Not really...same thing happens every time you shop on-line, whether you disable cookies or not, whether you engage private browsing or not. It a new world... :eek:

Not really...same thing happens every time you shop on-line, whether you disable cookies or not, whether you engage private browsing or not. It a new world... :eek:

With normal browsers, the data does not all pass through Amazon. Here they are the proxy so you could be browsing a competitor's site and now Amazon will have insight into what you are looking at. I find that disturbing. Even google does not act as a proxy for the web traffic in this way. The only thing that is similar is Opera Mini.

Amazon's main goal is likely to offer you things you want, in other words, to beat the competition by giving you a more attractive deal. Do you find that disturbing?

Another goal may be to sell information on your interests to other companies. Is that more disturbing?

I suppose they'd have to disclose this as part of their privacy policies. Opera mini says it doesn't disclose individual information (except as required by law or law enforcement). http://www.opera.com/privacy/

Nope.

Amazon knows more about me through my shopping habits than I do.

And, though this is anecdotal, don't Amazon's servers host all sorts of other web sites (I thought I heard they host Netflix or Quikster, or whatever it is now)? That's even more data they could mine (subject, of course, to whatever privacy they've agreed to with the company leasing Amazon's servers).

A friend and I used to joke that, based on what Amazon "suggested" to me due to past looks at and buys of merchandise, it seemed their systems could find Osama bin Laden in minutes if whoever just loaded up every "tip" about him into Amazon's brain and let it chug through it all to predict...

Yes, Osama is gone. But, the new joke I made to my friend is that with this Silk predictive browsing and Amazon's brain, Amazon could not only find Osama but know where he's going before he even decided to go there.

It's definitely going to be a successful product and a good sign that Apple will have competition to force their hand and keep improving. Already, the new Kindle products are taking up the top 12 spots or something on Amazon's gadget list. Amazon is hitting the mark with their price points (even if they are taking losses to do so).

The new Kindles actually are more intriguing to me. Text works out a lot better with the smaller 7 inch screen since you can enlarge and shrink at will. The main benefit to having the color screen to me is for magazines, which the iPad 2 does extremely well (both with PDF versions and native apps like Time, Sports Illustrated). It will be interesting to see how magazines are formatted and how they perform on the Kindle. Right now, I can read the whole page of a PDF on the iPad, zoom in quickly, and turn pages smoothly. I'm not sure you can read text at all on a 7 inch screen if formatted for printed page.

It was a little disappointing that the Fire doesn't use a color e-Ink screen which would at least give it that advantage. I'll be waiting for both the iPad 3 and Kindle Fire Pro (or whatever the 10 inch version is). Amazon could also win me over by getting magazine companies on board with the right pricing.

Bottom line for me is a wait and see on the Fire, and I'd buy a regular black & white Kindle if I didn't already have one from last year.

Imagine the outcry if Apple was selling iPad's at a loss to gain market share. But this is Amazon, so they get a free pass.

I can recall when ipods came out people laughed at the lack of wireless. I am sure the 3g version is coming for the fire, but for now wifi will suffice. I am an amzn prime customer and i missed the announcement that free streamimg was added. I will be comparimg to netflix soon, and likely dropping netflix. Netflix looks done like dinner.

If this get added to a future fire then it is huge, even if perhaps the free 3g is tied to an amazon prime membership.

Wow.

I imagine Apple's shareholders would be pissed, yes, because Apple sells content at barely breakeven and makes their money on highly margined profitable devices. Amazon makes their money on content.

Are Apple fans bots?

I'm still waiting for wireless iPhone/iPod syncing. Not laughing anymore, just whining.

How are the content rates barely break even? They seem to the same as Amazon. Indeed the number one nyt hardback novel, Heat Rises, sells for nearly three dollars more on the iBook store than the kindle store. :confused:

Why do you need an iPod if you have an iPhone? :confused:

Anyway, ordered a fire yesterday. I am not likely to switch from my iPad, but the mrs might like it.

If Amazon does buy Palm/WebOS, I'll regret having sold my TouchPads so inexpensively.

Are "apps" content in your perception? I assure you that Apple's margins are quite well served by the cut they take on every single application being distributed through the app store.

Not that you asked me, but I always had to carry both. Since I couldn't replace the battery on either, any remotely long flight and I'd be dead by landing. Slightly less of an issue when using the ipod and keeping the phone off, though after two years with the ipod, they both seem to eat charge pretty quickly.

< shrug > Apple has stated the iTunes store "runs slightly above break even". FY2010 iTunes revenue was $4.4 billion. Q42010 iPhone & accessories revenue was $8.8 billion. Similar numbers for recent quarters except greater growth in iPhone sales than iTunes.

FOR 200 DOLLARS, NO LESS!!!

(1) i have a 3g kindle... and rarely rarely have i actually used that feature. only sparingly abroad to check emails
(2) since it doesnt supplant a mobile phone... most techies would already carry modern smartphone that the kindle can tether to for data

its a great price-point. i preordered a fire the day it was announced