What are your thoughts on the new Amazon Kindle Fire?

[famousringo]

smbu2000 said:

It doesn't really seem to be trying to compete with the Ipad. The Fire looks more like it's going up against the Barnes and Noble $249 Nook Color.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nookcolor/#logo

Just like the standard Kindle is up against the B&N Nook.

That's my take on it, too.

It has a shot at being the definitive content consumption tablet, but not having a large enough screen for a ten-finger virtual keyboard is going to limit what you can do with apps on this device. Apple views the iPad as a computing device. Amazon's Fire is still a Kindle; a content delivery device.

I have a personal beef with the Silk browser. It can track every single move you make online. You could opt in to every service and feature that Google and Facebook offer and neither company would know as much about you as Amazon could if you did all your browsing through Silk. It's clear that this "service" is a major reason why Amazon can afford to subsidize the crap out of this device. Some people are cool with trading their privacy for subsidized products, but I just wouldn't want to use a device where customer surveillance is a core function. Even if Amazon allows you to opt out, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Another issue for the Fire is regional restriction. Amazon's warehouse of digital content starts to look like a closet once you leave the US. Up here in Canada, Kindle barely beats iBooks for content availability, and Amazon music and video are MIA. It's not going to do Amazon a whole lot of good if they conquer the US tablet market while competitors secure the rest of the globe.

The last, and most interesting problem, is the war that Google and Amazon are about to wage over Android. I'm not really sure what Google can do to stop Amazon at this point, but you can bet that they'll do whatever they can. Is this the real reason why Google hasn't released the Android 3.x source code?