Many Early Adopters of the Amazon Fire Are Unhappy 463
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that the Kindle Fire, Amazon's heavily promoted tablet, is less than a blazing success, with many of its early users packing the device up and firing it back to the retailer. A few of their many complaints: there is no external volume control. The off switch is easy to hit by accident. Web pages take a long time to load. There is no privacy on the device; a spouse or child who picks it up will instantly know everything you have been doing and the touch screen is frequently hesitant and sometimes downright balky. Amazon's response was: 'In less than two weeks, we're rolling out an over-the-air update to Kindle Fire.' The only problem with that is many of the complaints are hardware related and no amount of software can fix one of the early blunders: 'The fire is shipped in a box that advertised on the outside of the box exactly what it is. "Hello, you, thief, please come steal me!"' wrote one would-be customer who, as you might guess, had her Fire stolen and was left with the box. This was supposed to be an iPad killer, with its much lower price point, but Apple is tough to beat because most of its mistakes are software-based."
Nicely played with the statistics... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What a surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
There's very little wrong with the Kindle fire that can't be fixed with software.
I owned one, and returned it. I returned it because I prefer the e-ink screen of the Kindle DX for reading. If you want a tablet, the Fire is fine.
The problem is that the operating system is not ready for release, it feels like it's in a beta state. There's no way to customize most of the things you look at and think "Hmm, I wish I could ..."
The volume button position is weird, but you can simply turn the device over and the screen flips. It's no issue. Some people bellyache about the external volume control, but so what? Does that kill a device that comes in a less than half it's competitors' price point?
The Silk browser was reportedly sped up greatly after the first software update - I returned mine before taking it.
The Kindle Fire was rushed out before the OS was ready. A couple updates down the road, it will be a very nice competitor to the iPad.
Re:You get what you pay for.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Uhm, have you ever driven a BMW? They have *horrible* ride quality, with rock hard suspension and crap seats - and downright unpleasant handling. BMW haven't really made a decent car since the E30.
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Re:What a surprise (Score:2, Interesting)
I admit it's difficult to put your finger on exactly what a flamebait is. The term, along with "troll" came into being at a time when the content on the Internet was almost exclusively written by university academics. They were constantly policing their professional debates to make sure people weren't getting hurt or turned-off, or having their correspondence side-tracked by trolls, and flamewars among academics are a very specific manifestation.
By the standard of how the terms were originally defined, just about every thread on slashdot would be trolling and flaming, but then again Slashdot exists mainly to sell ads and entertain the reader. People on USENET in 1989 discussing "The Emperor's New Mind" would have had a much more nuanced sense of the terms.
Re:Remember what Seth Meyers said about the Fire.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not bad for the price (Score:4, Interesting)
i-devices don't seem to drop in price like everything else in the tech world, they just gain in performance.
That's because i-devices are made by one supplier. When they start selling the next model, they discontinue the previous. They're removed from the market before their price begins to appreciatively decrease.
My Kindle Experience (Score:1, Interesting)
Pros: I can read on it (the main reason I bought it) with white text on a black background (E-Ink isn't... that particular contrast.). It runs the apps in Amazon's store reasonably well. Video looks pretty good streaming. Even the PC Magazine I read on it looked pretty good.
Cons: It can be "touchy" sometimes and doesn't register button presses. I can't put custom wallpaper on the lock screen. I would like the ability to delete apps I have no intention of using again from "The Cloud", but cannot seem to accomplish this.
Re:What a surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm conflicted here because the Kindle Fire is not for me; the form factor and CPU are good but I'm going to wait for a 7" pad with an SD card slot. (Other than the overpriced Galaxy.) On the other hand, I used an iPad for a week and gave it back; clearly that overpriced and overhyped device is not for me either. I guess I'm not a fanboi.
I followed some of the links, trying to find where Amazon has called the Fire an "ipod killer", and the only place I can find that phrase used is by various media pundits. (For instance, one PCMag article cites an earlier PCMag article. Wow, we're not CREATING news, are we?)
It appears that Amazon was trying to create a reader on a code base that they don't have to maintain themselves, that was compatible with Kindle content and also had some browsing capability. (Someone will surely correct me if I'm wrong.) I personally think it doesn't have enough memory or expandability to be a serious contender in the tablet marketplace, but that isn't important.
The Nook Color has some issues too. If we had the processor of the Fire and the features of the Color running full Android 3+ including Marketplace instead of dinking around with crippled versions of the OS, at that price point, or even a little more, well, I'd buy one. Some day it'll happen.
The Fire will either succeed (with a much needed firmware update) or it will fail. It doesn't really matter, as there will be alternatives. Some day, someone will take Amazon's idea of not trying to compete with the iPad as a boutique item but actually make a usable tablet for a reasonable price, and it'll really take off. But it'll have to be, you know, usable.
But I'm uncomfortable with "X will be a Y killer" especially when "Y" has a near-hysterically devoted fanbase. Rather, I think there is room in the marketplace for multiple products, including ones for people who are looking for a certain set of capabilities, and ones for people looking for a certain logo engraved on the trendy stainless back.
(And yes, I'm being intentionally provocative, as I found the tone of the parent article irritating and fanboi-ish.)
Re:What a surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
The most direct competitor to the Kindle Fire is either the B&N Nook Color ($50 more than Fire when Fire was launched, now the same price, lower hardware specs in general, but does have an SD card slot, and many reviews have the Kindle Fire performing worse on many common tasks) and the B&N Nook Tablet (released shortly after the fire, at a $50 higher price point, similar processor specs to the Kindle Fire, but more RAM, local storage, SD card slot, and most head-to-heads I've seen find it performs better overall.)
Neither B&N device has the power button placement issues or lack of external volume controls that the Fire has, either.
Amazon clearly wants people to compare the Fire to the iPad on price, because a not-quite-iPad at half the price sounds like a good value proposition, and the best chance Amazon has at succeeding with the Fire is if that's how people see it, but its closest competitors on price, form factor, and features aren't from Apple.
Re:What a surprise (Score:4, Interesting)
And what usage is the Fire intended for?
Answer: general tablet usage.
It isn't a general purpose tablet, it is a platform for Amazon's services. If you want to do much non-Amazon stuff you want a general purpose tablet, but like the Kindle if you get all your ebooks and video on demand and apps and store your stuff on Amazon's cloud services then this might be of interest.
In some ways it is similar to the iPad, in that it is locked down in order to make the user Amazon's cash cow. Unlike the iPad it is a cheap low end device and even less general purpose, but some people are quite happy with that. Like Apple's devices they want something that "just works", or more accurately lets them exchange ease of access to stuff for getting locked in to Apple's revenue stream.
Amazon is pretty much the budget version of Apple.
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Re:What a surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Absolutely. I returned mine because I can't read the New York Times on the Kindle Fire. Why? Because I didn't buy my New York Times subscription from Amazon; I bought it (long ago) from - ta da - the New York Times. Believe me, I tried, I rooted the device; I found an apk from someone's backup and tried downloading that. The New York Times app gets hi-jacked when you try to load it on the Kindle Amazon says, basically, "go away".
And don't get me started on the library books available for the Kindle (not to mention the interface - !!!!)
Yuck. Back it went.
iPad has come controls (Score:4, Interesting)
Does the iPad not do that? All tablets (not slate computers) I have seem do not seem to be set up with user accounts.
The iPad has a large number of apps that essentially provide accounts. Plus of course for things like games there is GameCenter, where you can log in as different people.
The iPad also has parental controls safeguarding purchases. The Fire has none; once it's wired to an Amazon account you cannot block purchases (without unlinking the account which also disables some things on the tablet).
The iPad has basically lurched halfway to being a multi-user device, while the Kindle doesn't pretend to be at all to start with.