One of the best parts about living in the 21st century is our access to millions of products with a simple tap of a button.
Or the swipe of a hand, the scan of a palm, the tap of a credit card...you get the idea.
Thanks to a shift in consumer shopping habits, brought about in part by retail giants like Amazon (AMZN) who have supplied us with things we didn't know, we can now order the things we need and get them the very next day. Sometimes even sooner.
To be sure, some of the shift in our shopping patterns also changed by necessity.
In the early 2020s, covid spurred many legacy shoppers, who may have even preferred to shop in person, to take more of an online tack. Everything from groceries to pet supplies suddenly was available online, and with the rise of social distancing (and many non essential retailers closing for months on end), we were forced to rethink how we made our purchases.
Now, almost three quarters of us claim the relatively new habit of preferring to shop online in place of in person. No small feat, considering one decade ago that was far from the norm.
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Amazon largely instrumental online convenience
Now that most of us have gotten used to (or even come to expect) the convenience of next day shipping, Amazon has begun to warm us up to other convenient perks to make our shopping habits as seamless as possible.
Amazon's voice enabled at home assistant, Alexa, for example, is in millions of homes and has sold an estimated half a billion devices. In 2023, household use of Alexa rose by 35%, according to Amazon SVP for Alexa Rohit Prasad.
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The Fire TV makes streaming across multiple services and devices a seamless process. And Amazon's acquired Ring doorbell makes at-home security accessible for both home owners and renters. Millions of users use Amazon's Blink or Ring devices to deter things like porch pirates and give families a peace of mind while they are sleeping or away.
One of Amazon's most popular devices, however, remains the Kindle. The tablet style e-reader makes reading books on the go a breeze. Its anti-glare screen, ease of use, and ability to store thousands of titles in a device that weighs less than a children's book was revolutionary at the time of its introduction in 2007.
Kindle has received a lot of updates
Kindle remains one of the top selling e-readers on the market, with Amazon having sold an estimated 500 million since its inception, which equates to a market share of just under 70%.
That's impressive, but many customers have grown frustrated with the devices in recent weeks, claiming Amazon has tinkered too much with the devices, issuing unnecessary software updates and straying too far from what once made the readers great.
"Quality and control of Kindle firmware development are at an all-time low. Many of the top executives at Amazon, who were in charge of software and hardware, quit the company or retired. A new generation of talent is at the top ranks, and many long-term Kindle developers were also laid off last year when Amazon fired thousands of workers," Michael Kozlowski writes for Good E Reader.
"This is likely because Alexa, Kindle, and Fire tablets were losing 5 billion dollars per year and did not have any end in sight for making them profitable."
Amazon issued its latest 5.16.10.0.1 firmware update, earlier this summer, and users have not taken kindly to the changes.
Some of those changes include:
- Reading progress: changed font
- Reading progress: slower to update
- Reading progress: can affect margin sizing and page formatting
- Time: now reflected in military time (can't be changed as of this writing)
Some users have even reported their batteries drain more quickly after the new update.
"Battery life gone to heck as well (this is on my Scribe)," one user on Reddit said of the update. "Haven't checked my Paperwhite Signature yet."
"Has the 'Time left in chapter' info disappeared with this update? It's greyed out and says 'not available' when I try to enable it," another asked.
"Yes! It is terrible!" another user replied.
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Reddit, Kindle forums, and tech wires are filled with poor reviews for the new Kindle update, with many claiming competing devices are preferable.
"Kindle is in a state of decline, with updates breaking more than they fix (like Kobo used to be) with no direction forward software or hardwise however," one reader commented on Good E Reader. Kobo is a Canadian e-reader company owned by Rakuten.
"My next reader will likely not be a Kindle. I have 820+ books purchased from Amazon, but tools exist to transform the format and remove the DRM and Amazon isn't giving me any reason to stay with them," another commenter wrote.
Amazon has not yet addressed the complaints about the e-reader's most recent update. It simply has a description of the latest patch and instructions on how to offer feedback on the most recent firmware update page.
"Your Kindle is regularly updated with improvements to the reading experience. Have feedback? Please share it with the Kindle team by going to Contact Us under Settings and then Help & User Guides," Amazon writes.
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