this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2025
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The only surprising thing about this is that the functionality existed in the first place.
early models didn't have wifi, only usb or cellular from one provider or another--and those models' 3g connectivity was killed off years ago.
this will obsolete all the non-wifi kindles still in use.
You can still use calibre to sideload onto them. Where you get the books is another issue.
So it just obsoletes them for the model users that buy ebooks from Amazon and put them on their Amazon device without conversion in between. Even though this user group should be Amazon's favourites.
lol, lmao even.
The specific devices impacted by this are pretty old (I think only the first and second gen ones? So at latest 2009), so honestly I doubt they're very worried about it.
Yeah the companies obsoleting stuff are never worried about cutting off customers anyway. Fuck em.
I mean, I agree with this. I have a kindle and had no idea you could directly connect it to download books. Guess I learned my new thing for the day.
It's the old bait and switch, they had to have this feature to build initial trust in ebooks.
... a 17 year bait and switch (or however long Kindles have been around for)?
Amazon spent 20 years being unprofitable on purpose. You think they don't have long term strategies?
Profitability as reported by companies, especially tech companies, is complex. Also understand that most of that 20 years (assuming that is an accurate statement) was the era of venture capitalism and infinite funding.
But yes. Amazon did spend decades inventing and taking over e-commerce.
But that is not what you described. You described a "bait and switch" which implies that they designed the old keyboard kindles with built in wikipedia support as some long con to get around the eventual invention of a de-drm plugin for the eventually invented Calibre library manager.
The reality is that this is just a case of locking down walled gardens to take advantage of market share. Everyone is doing it. It isn't some deep conspiracy and is more just the logical end result of a walled garden with large market share.