If you love your e-reader, take note: apparently, Amazon is ending support for older Kindles, but it's not because there's anything wrong with them; in fact, they seem to be working just fine.
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In an email to users on Wednesday, April 9, Amazon announced that it will be "discontinuing support for Kindle devices released in 2012 or earlier," although many of these devices are perfectly functional. Users will still be able to use their Kindles to "read books already downloaded," but beyond that, their devices will seemingly be bricked — aka, rendered useless. Browsing, buying, and downloading books will no longer be supported.
The move means that Kindle users with older, functional models will be forced to buy a new device in order to keep using their Amazon e-reader. But never fear: according to the email, $2.508 trillion market-cap company Amazon is, most generously, offering a 20% discount on the new e-reader they are pressing their customers into buying.
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The decision for a company that created such a long-lived, much-loved product to purposefully ruin it seems baffling, and users are, justifiably, pretty upset about it:
One Twitter user pointed out the difference between companies selling devices with planned obsolescence, which deserves criticism of its own, and this, Amazon's "deliberate choice to brick a device that's working perfectly well, in order to force your customer to buy a new one."
Referring to the age of the devices stipulated in the email, another user likened their aged Kindle to a cast-iron skillet — a "simple, elegant device." Exactly!
Amazon "certainly [has] the ability to continue supporting these older devices," one user wrote. "A Kindle purchased in 2012 still works just as good for reading as it did then!"
Annnnd here it is: the speculation as to why Amazon is making this decision. As one Twitter user puts it, "The new Kindle devices have ads in them, which you have to pay extra to remove. ... We live in corporate hell now!"