

I think we have it installed on my wife's M1 iMac. I will let it do the upgrade there.
tomsem is offline   Reply With Quote
Advert
Old 09-03-2023, 03:21 PM   #6
jhowell
Grand Sorcerer
jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
jhowell's Avatar
 
Posts: 6,753
Karma: 86500093
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Charlottesville, VA
Device: Kindles
Quote:
Originally Posted by tomsem View Post
I also want to check if it will open anything from file system. And figure out where it stores files.
I am curious about that too. The Kindle for iOS app on my iPad will open book files sideloaded using iTunes but won’t allow files to be loaded to it via the Files app.

I also wonder where it stores the registration data for the app. It is very accessible in the old Kindle for Mac app. I expect to new one to be more locked down.
jhowell is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-03-2023, 04:27 PM   #7
tomsem
Grand Sorcerer
tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 6,766
Karma: 26974049
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: USA
Device: iPhone 15PM, Kindle Scribe, iPad mini 6, PocketBook InkPad Color 3
Quote:
Originally Posted by jhowell View Post
I am curious about that too. The Kindle for iOS app on my iPad will open book files sideloaded using iTunes but won’t allow files to be loaded to it via the Files app.

I also wonder where it stores the registration data for the app. It is very accessible in the old Kindle for Mac app. I expect to new one to be more locked down.
Open With... is enabled for PDF (and it 'works'!?) but not .mobi, .kfx, .azw3 ... So effectively no side loading. And you cannot assign Kindle app to these extensions.

Storage is in:

/Users/[user]/Library/Containers/Kindle/Data/Library/eBooks/

.azw for personal documents (no DRM) and .kfx tree.

So upgrade presumably will move things from the previous location (which is currently configurable).

"Registration data": for...?? where was it, I will check there.

There are some things that could be better (even on iPad, since it supports external display):

- Print replica/PDF only displays one page (as contrasted with non-fixed document content, which offers 2 columns. Also dark mode would be nice.
- multiple document support (Apple Books has this on Mac)
- cursor should fade out when in reading mode and over the app window.

But other than that I like really having it at parity with the iOS app.
Attached Thumbnails
Click image for larger version

Name:	Screenshot 2023-09-03 at 12.23.04 PM.png
Views:	127
Size:	706.7 KB
ID:	203526   Click image for larger version

Name:	Screenshot 2023-09-03 at 12.23.34 PM.png
Views:	100
Size:	117.1 KB
ID:	203527  

Last edited by tomsem; 09-03-2023 at 05:33 PM.
tomsem is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-03-2023, 05:35 PM   #8
odamizu
just an egg
odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
odamizu's Avatar
 
Posts: 1,697
Karma: 5514284
Join Date: Mar 2015
Device: Kindle, iOS
Quote:
Originally Posted by jhowell View Post
... So it says that support will be ending for the old version. It says nothing yet about whether or not it will continue to function or for how long.
Yes, that is a big question, especially since the new K4Mac beta only runs on Silicon Macs. If they will not be releasing the new K4Mac for Intel Macs, I suspect they will leave 1.40.1 out there for Intel Macs but provide no further updates or support.

Also, earlier versions of the beta appeared to be identical to Kindle for iPad, but the latest version is a little different.

The file directory for the beta is totally different from 1.40.1, including how it stores book data. They really are two separate apps. I have both versions running on my Mac without any problem.

Quote:
Originally Posted by jhowell View Post
... I also wonder where it stores the registration data for the app. It is very accessible in the old Kindle for Mac app. I expect to new one to be more locked down.
I have poked around a little and could not find anything resembling registration data. Granted, my poking around skills are VERY limited. But I suspect you are right that the new K4Mac will be hard to crack.

Last edited by odamizu; 09-07-2023 at 11:52 PM.
odamizu is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-03-2023, 05:49 PM   #9
odamizu
just an egg
odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.odamizu ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
odamizu's Avatar
 
Posts: 1,697
Karma: 5514284
Join Date: Mar 2015
Device: Kindle, iOS
nevermind

Last edited by odamizu; 09-07-2023 at 11:51 PM.
odamizu is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-03-2023, 07:19 PM   #10
jhowell
Grand Sorcerer
jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
jhowell's Avatar
 
Posts: 6,753
Karma: 86500093
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Charlottesville, VA
Device: Kindles
Quote:
Originally Posted by tomsem View Post
Open With... is enabled for PDF (and it 'works'!?) but not .mobi, .kfx, .azw3 ... So effectively no side loading. And you cannot assign Kindle app to these extensions.
You might get it to work by manually copying those file types into the proper folder. It might be worth trying different folders under
/Library/Containers/Kindle/Data/Library and seeing if the app detects their presence up when restarted.

Quote:
Originally Posted by tomsem View Post
So upgrade presumably will move things from the previous location (which is currently configurable).
If by "things" you mean books then I strongly doubt that. My understanding is that the upgrade process is simply copying collections from the old app to cloud storage shared by all of the Kindle apps under your account. The new app is independent of the old one and uses different DRM keys so book files can't just be copied over.

In addition KFX format has different variants depending on the platform to which it is sent. The new app will likely get a different set of files than the old one, likely the same files that are delivered to iOS devices.

Quote:
Originally Posted by tomsem View Post
"Registration data": for...?? where was it, I will check there.
There are two components (DSN and account secret) established when the app is registered and used as part of the key for DRM. Without a way to discover those the Kindle for Mac app is going from being one of the more insecure Kindle apps in terms of DRM to being completely unbreakable.

In the old app this data is stored encrypted in a file named .kinf2018 found in either /Library/Containers/com.amazon.Kindle/Data/Library/Application Support/Kindle/storage or
/Library/Application Support/Kindle/storage. I assume that the new app takes advantage of more secure storage options now available in MacOS.

Quote:
Originally Posted by tomsem View Post
But other than that I like really having it at parity with the iOS app.
The Kindle for PC app is going the same way, however it is going to take longer to happen there. Windows 11 includes built in Android emulation with apps supplied by Amazon, including the Kindle app. Users can use both the old Kindle for PC and this new app and they are independent of each other. I suspect that once Windows 10 reaches end-of-life in two years there will be a similar deprecation and transition to the new app on Windows.

Last edited by jhowell; 09-03-2023 at 08:13 PM.
jhowell is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-03-2023, 08:59 PM   #11
tomsem
Grand Sorcerer
tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.tomsem ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 6,766
Karma: 26974049
Join Date: Apr 2009
Location: USA
Device: iPhone 15PM, Kindle Scribe, iPad mini 6, PocketBook InkPad Color 3
Quote:
Originally Posted by jhowell View Post
You might get it to work by manually copying those file types into the proper folder. It might be worth trying different folders under
/Library/Containers/Kindle/Data/Library and seeing if the app detects their presence up when restarted.
Yes, seems there should be some way to side load since iOS app does.

Quote:
If by "things" you mean books then I strongly doubt that. My understanding is that the upgrade process is simply copying collections from the old app to cloud storage shared by all of the Kindle apps under your account. The new app is independent of the old one and uses different DRM keys so book files can't just be copied over.

In addition KFX format has different variants depending on the platform to which it is sent. The new app will likely get a different set of files than the old one, likely the same files that are delivered to iOS devices.
Makes sense but will it continue to open from old location as well as the new one? I guess I can see what happens when it ships.
Quote:
There are two components (DSN and account secret) established when the app is registered and used as part of the key for DRM. Without a way to discover those the Kindle for Mac app is going from being one of the more insecure Kindle apps in terms of DRM to being completely unbreakable.

In the old app this data in stored encrypted in a file named .kinf2018 stored in either /Library/Containers/com.amazon.Kindle/Data/Library/Application Support/Kindle/storage or
/Library/Application Support/Kindle/storage. I assume that the new app takes advantage of more secure storage options now available in MacOS.
Not seeing either of these (checked /Users/.../Libarary also). But upgrade will need to clean them up and maybe do fresh registration.

Quote:

The Kindle for PC app is going the same way, however it is going to take longer to happen there. Windows 11 includes built in Android emulation with apps supplied by Amazon, including the Kindle app. Users can use both the old Kindle for PC and this new app and they are independent of each other. I suspect that once Windows 10 reaches end-of-life in two years there will be a similar deprecation and transition to the new app on Windows.
Not clear: surely W 10 will never run Android apps. Amazon hasn't actually announced their plans for W 10, have they?
tomsem is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-03-2023, 10:24 PM   #12
jhowell
Grand Sorcerer
jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.jhowell ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
jhowell's Avatar
 
Posts: 6,753
Karma: 86500093
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Charlottesville, VA
Device: Kindles
Quote:
Originally Posted by tomsem View Post
surely W 10 will never run Android apps.
I agree that Windows 10 will not run Android natively and I so doubt Amazon will discontinue support for Kindle for PC while Windows 10 is still supported by Microsoft.

Quote:
Originally Posted by tomsem View Post
Amazon hasn't actually announced their plans for W 10, have they?
Yes they have.

Quote:
Windows 10 will reach end of support on October 14, 2025. The current version, 22H2, will be the final version of Windows 10, and all editions will remain in support with monthly security update releases through that date. Existing LTSC releases will continue to receive updates beyond that date based on their specific lifecycles.
Oops, my mistake. Those are Microsoft’s plans not Amazon’s. I am just guessing what Amazon intends to do.

Last edited by jhowell; 09-03-2023 at 10:28 PM.
jhowell is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-05-2023, 02:39 PM   #13
johnnyb
Cloud Reader
johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.johnnyb ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 1,118
Karma: 4000066
Join Date: Aug 2010
Device: Kindle Oasis, Kindle Scribe, iPad Pro 11
Quote:
Originally Posted by jhowell View Post
So it says that support will be ending for the old version. It says nothing yet about whether or not it will continue to function or for how long.
Yeah sorry, that was an incorrect paraphrase on my part.

I suspect, like you said, that either the old app will continue working on Intel Macs, or they will release it to work on Intel as well (they did that, btw, with the Prime Video app which is a port of the iOS app but runs, albeit poorly, on Intel Macs).
johnnyb is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-07-2023, 05:38 AM   #14
mmurray
Member
mmurray ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.mmurray ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.mmurray ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.mmurray ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.mmurray ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.mmurray ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.mmurray ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.mmurray ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.mmurray ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.mmurray ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.mmurray ought to be getting tired of karma fortunes by now.
 
Posts: 24
Karma: 4087612
Join Date: Sep 2010
Device: Kindle Paperwhite (10th generation)
The Kindle app on my Mac just updated to 1.40.02 and now calls itself Kindle Classic.
mmurray is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 09-07-2023, 09:17 AM   #15
monoxdd
Member
monoxdd began at the beginning.
 
Posts: 16
Karma: 10
Join Date: Aug 2019
Device: Kindle
Quote:
Originally Posted by mmurray View Post
The Kindle app on my Mac just updated to 1.40.02 and now calls itself Kindle Classic.
And what´s new??
monoxdd is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
Kindle Mac app, automatic adding emmgee Library Management 18 05-08-2016 07:43 PM
Kindle app on Mac laptop Hoppity Amazon Kindle 3 02-15-2013 10:12 AM
Mobi thumbnail on Kindle PC/Mac app mo79 Kindle Formats 7 08-04-2012 08:02 PM
Kindle for Mac - Amazon vs App Store gers1978 Amazon Kindle 15 05-05-2012 01:53 PM
K4 Mac or PC Transferring ebooks from Kindle App for Mac to Kindle kitchenette Amazon Kindle 2 03-03-2011 06:39 PM


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 03:36 PM.


MobileRead.com is a privately owned, operated and funded community.