If you drop a book into the toilet, you can fish it out... But if you drop your Kindle in the toilet, you're pretty well done.
STEPHEN KING
This post is a response to the news in this article:
Your Old Kindle Still Works Perfectly. Amazon Is Killing It Anyway
I recommend reading the whole thing. Meanwhile, here are my two cents on the matter.
The Love
I bought my Kindle sometime back in 2007 or 08. I can't remember, but my device is close to 20 years old now. I still have the original battery in the thing, and it still works. It is certainly one of the devices that Amazon wants to brick now.
I bought the Kindle because of all the free books in the public domain you could download on the thing. I downloaded many of them. I liked the fact that you could carry around a library on the device that was the size of a paperback, and it has been in my backpack many times when I have had to travel. There is no clutter with the Kindle.
The Kindle really shined for me after my accident. My eyes cataracted over from the smashing of my head, and my vision began dimming to a point that I could no longer read a regular book. With the Kindle, I was able to enlarge the font to a gigantic size which allowed me to read the text. I chose to read the Douay-Rheims Bible, and I finished it on the Kindle. I could have never done that with my dead tree version of the Bible.
I had an iPod Touch once upon a time, and I read books on the Kindle app. But my eyes felt like someone had scrubbed them with sandpaper after reading on the thing. I discovered that I was not blinking when I was reading on the iPod screen. I don't know why I did that or what caused it. My eyes were drying out from not blinking. I have never had this problem with the e-ink display of the Kindle. They got that part exactly right, and it is why I preferred the Kindle over a tablet device like the Fire or the iPad.
The other great thing about the Kindle is that it allowed rapid delivery of a book. I didn't have to wait for the days that it takes to get a physical book through the mail from Amazon. And there are no late fees or return trips like you have with library books. That is the perk of "ownership" which brings me to the hate portion of this post.
The Hate
The argument that I heard from the beginning about the Kindle is that you don't really own the books on the thing. The fact that Amazon is going to brick my device supports that argument. The other thing is that Amazon had the ability to retroedit the ebook after the fact for whatever woke agenda they might want to push. You can't do this with a physical book. This is why it behooves you, Gentle Reader, to own and collect physical media.
The other thing about the Kindle is that it isn't the same experience as reading a physical book. My wife hates the Kindle and prefers a book she can hold in her hand. She can flip the pages and put bookmarks where she needs them. My wife is not a book vandal and does not make notes or underline things. But some people want that vandalism option which only a physical book provides. I can say for myself that I prefer reading a physical book over the electronic version. Since my eye surgeries, I have gone back to reading the Bible in its physical form.
They have tools and tricks on the Kindle to make it more like a physical book, but it was too aggravating to use them. A real book is the ultimate form factor for reading, and this is why physical books haven't died. This is why bookstores like Barnes and Noble have been making a comeback. Books are never going away.
This brings me to another criticism from my wife. Many of the books you would buy for the Kindle cost almost as much as the physical book. It costs virtually nothing to "print" and "deliver" an ebook. It is just electrons on a device. You could sell a book on the thing for a dollar and still make a profit. Instead, they demand full price for the thing that you never really own.
The Future
I know that Amazon got the idea for this unplanned but forced obsolescence from Apple who is famous for bricking older devices to churn the base of their cult of customers to get more money out of them. This was the fate of my iPod Touch. I appreciate that Amazon relented for almost 20 years on this move unlike Apple, but they are going to be the losers on this. I will never buy a new Kindle. I will never buy another ebook for the Kindle. They have shot themselves in the foot on this.
Would you be a fool to buy a Kindle or an ebook now? Absolutely. This digital crap is merely the illusion of ownership. That illusion is over. The only positive note on this is that you can still access your ebooks on the app on your other devices. I don't care. I am going back to physical books 100% now.
As for my current device, it still works and will continue to work until I reset it or whatever. I will hang on to it for now, but I am sorely tempted to eat the loss and trash the thing. I can't look at the thing without getting mad about it. You tricked me, Amazon. You won't trick me again.
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KINDLE NEWS and not the good kind 😨
Amazon’s Ending Support for Older Kindles… And That’s Not The Worst Part
I Tried Reading On A Kindle Instead Of "Real" Books... Here's The Truth
Kindle has a big problem, so I'm leaving it behind.
Ebooks, Kindle and the Erosion of Ownership
