Technical information

Page 10
by Glenn Fleishman
The Amazon Kindle Fire is not an iPad killer or even precisely
an iPad competitor. If it succeeds — and based on my first day
with it, I believe it will — the Fire will create a new intermediate
niche for those who want a device with a bigger screen than a
phone for reading, gaming, and watching video, but don’t want the
iPad bulk or price tag. (You can read my brief review at The
Economist.)
Where Amazon can compete with Apple, however, is on the
ease of accessing media: both the items you purchased from the
company that made the tablet, and other media to which you want
access. Amazon’s Fire beats iOS hands down, even if you sepa-
rately subscribe to Apple’s just-released iTunes Match.
On the Fire, the home screen has tabs all in a row for four
divisions of media (Newsstand, Books, Music, and Video), as well
as Docs, Apps, and Web links. Tap any category except Docs and
Web, and two side-by-side buttons appear at the top when viewing
your library: Cloud and Device. Tap Cloud, and every electronic
media item you’ve ever purchased from Amazon is available for
download (all categories), or streaming for audio or video. Tap De-
vice, and anything stored on the Fire can be accessed, launched,
or read. (There’s a necessary footnote on music, that I’ll discuss
below.)
Amazon Beats Apple at Media
Access
Compare this to iOS 5, which suffers from Apple’s accre-
tive approach when it adds new kinds of media, and doesn’t
return to the information architect’s easel and rethink how
its approach is working — or not. This is Apple at its most
Microsoft-like, sadly. On the desktop, iTunes is a bloated and
distorted bag of unrelated features bursting at the seams.
But iOS doesn’t do much better by bursting out that bag into
separate sacks.
Consider this scenario. I’ve purchased a movie on my Mac
laptop that I want to continue watching on my mobile device.
With an Amazon Fire, my steps from zero to watching are:
Wake and unlock the Fire.
Tap the Video tab.
If your library isn’t showing, tap Library.
Tap Cloud if it’s not selected.
Tap the movie.
Tap Play or Download.
If you tap Download, you have to wait for enough footage
to buffer before it starts playing. Tapping play uses a streaming
mode that allows for faster startup, although it seems to trade
quality — the ultimate amount of data transferred for stream-
ing is likely less than for a download over the same video file.
On an iOS device, you
can’t transfer that movie
using any on-board app.
Instead, you:
Switch to iTunes on
the computer on which you
manage your purchased
media for that iOS device.
Connect the device to
the computer via USB if