Barely adequate

Companies get comfortable when they have a monopoly, and it’s hard to imagine any other excuse for such a poor product. Once you buy a Kindle book (and I have over 1,000), there is only one program that you can read them on: the Kindle app. I would gladly pay for a better app, such as one that allows annotations with Apple Pencil or other styluses, but Kindle books are locked so that you cannot go to the competitor for a reading app. The result is an app that is years behind development. In addition, although it offers Collections, there is almost no way to rearrange the order of the collections or to have, in effect, subfolders. This is a feature that, if there were competitors for reading Kindle content, would typically appear in the first year. I’m (generally) happy to buy content from Amazon, but it would be far better if the reader was open to competition.

One feature I’ve long wanted in a reader—I use the Kindle Voyager most of the time—is the ability to have the book cover I’m currently reading appear as the default image on the face of the reader when it is off. It would be so easy, but unfortunately they don’t bother.

Bottom line: open up this sealed system so that we can buy Kindle books but read them on non-Kindle apps and devices.

It works as a basic, few-frills app, but that’s it.

Larry_Hinman about Kindle Classic, v1.12.4