[A_D_E_P_T]

Amazon's attitude towards its Kindle device customers is one of lofty disregard.

Every time they announce new Kindle products, half of the comments are like "I hope they have buttons," "I hope they bring back the Oasis," etc.

But they appear to exult in dashing the hopes of their customers, or at the very least they don't care about them at all. They've doubled down on no-key devices with stupid pens, pointless and poorly-implemented color, and tiny or excessively large form factors with little in between. It's kind of crazy just how much they don't seem to care.

The subtext of the article indicates that the problem isn't discontinuing support alone, but discontinuing support without offering those customers a reasonable replacement for their old devices that had keys and buttons. (Even if it's just a couple of buttons.)

[Aloha]

14 years of support for a device is pretty incredible.

[chocochunks]

It's not. It's really not. It's 14 years of you can still access the store and buy stuff. That's not that good. You can buy a DVD and it'll still work on 25+ year old players. You can still buy digital content on an almost 20 year old PS3, you can use iTunes purchases on an original iPod from 25 years ago. Even in the eBook space you can get a new DRM'd purchase on a Sony PRS-500 from 2006 with Adobe Digital Editions.

These Kindles were not getting firmware updates (outside of maybe security certificates), they weren't getting new features or patches. You could just get new content.

[e28eta]

I don’t know how I feel about it. I’ve been on one side, looking at usage numbers of older iOS versions, and arguing that low single digit percentages were fine to stop supporting with the new version.

On the other hand, I view my kindle as an appliance, and I don’t need it to have updated functionality. I think this is true of many electronics: digital cameras, printers, misc USB peripherals, etc. I believe Amazon could easily support the APIs it uses, and keep delivering me books that I’ve paid for or borrowed.

Financially, I suspect the kindle devices have a much longer lifetime than iPhones do, and Amazon is still making $$ off of old kindles.

If there were TLS concerns, a partial disablement (ex: can’t buy books from the device) would be way more acceptable than a complete cutoff. I’ve seen suggestions that it’s a DRM issue, and if that’s the primary motivation, it’s pretty disappointing.

[Aloha]

I'm supporting a 30 year old product, the oldest one in the field are 20+ years old, we still support them.

I'm just in the process of developing a lifecycle policy, being able to cut off support for a 12 year systems would make my life much more full of joy.

[_doctor_love]

(This may be a very ungenerous reading of your comment, so my apologies if this is not what you mean.)

The phrase that jumps out at me is:

> being able to cut off support for a 12 year systems would make my life much more full of joy

I think this is a nearly-poetical capturing of the core problem.

The focus is on the joy and well-being of the maintainer, not the impact to all the people who will be impacted by this change. Possibly some people rely on these devices and it adversely impact their joy and livelihood when support is ended.

This happens over and over again in tech.

[andrekandre]

  > Possibly some people rely on these devices and it adversely impact their joy and livelihood when support is ended.
    This happens over and over again in tech.

its true and i agree with you as a user

on the other hand, some software gets harder and costlier to support the longer its out there (think spec changes, security issues, updates in law etc), and even paying a normal subscription for it can cause roi to go negative, especially when factoring in opportunity cost for a business (help the old users or spend that time/money making a new feature for the majority)

my thought on it is if its a subscription, maybe for some software, the longer someone uses the old version the subscription cost could go up slowly, or if its a one-time purchase, after x years they could just buy a support ticket or something...? for ad-supported software i have no ideas...

[lwhi]

This reminds me of the time we needed to support IE6.

[Aloha]

You try building software with a version of Delphi that wont run on something newer than windows 7 and tell me how well that works out for you.

Some of those customers cannot be upgraded without hardware replacement, we can sell them a brand new system that will do everything (and more) their old one will, but they dont want to spend the money, and we are happy to take the money for support (the old CAPEX vs OPEX argument).

Some of this is sorta easy, its COTS hardware, but we also have much older systems that due to component obsolescence I simply cannot build replacements anymore. 10+ years of support ought to be enough for 90% of the products out there, at some point the answer really is “upgrade your hardware” - we didn’t sign up to indefinitely support not just hardware (much of which we cannot build spares for) much less the software ecosystem around the hardware.

Long term I plan on increasing support renewal costs for systems that are older than 10 years old to encourage hardware refreshes.

Like I still have to have XP VM’s to build firmware for older products, when is it reasonable to cut off service and support?

[Aloha]

How long should a hardware and software product be expected to last?

Try estimating doing win11 updates on a 20 year old piece of delphi spftware with hardware full go custom ASICs be expected to lsat?

[koliber]

Supporting is a word that means many different things.

It’s ok to stop providing updates to old software and hardware.

It’s OK to not support ancient devices when writing news software.

It’s not ok to make old devices inoperable if they are using the old software and don’t need updates.

Will my old Kindle stop being able to show me the books I bought and downloaded to it? Or will it become impossible to buy new books? If it’s the earlier, it’s borderline criminal. If it’s the latter, I’m unhappy but understand realities.

[smcin]

This isn't about hardware "lasting", it's about basic software functionality on older hardware intentionally being disabled. Somewhat similar to Apple's Batterygate.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Nobody is insisting that the physical kindles last forever, not that the software that they run be upgraded to support all the new bells & whistles of newer devices.

The point is that e-books are basically a data format plus a reader, and if the data format hasn't changed (it hasn't) and a reader is still working, what is gained by preventing that reader from being given new data to present?

amzn doesn't have to "provide support" for old kindles, but they also don't need to prevent them from downloading ebooks.

[mystraline]

> How long should a hardware and software product be expected to last?

Until it dies due to unintentional software or hardware defect.

NOT when it is sabotaged by the manufacturer.

[happyopossum]

Presumably that “support” you officer is tied to a nice fat multi-year support contract, no?

You can’t equate that to providing ongoing updates and support for a $100 hardware device indefinitely.

[Aloha]

It is, but I cant build them spares (not even thru broker bought parts) anymore. At some point you have to force the customer to say goodbye.

[protocolture]

I have a customer that had to be talked into ending support for a product they built in the 80s and provided unlimited, material cost only, repair plan for.

They replaced the product, but they kept buying the parts and updating the software for the old one. And customers were absolutely still sending back their broken ones getting at cost replacements.

It was like looking at a well engineered, thoughtfully maintained hole in the bottom of a cruise liner.

[Zambyte]

There are other people who can and will support it. Let them.

[NetMageSCW]

There are companies that will make deals with tens of thousands of book publishers and provide storage and access for millions of books, magazines and comics? I suppose they will do it for free?

[Zambyte]

How do you know what Aloha does?

[Twirrim]

I'm not sure if they ever changed away from it, but early generation kindles were running an old version of embedded java (4 I think? Pre-generics), that was already quite painful to deal with, with the team having to maintain their own forks, build tools etc. because nothing supported it. Reportedly there wasn't a way to actually upgrade the version either. While I wish they'd support them longer, I'm not surprised that they've finally decided it's not worth it.

[al_borland]

It seems they’ve gone out of their want to make them useless. They could have ended official support, while still allowing users to download ebooks from the store and side loading them through a computer. However, before killing support, they eliminated the ability to download ebooks to the computer.

[ladyanita22]

But you can still sideload them, right?

[swiftcoder]

If you don't allow the device to connect to the internet, yes. Kindles are somewhat infamous for updates that wipe storage if they think you are side loading pirate ebooks

[delecti]

> Kindles are somewhat infamous for updates that wipe storage if they think you are side loading pirate ebooks

Source? I've never heard of this, and I used to work there, including building the OS from source (though my contributions to the OS were pretty minimal). If you just put a .mobi file onto the storage, how does it have any idea where it came from?

> If you don't allow the device to connect to the internet, yes

Why is that a problem for a device which has been EoL'd?

[chocochunks]

Only if they are DRM-free. And only if they are in a compatible format. It's a solvable problem for techies in a lot of instances but for mainstream users it's pretty close to bricking.

[zeafoamrun]

If only you knew the lengths amazon went to to keep supporting these devices. Stopping support is emblematic of the Jassy era, of amazon becoming just like any other bigco. This would've been unthinkable under Bezos.

[realusername]

I have my 2010 Kobo and it still works fine, you can copy books by usb to it.

[oceanplexian]

14 years is impressive? Wait until you find out how long a real book can last.

[userbinator]

It's not like old books are particularly rare and fragile either (although many which did not use acid-free paper can deteriorate quite rapidly); I have a few from the early 19th century, which are still in good condition.

(They have also been scanned and are available on archive.org; the copyright is long expired and they're public domain.)

[Aloha]

Yes, and you can buy a new e-reader and read all those same books.

A kindle is more like a bookshelf from IKEA, it has a finite lifetime.

[wolvoleo]

But really what does it need to do? Write some characters on a screen. If it could do that 14 years ago it can do it today.

It's not like ereaders have evolved to do full motion video and the text ones have become obsolete.

Luckily koreader works well on old kindles. I'm even running it on my new one now.

[WalterBright]

I'm sad that Apple cut off support for my iPod. It still takes a charge and is a joy, except that most of the apps no longer work, because what they connect to is gone.

I used to be able to read books on it and watch Netflix.

My iphone is a boat anchor next to the sleek, slick iPod.

[segmondy]

you think? i can bring up my 40 yrs old NES and it works every time.

[mystraline]

That was before the public everything-connected internet era.

Now, even Nintendo destroys your hardware if you do something they dont like.

Like every one of these terrible companies, Im 100% sure that if they could update the NES firmware to destroy the console or sabotage it, they would.

[tmerc]

My ps2 has Ethernet, so does my Xbox 360. They're two different phases of online access. The ps2 I wouldn't worry about putting on the Internet. The 360 is a bit different because it has firmware updates. That said, afaik Microsoft has not tried to remotely disable the 360, which is about 20 years old. Xbox live even worked a couple years ago when I really wanted to play rez. I think they disabled xbl finally but they didn't brick my console or make it not work less. So it's a choice.

[mystraline]

Oh the PS2, as in the one that Sony sabotaged and removed an advertised feature, of OtherOS?

They only had a joke of a payout, and no criminal charges? Thats the console youre using as an example???

If we actually had real jurisprudence for the Public, Sony execs would be in prison for felony hacking, and the payout would have been treble the cost of console payable to each owner. Then lawyer fees would be on top of that (not removed from treble damages).

[delecti]

You can just as easily insert an NES cartridge today as when it launched, and you can just as easily copy a .mobi file over USB to a Kindle as when it launched, both without using the internet.

[neoromantique]

It says a lot about our world that artificially discontinuing a fully functional device (thankfully mine are offline and jailbroken) is "pretty incredible".

Sad even

[jzb]

No. It’s not. It’s just that we’ve been conditioned to accept that disposable devices are the way of things.

[fsflover]

My 20-year-old laptop still runs latest Debian with all security and (optionally!) feature updates.

[NetMageSCW]

And it will be deprecated as well one day.

[fsflover]

How? All drivers are part of Linux and free software.

[muyuu]

not when all it takes is not to actively boycott the device

[pjmlp]

I still remember support for life.

TV, refrigerator, recorder, whatever electronics, broke down and I or my parents would take it to one of several repair locations around town.

Software coming in eproms or disks meant QA was actually a thing to get right, not as online updates that eventually stop.

[gambiting]

I think that's kinda different - these repair shops could repair anything because things were repairable and because people had the skill to do so, and because the financial reality meant that repairing something almost always made more sense than buying new. I still know these people who are happy to do soldering on modern TV motherboards to fix them, but it's just very hard to justify financially in Western economies. I once shipped an entire HiFi system to a repair shop in Poland because a guy there could fix it for equivalent of €50, even with shipping the thing there and back it was worth it. Meanwhile my local repair shop wanted €100 just to diagnose the issue.

[NetMageSCW]

How well do those TVs pick up HD digital TV signals?

[LocalH]

You can get HDMI to analog converters for pretty cheap for use with streaming devices. You can also get devices that will receive digital OTA signals directly and output them to analog signals.

[solenoid0937]

Yeah, I do not really see the problem here. These devices are ancient and the panic is unwarranted. The older Kindles can be jailbroken if anyone cares that much.

I think there is a smaller argument that the newer Kindles don't feel as nice. The Oasis was the pinnacle of e-reader hardware design, and it'll be sad when they stop supporting it, but it certainly won't be worthy of a news article or this kind of reaction.

[phil21]

> The Oasis was the pinnacle of e-reader hardware design, and it'll be sad when they stop supporting it, but it certainly won't be worthy of a news article or this kind of reaction.

To me it would. If they don't have a similar device released by that time.

It would get me motivated enough to finally de-DRM all the books on my device (or pirate copies I can't otherwise decrypt) and copy them to a third party something like a Kobo Reader or whatnot.

I am firmly in the Kindle ecosystem sort of by accident and inertia, but if they were to end support of the only device that meets my needs (page turn buttons and waterproof - which for the latter to be useful you need the former) it'd be the end of Kindles for me forever, and I'd certainly bitch a lot about it on-line!

If they end support for it 12 year after release but offer a reasonable upgrade path? I'd grin and bear it. 12 years is a decent amount of time for a $200 device.

[Shorel]

Isn't it already too late for that? The devices were made obsolete in part to disable known methods of de-DRM kindle books. It is quite possible you won't be able to de-DRM anything if you try right now, and any point in the future.

[tapland]

Sigh. The unnoteworthy useless ancient device Noone should talk about that has the features everyone wishes the newer versions had.

Yeah, it's the smells wherever you go problem.

[paulcole]

> Every time they announce new Kindle products, half of the comments are like "I hope they have buttons," "I hope they bring back the Oasis," etc.

WWII fighter plane with red spots on it dot gif.

The vast majority of people who buy Kindles simply read books on them and don’t repeatedly cry online about features that are never coming back.

I’ve bought about 10 of the things dating back to 2012 either because I wanted to have the latest model or because I wanted to give one as a gift. They are all amazing devices.

I’ve never thought, “boy I better go online and complain about this one.” I’ve just been too busy buying and reading books on them!

[kuschku]

The reason people complain is because the old kindles used to have buttons, and honestly the touch screen is really fucking janky if you're used to the page turning buttons of the kindle 4, or the onscreen keyboard is janky if you're used to the kindle 3g.

And the sad part is that there's no best of both. You can't get a kindle paperwhite with buttons.

[PunchyHamster]

Different way to think about it: Whatever failings device might have, people still buy it for Amazon service integration.

Also "but people buy it anyway" is terrible way to disregard legitimate criticizm without thinking

[paulcole]

“But people cry about it” doesnt mean the criticisms are legitimate.

To be fair, I don’t think the criticisms are illegitimate by your definition, I just think they’re pointless and from vocal crybabies.

[lynndotpy]

You are only making complaints about criticisms (which you acknowledge as legitimate). If complaints from consumers about consumer devices are pointless and the consumers are "vocal crybabies", then how would you categorize yourself and your complaints about their complaints?

[paulcole]

I’m no better than anyone. I was using the other persons definition where it seems there is no illegitimate criticism. I honestly think anybody crying that there aren’t buttons on a kindle needs to come to terms with reality and move on with their life.

[lynndotpy]

"Crying" is needlessly dismissive and it doesn't strengthen your position.

I'm happy there is a mass of popular sentiment that consumer devices are better with buttons. I think they're to whom we can credit the return (or addition of new) buttons to cars, to phones, and to all manner of appliances (induction stoves, thermostats, ACs.)

In either case, it looks like the last Kindle with buttons disappeared only late 2024, a year and a half ago. This was a recent enough phenomena that these complaints make sense. Amazon still has a chance to get with the times and release an eReader with buttons.

[wiseowise]

> I’m no better than anyone.

> dismisses user wishes and calls people “vocal crybabies”

I’m honestly amazed how someone can lack so much self-awareness.

[wiseowise]

You don’t really care about any buttons or Kindles, you just want to complain about “vocal crybabies”, do you?

[trueno]

if they want buttons just look at the various e-readers online there's like such a breadth of these things now its insane. i personally was fetched an xteink reader cause theyre tiny (literally magsafes to the back of my phone wtf) and i love that (they have buttons) and chucked this dudes custom firmware on it to make formatting and usability a lil bit better https://github.com/crosspoint-reader/crosspoint-reader

is it kindle, no but can i read a book on it yeah. easily.

[Insanity]

+1. It seems like there is just a vocal minority who complain about the missing HW buttons etc.

I’m sure Amazon has enough actual customer data to make their product decisions based on what moves the most volume.

[ryandrake]

Just like the 3.5mm headphone jack, which a very vocal bunch of people are still complaining about, 10 years after iPhone got rid of it.

[anonymars]

I traded occasionally making my life more difficult, and in return I got what? My old phone was equally waterproof

[u_fucking_dork]

Keep buying phones with headphone jacks and removable batteries then. They exist. If every social media user that whined about these things acted with their wallet maybe they’d be able to change something.

[kuschku]

They are — all non-flagships do still have headphone jacks, even the Pixel A lineup kept them for many many years after the mainline Pixel phones dropped them.

And the reason most phones keep these is because wireless headphones are in the end luxury. They're not necessary, they're not even significantly better, but they're in the end a class symbol.

[Macha]

I recently had to do a flight without my headphones, because they had discharged because the switch had got jostled and activated in my luggage. 10 years on, we're still running into the disadvantages of losing 3.5mm headphones, so of course there's complaints.

[wiseowise]

Ultimate consoomer. Eats whatever shit it’s being fed and doesn’t complain. Powers that be know better what is good for you anyway, right?

[carlosjobim]

Even in the past, when the only thing people would purchase was livestock, you wouldn't expect them to last more than 12 years.

[paulcole]

Why would I complain? I can start reading nearly any book I want to in a few seconds for around $10.

[smcin]

How long is your expectation that you can access that e-book, after you pay $10?

[gambiting]

I also think they leave so much money on the table by not having the simplest of features - why can't I gift someone kindle books? I'd be buying so many for friends and family, but there is literally no way to do that on kindle. It's money they aren't getting.

[wilsonnb3]

You can do that, in the US at least.

[gambiting]

Can you?? It's never been an option here in the UK. Damn.

[expedition32]

I bought a cheap Kindle 2 years ago (remember Amazon subsidizes these things) and never bought a single book from the Amazon store.

They totally should disregard me.