Comment by paulcole
20 hours ago
> 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!
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.
Kindle 4 came out in 2011. I think 15 years is enough time to get ready for a buttonless kindle world.
No amount of "getting used to buttonless" can keep a touchscreen from registering water droplets as touch.
So until they can figure out how to make touch screen work in those conditions, any device released without page turn buttons is useless to me.
It's not a preference thing for me. It's simply a physical requirement for my environment.
Yes, I do understand I'm a rather niche use-case and don't really expect them to pander to me. But I will be vocal about it just so they know I exist! There are at least dozens of us!
The fact I can continue to buy refurbished Oasis units whenever I leave one in airplane seatback pocket is the only reason I'm still on the Kindle ecosystem. The second I cannot make that work it's off to third party for me and they will lose an infinitesimal portion of their captured audience for future book purchases.
3 replies →
Why 15 years? Why should I ever have to accept things getting worse? Isn't the point of progress that things get better?
There's multiple touch zones (which aren't visible or marked), there's multiple gestures you can interact with, and it's so slow and janky enough that you never know what will happen when you touch it.
Will it go forwards? Or backwards? By one page? Or a dozen? Will it open the settings? Or change the brightness? Or just close the book? You never know.
I want to lose myself in the book, I want to forget the device even exists, not fight the device for half a minute whenever it decides to go forward by 11 pages, open the settings, change the font and brightness just because I wanted to go one page back
7 replies →
What a stupid thing to say.
The problem with a buttonless word is that it doesn’t have buttons.
Anyone who’s ever even seen a button from a distance has immediately known a world with buttons is superior to a world without buttons.
1 reply →
You may have noted the number of automobile makers announcing they are switching back to buttons after trying several years of button-free ... I wonder why that might be ...
Am I so out of touch? No, it is the customers who are wrong.
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.
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
“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.
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?
7 replies →
You don’t really care about any buttons or Kindles, you just want to complain about “vocal crybabies”, do you?
+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.
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.
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.
I traded occasionally making my life more difficult, and in return I got what? My old phone was equally waterproof
4 replies →
[dead]
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?
Even in the past, when the only thing people would purchase was livestock, you wouldn't expect them to last more than 12 years.
Why would I complain? I can start reading nearly any book I want to in a few seconds for around $10.
How long is your expectation that you can access that e-book, after you pay $10?
[flagged]
As opposed to what?