So today I made the mistake of removing the airplane mode and downloading a few book samples.
Lo and behold when I get back to the device I discover that Amazon have updated the OS without asking me (to 5.7.2.1), completely changing the UI, and the look and feel of the device. I've had firmware updates before but never such a massive UI update. A few issues:
1) The new UI is horrible. It's counter-intuitive, the fonts are unnecessarily small and thin, the nice book-shelf image for the collections is gone, a blank space replacing it. why remove a feature is beyond me.
2) I work in software and I've never heard of a product that radically changes the UI part of its OS without asking or notifying the customer before hand. Not in cellphones, not in PCs, etc. Am I wrong? This is highly aggressive.
Do you have any idea how many elderly Kindle owners who are not computer savvy, not to mention the hard-of-sight will struggle tonight with learning the new UI? (For instance by default it now shows only books you've downloaded from Amazon and not those copied unto the device.)
3) Am I correct to assume that even if I manually downgrade the OS (haven't even checked yet how to do that) it would just upgrade again the next time I connect?
thanks
Lo and behold when I get back to the device I discover that Amazon have updated the OS without asking me (to 5.7.2.1), completely changing the UI, and the look and feel of the device. I've had firmware updates before but never such a massive UI update. A few issues:
1) The new UI is horrible. It's counter-intuitive, the fonts are unnecessarily small and thin, the nice book-shelf image for the collections is gone, a blank space replacing it. why remove a feature is beyond me.
2) I work in software and I've never heard of a product that radically changes the UI part of its OS without asking or notifying the customer before hand. Not in cellphones, not in PCs, etc. Am I wrong? This is highly aggressive.
Do you have any idea how many elderly Kindle owners who are not computer savvy, not to mention the hard-of-sight will struggle tonight with learning the new UI? (For instance by default it now shows only books you've downloaded from Amazon and not those copied unto the device.)
3) Am I correct to assume that even if I manually downgrade the OS (haven't even checked yet how to do that) it would just upgrade again the next time I connect?
thanks