Amazon Kindle Fire: Is what’s bad for Android Good for the User?
In a recent post, I suggested that the Kindle’s genius was the fact that the OS is unnoticeable – that, when I use a device that is designed for content, the OS is the last thing that I want to think about.
Well, I wrote that just before the Kindle line got very interesting because Amazon just launched the Kindle Fire, which supposedly runs a branched version of Android.
There’s been tons of analysis and opinions on this device in the last two days, but what’s struck me as interesting is how many are commenting on the lack of Android branding. A widespread opinion is that Amazon has “hijacked” Android with this device (In fact, searching “Amazon Kindle Fire” in Google results in this article first – before any Amazon.com pages are listed.)
I think this is a odd way to view the situation and here’s why: I shouldn’t have to care what OS I’m running. The wonder and genius of the older Kindle (now known as the Kindle Keyboard) was that all I saw was content – I wouldn’t have even thought about the Kindle running Linux if it weren’t that this fact was listed as a glorious, epic victory on Linux blogs.
In the light of Kindle’s invisible-OS-genius, what could be better than this news? Amazon has managed to switch to Android – an indisputably better system – but has also done so without bringing-along the obtrusive artifacts of the underlying system.
Alan Perlis once said:
A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to the irrelevant.
It seems like a sidetrack, but when I buy a device designed for content, the underlying system becomes irrelevant, and a device is low-level (with regard to its intended use) when I have to pay attention to the OS (or even notice it).
The fact that Amazon got this right shows that they’re approaching Apple’s iPad market-share with a high-level understanding of their goals. As far as I can tell, they’re the only non-Apple tablet producer to have done so.