• @adarza@lemmy.ca
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      61 month ago

      early models didn’t have wifi, only usb or cellular from one provider or another–and those models’ 3g connectivity was killed off years ago.

      this will obsolete all the non-wifi kindles still in use.

      • Cid Vicious
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        31 month ago

        You can still use calibre to sideload onto them. Where you get the books is another issue.

        • @Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de
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          1 month ago

          So it just obsoletes them for the model users that buy ebooks from Amazon and put them on their Amazon device without conversion in between. Even though this user group should be Amazon’s favourites.

          lol, lmao even.

          • Cid Vicious
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            11 month ago

            The specific devices impacted by this are pretty old (I think only the first and second gen ones? So at latest 2009), so honestly I doubt they’re very worried about it.

    • @FlyingLoon@lemmy.world
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      11 month ago

      I mean, I agree with this. I have a kindle and had no idea you could directly connect it to download books. Guess I learned my new thing for the day.

    • @jonathan@lemmy.zip
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      -31 month ago

      It’s the old bait and switch, they had to have this feature to build initial trust in ebooks.

        • @jonathan@lemmy.zip
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          31 month ago

          Amazon spent 20 years being unprofitable on purpose. You think they don’t have long term strategies?

          • @NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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            21 month ago

            Profitability as reported by companies, especially tech companies, is complex. Also understand that most of that 20 years (assuming that is an accurate statement) was the era of venture capitalism and infinite funding.

            But yes. Amazon did spend decades inventing and taking over e-commerce.

            But that is not what you described. You described a “bait and switch” which implies that they designed the old keyboard kindles with built in wikipedia support as some long con to get around the eventual invention of a de-drm plugin for the eventually invented Calibre library manager.

            The reality is that this is just a case of locking down walled gardens to take advantage of market share. Everyone is doing it. It isn’t some deep conspiracy and is more just the logical end result of a walled garden with large market share.