Members UstadKhanAli Posted September 30, 2011 Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 I'm surprised no one's posted about this, so I'll do the honors this time! http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/09/kindle-fire-android-competion/ The Kindle Fire could be the first truly successful Android tablet. It touts a very reasonable $200 price tag, a well-curated app store, easy access to Amazon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Philter Posted September 30, 2011 Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 Apparently they are running a tweaked version of Android on it that will prevent compatibility with Android apps not specifically written for their platform. For me this would be a deal-killer. Maybe this will turn out not to be the case. The little blurb you posted above glosses over that issue with unclear language, like just about every other news report I've read on the subject. Novak is disappointed that the Kindle Fire supports Gingerbread, rather than Honeycomb, Android Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted September 30, 2011 Author Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 Another article, with a bit on what the tablet has: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-amazon-tablet-20110929,0,7340005.story The Fire, introduced Wednesday by Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, is aimed at attracting consumers who want a tablet but can't afford the iPad and its other pricier competitors. Amazon set the price at $200 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted September 30, 2011 Author Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 Apparently they are running a tweaked version of Android on it that will prevent compatibility with Android apps not specifically written for their platform. For me this would be a deal-killer. Maybe this will turn out not to be the case. The little blurb you posted above glosses over that issue with unclear language, like just about every other news report I've read on the subject. The LA Times article also glosses over that point, it appears: Like the Fire, tablet devices from those rivals use a version of Google Inc.'s Android mobile operating system. But Amazon went a step further, creating a custom version of the operating system to focus largely on Amazon products and entertainment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members techristian Posted September 30, 2011 Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 This is not the first android under $200. I have a Velocity Cruz T301 ($150). It was marketed as an "android 2.2" but was severely crippled to work mostly with Amazon as a "Kindle" with android capability. At first it had NO MARKET access, no speed, no Adobe Flash. Now after a few hacks it will run, Market, a few other apps that it wasn't supposed to run, and it runs up to 5X faster, but out of the box, very disappointing. I still can't run Flash but perhaps it will run V11 Flash. I do run SkyFire as a Flash substitute though. Anyway, the point being, a READER ONLY won't satisfy the Tech Savy. If it only downloads PAYED FOR VIDEOS AND CONTENT FROM AMAZON, THEN COUNT ME OUT......until someone finds a hack for it. As a possible developer, I'm also not interested in another crippled android because it won't run the future music apps that I may design. The average end user is not going to spend 50 hours learning how to make a reader into a real android. Dan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted September 30, 2011 Author Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 Buried in this, perhaps, is a new Kindle for $79, according to the LA Times article. As far as the new tablet, I doubt it would only work with Amazon videos and content. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nat whilk II Posted September 30, 2011 Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 Yeah, looks like Amazon has put a fence around the content to keep you buying from their select circle of related providers. But really, that doesn't bother me if there's a trade-off in the price and the quality is there. I already bought 90% of my books from Amazon before the Kindle came on the market. I haven't been inside a book store for a couple of years now... I still need to be sold on a pad anyway...I have an iPod for portable music, a nice big computer screen and HDTV for movies, and I don't need colors to read novels and such. My current Kindle got stepped on and damaged at the ACL festival so I'll be replacing it - so far I think I might upgrade to the Kindle Touch, but I'm not convinced the Fire will give me anything I care to pay anything extra for.... nat whilk ii Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted September 30, 2011 Author Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 I've still been in bookstores, but they've typically been independent bookstores, the sort where the browsing and so forth is half the experience, such that you can find stuff that you wouldn't ordinarily find on online stores. Anyway, I am interested in getting an iPad largely for photography, but also for watching movies, reading books and magazines, going online, and maybe using it as a controller in my studio. And for many of those things, the nine inch screen would be more preferable for me than the seven inch screen that the Kindle Fire has. So at this point, I'm still favoring the iPad (I had waited a bit to see what the Amazon tablet would have to offer). That said, at a $200 price point, if it's well-designed and interfaces really great with Amazon and the browser is really fast, as the article indicates, that sounds like it might be a winner. That's a significant price difference from a lot of other tablets. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Anderton Posted September 30, 2011 Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 The good news: Does Flash. The bad news: No 3G... The "we'll see" news is that iPads may not have the iPhone's 60% markup, but they do run 40% to 50% - plenty of room to cut prices if Apple feels competition looming. Not that the Fire really is competition at this point, the idea of being a "consume only and for cheap" device puts it in a different class - paperback as opposed to hardcover, as an analogy. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Odd that someone else is now in the position of making "the tablet for the rest of us." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Coaster Posted September 30, 2011 Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 The good news: Does Flash. The bad news: No 3G... The "we'll see" news is that iPads may not have the iPhone's 60% markup, but they do run 40% to 50% - plenty of room to cut prices if Apple feels competition looming. Not that the Fire really is competition at this point, the idea of being a "consume only and for cheap" device puts it in a different class - paperback as opposed to hardcover, as an analogy. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Odd that someone else is now in the position of making "the tablet for the rest of us." we are destined to become that which we rebel against. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderators Lee Knight Posted September 30, 2011 Moderators Share Posted September 30, 2011 we are destined to become that which we rebel against. I'll never be like you DAD! I'll never be like you! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members UstadKhanAli Posted September 30, 2011 Author Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 If people perceive this as doing plenty and don't need, say, a camera (the iPad is really shaped poorly for use as a camera, , especially given its large size, but that's besides the point), that it has plenty of apps or features, and it is significantly better than all the other Android-based tablets, it'll do really well. And I have a feeling it'll do really well. iPad killer? No. Doing really well? Probably. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted September 30, 2011 Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 If you want a WiFi touch pad you can do pretty good with one of these if you can snag one quick enough. http://www.hp.com/united-states/webos/us/en/shopping-touchpad.htmlHP still have some 16G for $99 and $149 for a 32G from their fire sale. They were rated extremely high in their initial reviews. My wife works for HP and picked up a 32G yesterday. I figured for the price you just cant go wrong. I had been thinking about getting something simular for my lyrics. If I can see the thing properly it would be alot better than using a notebook full of paper. I'll likely just use a piece of velcro to hold it to a music stand for safety. I suppose I could use it to play back music between sets or even do some limited recording with interface to a limited degree. Probibly to a thumb drive. Its got a 1.2G Dual core so it should be fairly snappy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CMS Author MikeRivers Posted September 30, 2011 CMS Author Share Posted September 30, 2011 If you want a WiFi touch pad you can do better. HP still have some 16G for $99 and $149 for a 32G from their fire sale. Unfortunately sold out (as always) with a note that there will be another production run to meet demand at some time in the future, to be announced on Twitter. Maybe that your wife got one yesterday is a good sign that the day (and I'll bet there won't be more than a day) when they're available at that price is near. Will some kind Twit please let me know when I can buy one of these for $100? I'd like to give it a try, but I don't Tweet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members spokenward Posted September 30, 2011 Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 Amazon announced a November 15 delivery of the Kindle Fire. That was a preemptive strike on the refresh of the Nook Color lineup. The Nook Color has been very successful and is probably the real target of the Fire. Amazon has built a delivery system and the Fire provides a delivery address. But the Fire is a vending machine for Amazon. The Fire does not support EPUB like the Nook, iPad, or Sony products. The Nooks have supported PDF (third party apps improve the performance) - Amazon was late to the party with PDF and that kind of illustrates their enthusiasm for user-managed content. The Nook Color has had 3 software updates since release last Fall and it is a very capable eReader and a functional Tablet with a webkit browser. Like the Amazon product, it runs a special flavor of Android and has a "curated" App market. In that limited market nerd users like me can find Evernote, Pulse, Seesmic, WolframAlpha, Pandora and Fandango. Their App market though is biased toward the Mommy market with kids books and games. B&N attempted to leverage the women's market with magazine offerings. People expect 2 new Nooks. One 10" tablet and one 7" with more horsepower. Public Library support is probably farther along with the DRM'd EPUBs than it is with the Kindle products. It will be interesting to see how fast video migrates to a personal screen. That may be the real battle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted September 30, 2011 Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 The real news here, seems to me -- besides the 'we learned HP's lesson' pricing -- is the way Amazon leverages their cloud computing experience and infrastructure to deliver what a number of writers have noted as a snappy, almost-instant feel via predictive precaching, remote rendering, and other tweaky fashion forward computing technologies. Writers have noted that the Fire is even more oriented to passive consumption than other fondleslabs, no mic, no cam. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted September 30, 2011 Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 Unfortunately sold out (as always) with a note that there will be another production run to meet demand at some time in the future, to be announced on Twitter. Maybe that your wife got one yesterday is a good sign that the day (and I'll bet there won't be more than a day) when they're available at that price is near.Will some kind Twit please let me know when I can buy one of these for $100? I'd like to give it a try, but I don't Tweet. I'll keep my ears open. She finds out a a couple of hours prior to when they can be purchased. They were sold out in a day and a half this time around. Employess are only allowed to buy one, and pay the same cost as the public does. (same here at Canon when they have sales)The company is not making any profit on them and dont plan on continuing them past this first production run. There are places selling them at higher costs but they are mostly non HP vendors from what I see. HP is in the process of spinning off their computer business into a separate entity and is not being sold as some speculated. They will be making high end computers mostly and will likely quit making all the low cost boxes in the compaq line. The company is still #1 in sales over the competition but this economy hasnt helped any of them. Since Apple has the biggestshare of hand held stuff, HP reversing gears and rethinking things was a wise move on their part. I think They will wait till afterthis next election cycle before doing anything dramatic, but thats the same thing all companies are doing presently. Companies haveto use predictions with their business plans and are holding off production till they have a good idea of whats coming up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted September 30, 2011 Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 I found this arch jab at Apple's slate technologies and corporate culture from the sharp-eyed and sharper-tongued UK tech periodical, The Register:Apple to Oz court: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members spokenward Posted September 30, 2011 Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 The real news here, seems to me -- besides the 'we learned HP's lesson' pricing On that front - obviously no one has had a teardown, but an analyst estimates they are going to market $50 under cost. Like hogs down a greasy chute. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted September 30, 2011 Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 On that front - obviously no one has had a teardown, but an analyst estimates they are going to market $50 under cost. Like hogs down a greasy chute.Yep. If I had to have a slate for some currently unforeseeable reason -- and the cloud-tech boost from Amazon's massive mainframe farms notwithstanding -- I'd hold out for as open a platform as I could find. If that means taking a wee bit of extra caution in the Android app Market, so be it. I'm used to that drill with my phone. So far, while I have some truly very useful apps -- I've yet to spend a penny on one. And clearly that is not in the Amazon or Apple master scheme. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Lee Flier Posted September 30, 2011 Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 I'm pretty concerned about the privacy implications of the Silk browser - the thing that speeds it up is that every web request on every site you visit goes through Amazon's servers first, and the browser is designed to work with Amazon's server network to do predictive caching and other things to speed up your web experience and/or allow you to read websites offline. http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/09/the-implications-of-amazons-si.php Of course, there's a certain degree of this already built into HTML5, so it won't be long before other smartphones and tablets can do the same thing (to the extent that they can't already) without having to log your every move on their servers and sell it to advertisers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members michael_B Posted September 30, 2011 Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 If you're on the internet, you have no privacy from those that want the info. There's always a way to track, not that I advocate any of it, however if you want to live in the world of e-everything, it's a reality. Save 200 bucks and go to the library...(oh, that's right you'll get tracked there too....) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Geoff Grace Posted September 30, 2011 Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 So far, while I have some truly very useful apps -- I've yet to spend a penny on one. And clearly that is not in the Amazon or Apple master scheme. Perhaps not so much, in Apple's case. As a pundit on NPR pointed out, Amazon mostly sells content and prices its hardware accordingly low, whereas Apple primarily sells hardware and prices its content accordingly low. I'm not an iPad user, but I've downloaded plenty of useful apps for my iPhone and they're all free. Sure, there are apps I could pay for; but with so many free ones available, I've yet to buy any. Best, Geoff Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members blue2blue Posted September 30, 2011 Members Share Posted September 30, 2011 Perhaps not so much, in Apple's case. As a pundit on NPR pointed out, Amazon mostly sells content and prices its hardware accordingly low, whereas Apple primarily sells hardware and prices its content accordingly low. I'm not an iPad user, but I've downloaded plenty of useful apps for my iPhone and they're all free. Sure, there are apps I could pay for; but with so many free ones available, I've yet to buy any. Best, Geoff Sure. Good point. I think it's very clear that Amazon sees the Fire's value to the company as a way to get and lock in users. And I actually should have included Google in my comment you quoted, since the Android market is hardly founded on pure altruism. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Cry Logic Posted October 1, 2011 Members Share Posted October 1, 2011 " Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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