Kindle Jailbreak

[Zaelath]

Probably old news, but new to me...

http://yifan.lu/p/kindle-jailbreak

Excellent howto here: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/37424/ja ... omization/

And one of my first replacement "screensaver" pics from http://kindlewallpapers.tumblr.com/

[Siji]

I'll be curious to see what can be done with the Fire. If it's hackable to the degree the NookColor is, it'll sell even more than usual.

[Winnow]

Someone brought in a Kindle Fire to work and it's made me love my iPad even more. People might buy the Fire because it's cheap but that sluggish thing doesn't come close to the experience of an iPad. It's heavy too so anyone looking for a lightweight eReader is going to be disappointed as well.

For the budget people out there, the Nook has better stats than the Fire and should at least not make it feel like everything is in slow motion. For anyone with the available funds, get an iPad 2 or wait for the iPad 3 projected to be announced in January and released in March.

[Zaelath]

The fire is 40% of the price of the iPad... I don't see your point.

It's not actually a competitor to the iPad, in the same way that coffee isn't a competitor to crack.

[Winnow]

The fire is 40% of the price of the iPad... I don't see your point.

It's not actually a competitor to the iPad, in the same way that coffee isn't a competitor to crack.

I disagree with your analogy. Both Coffee and Crack are addicting while only the iPad would be addicting because the Fire sucks and lags so bad it would put you to sleep.

It would be like comparing Nyquil to Crack.

[Boogahz]

Seen more comparisons of the Fire to the Nook tablet, with the Fire being lower overall.

[Aabidano]

Played with a Nook tablet over the weekend, it's really nice. Snappy performance on the things I tried. Not nearly as nice a reader as an e-ink device, the Kindle app on my touchpad is much nicer too. Nook software on my droid is nicer too for that matter, might be a config issue. Wife wants one 'because....", for her usage e-ink would be better. For the price it's pretty nice.

*Edit - A non-hacked nook color seemed a bit lame for the price.

Our local news schills Apple products heavily every broadcast at Winnow-,like levels, it borders on laughable, Their Kindle fire review emphasized over and over "IT'S NOT AN IPAD!!!". No shit, it's less than half the cost among other things.

[Aabidano]

Played with a fire a bit ago, not too much different than a nook color. Given a good net connection and decent pre-processing on the Amazon back end it could be decent enough.

[Fairweather Pure]

I got my hands on a Fire earlier this week too. I liked it. It's a little slow and the Internet is less than great, but despite those quibbles it felt good in my hands and had a fun interface. The size is in between a tablet and a phone. My friend that owns it was pretty disappointed with it at first, but said he has actually ended up using it more than his HP Touch due to it's size alone. I may get my mother one for Xmas.

[Aabidano]

Assuming you're on a good link to Amazon and are browsing popular content it should improve a lot given time. All depending on Amazon's level if commitment to the platform of course.

At a spyware level it's potentially far more intrusive than IOS or vanilla Android.

[sarlen]

On November 29th Amazon put out firmware update 6.2, the second update since the launch of the Fire. Performance of both the carousel interface and web browsing is noticeably increased. I had my Fire rooted, when the automatic update hit it removed the root but left all of my root required apps working as they did before.

[Winnow]

Seems like it still needs some work:

(CNN) -- Although it has been on the U. S. market for just three weeks, Amazon's Kindle Fire is expected to become the second-most popular tablet in the world by the end of this year, according to the research firm IHS.

But the device is not having a very good week.

There have been complaints on Amazon community forums by some Kindle Fire users who are experiencing problems accessing Wi-Fi networks and the Internet.

And Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen posted a fairly scathing review on his site Monday of the hot-selling tablet.

A few lowlights:

"Using the Web with the Silk browser is clunky and error-prone. Reading downloaded magazines is not much better."

"The Fire is a heavy object. It's unpleasant to hold for extended periods of time. Unless you have forearm muscles like Popeye, you can't comfortably sit and read an engaging novel all evening. The lack of physical buttons for turning the page also impedes on the reading experience for fiction. On the older Kindles, it's easy to keep a finger on the button when all you use it for is to turn the page. In contrast, tapping an area of the screen disrupts reading enjoyment, is slightly error-prone, and leaves smudges on the screen. The Fire screen also has more glare than the traditional Kindle."

"The magazine reading experience could be good but actually is miserable. ... Many magazines don't have a 'home page' where users can return after finishing an article. Headlines on magazine covers aren't clickable. ...'Page View' is unreadable and 'Text View' has the worst layout I've seen in years."

"If I were given to conspiracy theories, I'd say that Amazon deliberately designed a poor Web browsing user experience to keep Fire users from shopping on competing sites. Amazon's own built-in shopping app has great usability, so they clearly know how to design for the tablet."

Seems like in the areas it's supposed to best iPad in being lighter and as a eReader, it fails. I guess it's cheaper. That's something.

[Aabidano]

I read for hours on my touchpad, my arms don't get tired as I'm smart enough to set it on my lap. Who on earth holds something up in the air to read for long periods? I don't think I've seen anyone do that with any sort of media.

The UI is clunky, maybe to avoid Samsung's issue with iLawyers? Or perhaps the user behavior gatherers might be turned up too high for regular latencies?

Flipping through a full color book the pauses are noticeable, would assume a network issue or a too-small read-ahead buffer as the hardware is up to the task by itself.

With the HW being decent enough it has potential. Jailbroken it might be pretty spiffy. But again, it's not an iPad competitor or intended to be. Some newer tablets with Ice Cream sammich and a sub ~$300 price tag might be. Given HW costs that's a tough bill to fill.

[Winnow]

I can understand the appeal of a smaller tablet for people that need to take the subway, homeless people that recharge at libraries, etc. but the thing needs to be snappy. No one wants a sluggish UI. Its primary use is for reading, ebooks, magazines, etc. Like it or not, Apple set the bar high with the iPad (now iPad2) with a very responsive UI. I would expect the other companies to at least match that before January when Apple ups the ante again with the iPad 3, most likely with retina display and even faster processor (they have something like 500 engineers working on processors at Apple) When that happens, the iPad2 will migrate closer to the cheaper range of the kindle, still being way better than it while the high end will still be completely dominated by the iPad 3.

[Aabidano]

Agree with you on the UI comment, regardless of "why" it needs cleaned up.

Not really sure what they've targeted this for, everything it does can be done better by something a user with an actual use for it either already has, like an actual computer or can get cheaper like an e-ink device for reading.

The "full size" tablet form factor is much nicer, not sure what I'll get if\when my touchpad croaks. Nothing else really matches up - that I'm willing to pay for.

They might just be aiming to hit the ~$200 "media consumption toy" sweet spot for the not-willing-to-pay-Apple-like-prices demographic and this is what they ended up with.