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Way back in TechFan episode 1, Tim and David have talked about the need and want of a new tablet devise that they could get as excited for as they were the iPad. Now that Amazon has announced and shown off the Kindle Fire, has their hopes come true?
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You asked for comments on the Kindle Fire. I have a first gen 3G iPad, and will likely get the next version when it comes out. I will probably not get the Fire, although I think it is a great product and will be very successful.
I buy all of my music and eBooks from Amazon, and use their cloud service, so I would like to get the Fire, and may well get the second version. I bought an old crappy 7″ Android tablet a while back specifically so that I could download Amazon’s free app of the day, so I have a lot of software.
My impressions of that were that Android has improved a lot, from unusable to where a normal person can deal with it, more so than desktop Linux, for example The applications are still lacking, there are some decent games and a few apps – Evernote, Read It Later, office apps, but if you want to do something mildly unusual – edit audio or video, use Markdown, etc, there are still few choices. Still, an Android tablet doesn’t have to be strictly a consumption device, and Amazon’s user interface will be a big step forward for the normal non-geek user.
I LOVE the 7″ form factor and light weight, Steve Jobs’ opinion to the contrary.
The Amazon store is good – it has far fewer apps than the Android Marketplace, but it is curated and a much better experience overall.
What I would use the Fire for is a portable media player/streamer, eBook reader, Twitter, Facebook, email, and gaming machine – it has Plants vs. Zombies and enough other good games that I would be happy. As David mentioned, there would be times when I would carry it rather than the larger, heavier iPad.
The downsides:
It is running an old version of Android. While I would prefer a newer version,this isn’t a dealbreaker for me, nor are the hardware specs and the lack of a card slot at this price.
It lacks the Android Marketplace. I am pretty sure that this can be hacked onto it (it has been on my tablet) and I could live without it.
For me the biggie is the lack of an HDMi out, I would love to bring a Fire, a USB drive with a lot of video, and a cable and be able to play it back on their TV. If it had this, I would definitely buy the Fire, without it, I will probably wait for version 2.
I do think that it will be a VERY big success, in terms of numbers sold. although how profitable it will be for Amazon is open to question.
Bob DeGrande