Amazon has been releasing Kindle e-readers since 2007 and is one of the oldest companies still releasing new products every year. Everyone these days is mad about the Kindle. In recent times, Kindles made before 2014 have been discontinued and can no longer connect to the bookstore to purchase new content. Every major tech blog, newspaper, and magazine is up in arms about this issue, proclaiming that nobody should buy a Kindle anymore and support alternative brands such as Rakuten Kobo or Barnes and Noble NOOK, or even Android e-readers.
Other issues that made the news circuit were the stealth encryption system Amazon implemented for older Kindle e-readers, that downloaded all e-books in their ultra secure KFX-ZIP format, which is not compatible with the encryption broken by 3rd-party tools for popular software such as Caliber and the DeDRM plugin. The new KFX-Zip files are available on Kindle e-readers from the 7th generation through the 11th generation. Prior Kindles from the 6th generation have not yet been updated.
I think most people fail to realize that the Amazon Kindle is the world’s most popular e-reader, designed to purchase books, store them in the cloud, and subscribe to services such as Kindle Unlimited. The devices aren’t meant to back up your e-books, break DRM, or sideload your own content, such as manga, comics, and PDF files. The Kindle does reading very well; the page-turn system is super fast, and it employs innovative software for people with visual impairments.
Anything other than a Kindle requires some sort of sacrifice. Kobo e-readers, on a pure hardware level, are very well designed; some have physical buttons. page-turn buttons, but the e-book experience is not as fluid as on the Kindle, and Kobo has basically gone all in on color devices. NOOK also has page-turn buttons, but its Achilles’ heel is the software, which is abysmal. Android e-readers go out of date very fast. If you have an Android 10 e-reader from a couple of years ago, most e-reading apps have already dropped support for it. Most companies do not ship with the bleeding edge of Android and are typically a few generations behind.
The average Kindle user is no longer using a 14-year-old e-reader to buy e-books. They don’t load their own content, nor do they try to manually backup their books. They like to read, and they do it better than anyone else in the industry. Try not to get caught up in the whole boycott Amazon because they do things you might not agree with. I assure you, the alternatives aren’t much better.