I'd like to add some longer term feelings on my Kindle Fire purchase here since last time I kinda compared it to the iPad since that seemed where the conversation was heading, now I'd like to talk about it in a vacuum of sorts.
First off, I think the default interface is fine. I've gotten used to the carousel so that's no longer really an issue although I still think it's probably faster than it should be. I consider myself a tad better at these things than some middle aged person or older using a new touch device and I still think it's a tad too responsive if I had a learning curve on it. So while I think it's workable for our generation I do still worry that it's too touchy overall, there really shouldn't be any adjustment to this kind of thing.
I'm actually a big fan of the different content being segregated up at the top, I like having a books "tab," a music tab, newstand tab, and so on and each one I think integrates well into Amazon's store and does a good job showing you what's on your device and what's in the cloud, except the music app. The music app is not the worst music app I have ever used but it's fairly, well, stupid. I find the UI a tad bit idiotic to put it bluntly. Currently I have bought 5 songs from Amazon and it shows those songs, I bought them with free credit as I actually have no desire to buy lossy music on my own dime and they do show up in the player and I can play them from the cloud. Where it fails is in getting that music that's in the cloud onto my device, there's a big button right next to each artist saying download or something to that effect but if you don't have the entire album it instead prompts you to buy the entire album, I find that counter intuitive both from a UI perspective and from the perspective of buying individual songs instead of full albums. Of course you can actually download your individual songs from the cloud it just isn't apparent in a manner I find acceptable for the masses. The music player needs real work.
The books section is workable, I have good eyesight when corrected and the default font is already pleasant to me but there's not exactly a ton of options there so this is a "your mileage may very" thing. I do however find fault with the overall handling of ebooks. Amazon has this whispersync shit and knows whether or not I've finished a book, the Kindle Fire can even tell me if I've finished the book right from the main selection screen by saying 100% over the icon and yet for some silly reason it's labeled as new when I download it to my Kindle Fire for the first time. I find that silly. There's also very little in terms of organization options, all I get for views is list and grid and all I get for sorting my books is by author or by title. That's simple and it's workable but I'd also like to be able to sort by genre, date or maybe even rating as well. Also missing in the Kindle Fire is the collections option that the Kindle PC offers. So really, it's very bare bones. Now that's there is nicely laid out, the UI is fine the app is just very basic. Bookmarking a spot, notes, it's all working how I expected them to I just want more options. Currently I have less than 20 books on there, 6 I've purchased and a bunch of the free classics so the limited view and sorting options are not a real issue but I can see them being a pain in the ass as your collection grows.
I do have a remotely related gripe in regards to the ebooks and it's that I already have one with an error, I believe it's missing a page as one of the pages is blank and the next page sorta makes sense but it really doesn't. Is it worth contacting Amazon or the publisher over this, I mean, they could theoretically update an ebook and push out a new revision but is that something that they actually do or is that pretty much relegated to when they do a new edition like in print? Either way, not the Kindle Fire's fault nor really Amazon's as I'm sure Amazon just throws up what the publisher gives them but since a lot of these ebooks are asking for more than the paperback costs it's poor form to not only give them physically less but have editing issues not present in the paperback or hardcover as well.
I actually dig the browser. I like its bookmarks function, it works fast, actually has a pretty robust option that you can set per site as to whether or not to default to the mobile or full website, I honestly have no issue with the browser outside not being able to simply click on a spoiler tag like on my shit Palm Pre to read it, though highlighting it still works as if you were going to cut and paste, and as I griped before, sometimes the activity icon doesn't seem to get updated and what you think is a stalled browser or perhaps a mis-tap on your part is actually just fine and it is indeed loading. That can definitely be fixed. The size on this screen is of course an issue, you will need to pinch and zoom on many websites, just how it is. Overall it's not as good a browsing experience as a larger tablet could offer but it's actually very good.
Now I get to Apps. the store works, apps load correctly, they run, technically it's workable. Amazon does have some issues with some apps being billed as Kindle Fire compatible that probably shouldn't but that has only happened to me once, it was with a solitaire game and if I merely had the option to switch orientation it would have been serviceable I just couldn't. My main gripe with the app store is not the content, which is lacking compared to the Android Market, nor necessarily the speed of updates to apps that are on it, which is also slower than the market but Amazon themselves. Amazon moved in a slightly more Draconian manner than I thought they would this weekend. Previously apps that facilitated rooting the Kindle Fire, along with other Android devices, like Root Explorer where on the store and labeled as Kindle Fire compatible and were available for purchase and would install and run just fine. That's what I expected, allow things that could be used by some to root the device for those power users but of course not just selling the Fire rooted from the start, that's what I thought. Well not anymore, those apps are now no longer Kindle Fire compatible and if you had purchased them from a computer or even your Fire when they were listed as compatible if you had not installed them yet they will no longer show up in your app list and you can not install it on your Fire. That is fucking bullshit. I support pulling broken or malicious apps from your market, I don't support pulling apps from specific devices because you've decided this device can be rooted but this one can not. I also ran into this issue with the Crunchyroll app, an anime streaming app sorta like Hulu Plus. It's a free app and was originally listed as compatible with the Kindle Fire, so I "bought" it and had been using it. It worked. Crunchyroll was never the best designed app ever but it worked. Well I did a system restore after I originally rooted the Fire as I thought it was just too much hassle and wanted to go back and now I can't download it. I "own" the app still, I can see it on Amazon's site proper but I can't get it on my Kindle Fire as they've pulled it. I really don't like this type of retroactive activity on Amazon's part. I also do not like the complete absence of communication from Amazon to their users on why they can't download something that was previously offered. They don't even show me the shit in the app and say "this has been temporarily suspended as we work with the author to fix y" Just nothing, it just doesn't show any more. So before this move by Amazon we already had less apps and less frequent and slower app updates but now I have them retroactively pulling apps from "the cloud" that I've purchased so that I can't install them, this has actually soured me quite a bit on Amazon's App Store.
Amazon also seems to be in a rush to really tarnish the whole concept of "Kindle Fire": edition apps on their appstore with the Facebook and Twitter "apps" being nothing more than bookmarks that reside in your app section that launch the browser to the mobile version of their respective sites. That's a fucking joke. I don't give two shits about Twitter or Facebook but if you're going to say it's a Kindle Fire edition app it better at least be a fucking app to begin with let alone be theoretically optimized for the screen of the Kindle Fire.
Sideloading does indeed work fine as I have done with Andchat and I think it's easy enough.
I only watched one video and frankly, not impressed at all with Amazon Prime's streaming to the Fire. I know this screen isn't 720p or 1080p but it's also like 7 fucking inches and isn't a total dog shit resolution either, there's no real excuse for this level of quality on the device.
Cut/Copy and Paste does indeed work as luoapp and khefka mentioned, thanks for that guys, my app was saying it had copied info to the clipboard in the notification area but in KeePassDroid you actually need to go to your entry and then down at the settings area tell it to copy the password, after that it worked as expected. That had initially been the only thing I tried to copy and now I've tried copying other text and it all works as I had thought it should. So I needed to set that straight.
I do like the form factor for books and I have found it easier to read books on than the iPad, I know that wasn't what I claimed I'd say, but the weight is still a tad heavy for really long extended usage periods but still easier because at least the weights in a smaller area. Overall it didn't "melt away in my hand" as the Amazon welcome letter claimed they had tried to do with it but it is by no means too uncomfortable.
Overall I still really dig it, the order of stuff I do with it goes ebooks, for which I like Amazon's store the most, web browsing, email and irc with web browsing really being the only thing that's truly a middling experience versus other tablets and all the rest being more or less great. Also keep in mind that I actually got this for 180 as I had a 20 dollar credit that I used when I bought this, for a hundred and eighty dollars I think it's an incredible device. The only thing I think is really an issue is that Kindle's on everything, this isn't like Apple where if I want to use their store I need to be on their device, you can install Kindle on any tablet, almost any phone, if ebooks are your primary concern the Kindle Reader App for the iPad was just as good as the one on the Fire with the only difference being in app purchases, many people may feel the freedom afforded by using a different tablet in conjunction with the respective Kindle App offers a better value, with some of the devices out now and some soon to be released I find it hard to argue against that logic. Amazon's UI I do like but if I had a 20 dollar credit and free shipping on a different tablet would I have bit on that one instead? Maybe so in all honesty. I don't find the Kindle Fire compelling in any area so if you had another similarly spec'ed android tablet for the same price it'd be hard to offer a point in the Kindle's favor outside of in app purchases of Amazon content, however, if you've decided that you are going to go it with Amazon's ebook service and are the type of person to buy shit on the fly it really is a convenient way to buy and read Amazon ebooks.
As an aside I've seen some people say content is king or that the Kindle Fire smokes everyone on content and frankly I think that's a lie. I like Apple's video store way better than Amazon's, the video quality was better too. Apple's music store beats the shit out of Amazon's and the iPod software in their iPad is better than the Kindle Fire's. Once you get down to ebooks, well you can buy and read ebooks from Amazon, Barnes and Nobel and Apple on the iPad natively without converting by using their respective apps and you can read ebooks from Barnes and Nobel and Amazon on any other Android tablet. Netflix and Hulu? Everyone's got it. So honestly, whenever you see a reviewer say there's so much more content on the Kindle Fire than elsewhere, they're full of shit. What the Kindle Fire does excel at is allowing you to seamlessly purchase Amazon's content. The Nook app isn't even on Amazon's store, you know you can't get Apple's content natively on the Kindle Fire, aside from Netflix and Hulu what other content does the Fire have besides Amazon's? But it's easy, if you're in the book section you can shop for books right there, same for music, it's a very seamless experience and I think better than Apple's approach as that's the only one I have a personal history with but as for the actual content, with the Kindle Fire you are pretty much placing yourself firmly in the Amazon camp for EVERYTHING.
