> We are still dealing with a home screen that prioritizes advertisements and promoted recommendations over your actual library. Navigating a large collection of books remains a chore, with sluggish animations and a lack of robust folder management that has been a standard feature on rival devices for years.
Such claims make me think that this article is biased.
There are two tabs on main Kindle screen - Home and Library (and also pretty good search). In Library you can see all your books AND collections as folders.
Very frequently when I turn on my Kindle it starts on “Home”. I have never found anything on “Home” remotely useful, and just want to see the books that I already have on the device, but they keep pushing me over to the screen full of ads (and it often takes >5 seconds to switch screens after I tap on “Library” for some reason). I think that's what they're talking about.
The kobo store has problems with DRM but Kobo devices do not. they’ll open whatever you put on the file system (and it’s treated as a first class citizen along with anything you’ve bought from them). They also are extremely easy to install custom firmware on.
Kindle's are cheaper because Amazon sells them at or below cost to lure users into their ecosystem. This helps them control the market from both the seller and consumer sides, in keeping with their overall business model. Add to that the fact that you don't really own the e-books you "buy" through Amazon, just like pretty much every other digital "purchase" these days, and that's enough for me to never buy one.
Of course, the general state of e-book devices is pretty abysmal. There are no good options I'm aware of.
> Add to that the fact that you don't really own the e-books you "buy" through Amazon, just like pretty much every other digital "purchase" these days, and that's enough for me to never buy one.
True. That's why I prefer to buy books on other platforms, sometimes directly on authors website.
And nothing stops me from reading them on Kindle. Maybe that's the reason why I don't understand the problem here.
This is such a non-issue. Whether my device phones home to the US or to China makes no difference at all to me (as a on US / China citizen). Boox devices do not serve any kinds of ads, are fully Android, you can customize your starting screen however you like, read every format (including amazon. kwx), have great battery life and I own what I put on them and nobody bricks them for whatever reason. Even better: I can buy wherever I want from* and download directly from the store to the device.
I've never had to interact with the Kobo store (which I guess is what you mean?) and just chuck the epubs I have manually, they all just work out of the box.
The only DRM-related thing I've dealt with is me hooking Libby up to it to read a book I borrowed.
Most, if not all, ebook stores have "issues" with DRM because publishers demand it (and authors too often simply go along with it). Amazon and Kobo (and other ebook stores as well) let authors of self-published books decide whether or not to put DRM on their books.
> There are two tabs on main Kindle screen - Home and Library (and also pretty good search). In Library you can see all your books AND collections as folders.
Two tabs, which one do they default you to? Which one do they default you to?
Such claims make me think that this post is biased.
There are two tabs on main Kindle screen - Home and Library (and also pretty good search). In Library you can see all your books AND collections as folders.
BOOX devices have their own issues https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33353640
I think Kobo has same issues with DRM as Amazon does.
Also, Kindle devices are cheaper, last time I checked, low end models of competitors, didn't have flush-front screens, like Paperwhite.
I never had problems described in this article (but YMMV of course).