Just another Kindle Fire micro-mini update. So far: books, movies and music are the Big Deal, although I have found and installed several Android apps that are very cool, both in the Amazon app store and elsewhere.
Elsewhere? Yeh. Side loading Android apps is easy-peasy once two conditions are met: getting the things actually downloaded to the device and configuring the device to allow installation of apps obtained outside the Amazon app store. But more on that later.
The apps I’ve found so far that have tickled my fancy (in a good way–getcher mind outa the gutter! ;-)) are Opera Mobile (of course! *heh*), BubbleLevel (amazing! Using the Kindle Fire as a level. Cool!</em>) and TeamViewer. While I’ve installed other apps over the last few days, these three have seen the most use to date. Pinch & Zoom work much better in Opera Mobile–Zoom and watch the page center in on the text or graphic you pinched to zoom without needing to manually adjust as with the Silk Browser. Nice, and just one of many browsing experience enhancements.
BubbleLevel? I have found myself walking around as I watch a movie or read a book. I catch something out of the corner of my eye. “Oh, that picture’s not level.” Pop open BubbleLevel and… level the pic. *heh* Sure, I could eyeball it level (it’s a knack), but why, when “there’s an app for that”? *heh*
And TeamViewer. Fun controlling one of my other computers from the Fire. That’s all. It’s just fun. Yeh, yeh, I know I’ll find it to actually be useful at some point (TeamViewer should be on every computer on a home network, IMO, and having it on the computers of remote family is even more useful), if only for accessing files and running apps on my desktop while I’m elsewhere… Oh, yes. That will be useful.
Now, as to dislikes concerning the Kindle Fire itself.
Few, but the biggest dislike is that Amazon didn’t include a USB data cable! (!?!) OK, so Amazon’s virtually giving the device away already, but not including a data cable? That goes beyond an annoyance and enters the verge of “This ticks me off” territory. How much easier it would be to sideload Android apps by dragging and dropping them from my desktop/laptop onto the Fire as opposed to emailing them as attachments and then downloading the attachments? Lots. But no, that will have to wait on my separately-ordered data cable, since none of my other USB cables has exactly the same micro-USB termination. *sigh* And even though I can email mobi files obtained elsewhere to the Fire (an eBook format the Fire can read) and have the Fire sync them, it’s a cumbersome process… and I have at least 100 of the things (only the ones worth reading more than once) to sync in.
Data cable a must-have. Amazon not including one with the Fire is irritating.
Now, side loading on the Fire: easy-peasy, even considering the irritation of having to kludge-net with an email attachment download. Oh, what’s with the email attachment download instead of a direct (browser) download of an Android app? I dunno. Silk seems to really, really, REALLY not want to download apps, and even with Opera Mobile it proved to be easier to download the apps to be side loaded on another computer, email the APZ APK* files to myself as an attachment and then download them to the Fire from the email. Weird, but not at all difficult. From there, if one has already enabled installing apps from “unknown” (as in “unknown”=”unavailable in Amazon’s app store *sigh*) sources all it takes is invoking the APZ file and bob’s your uncle.
Another lil note: I find that I have read most of the (10) books I’ve read on the Fire so far in landscape mode. Since I generally read a line or so at a time rather than one or two (or a few) words at a time, the longer lines afforded by reading in landscape mode are a better fit for my reading style.
*APZ-APK: while I’d like to claim “APZ” as a typo, anyone with half a brain would see that as a lame excuse. It was a brain fart (or Early Oldtimers’ Disease, take your pick *heh*). AMZ files are an Amazon mp3 downloader file, so I may have conflated the two format extensions somehow.