kindle-oasisIf you thought that the high $290 price point of the Kindle Oasis meant it wouldn’t sell well, better think again. Customers are already reporting that the ship dates for certain configurations of the Oasis have fallen back from April 27 into May or June.

The delays seem tied to different colors of cover. One customer said that customer care told them the “delivery date for WiFi-only, merlot with Special Offers is in fact June 21. The soonest I could get the black is May 3rd. I am unreasonably disappointed.” Another cause for delay is disabling the Special Offers.

Customers who want their Oasis as soon as possible might do better to order it with Special Offers intact and pay the fee to disable them after it arrives. (The option isn’t available yet, but then the Oasis hasn’t been released yet. I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t enable buying off the Special Offers the same as they have with every other Kindle or Fire.) Here’s the page with instructions for doing that.

(Found via the eBook Evangelist.)

5 COMMENTS

  1. Is this new Kindle intended to be the “Kindle for book fetishists”? That’s not far from my view that its a anti-utilitarian luxury item for up-scale women who spend an inordinate amount of time reading. Slate makes those claims here.

    “In return, you’ll get a device that Amazon has lovingly designed and crafted to appeal to the sort of people who view books as something worth cherishing. The Oasis is, in short, an e-reader for the book fetishist.”

    http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2016/04/amazon_says_the_kindle_oasis_is_an_e_reader_for_book_lovers_is_it.html

    Odd. Are you really “cherishing” a book when it’s simply bits stored with dozens of other books on the same device. Well, maybe there are people like that.

    ——

    There’s also this, which calls to mind my groans when I hear “Sir Ives” at Apple talk:

    “Hearing Green talk about the Kindle Oasis is a lot like hearing Jony Ive wax poetic about the beauty and tactile appeal of the iPhone.”

    Poetic? No, more like gibberish. I loathe artistic narcisism. There’s also this link to what Teleread is often discussing:

    ‘Lindsay waves away the notion that the prevalence of cheap mobile devices would erode the market for a product like the Kindle Oasis. A smartphone or tablet is like a Swiss army knife, he says. An e-reader is a hammer: “It does one thing, but it does it really well.” Like a hammer, sure—or maybe even a book.’

    —-

    My own take is that there are certainly people with more money than sense who will buy this and the author of this article seems to agree, noting about the slightly brighter screen: “Who would care about such a thing? It’s possible no one will—at least, not enough to spend $290 on a device whose sole function amounts to just one small feature on the tablet or smartphone that many already own.”

    Some will buy. After all, there are people who’re willing to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a pair of sunglasses or purses simply because they have a Gucci label. Here’s a selection of purses from $2,000 up:

    https://www.gucci.com/us/en/ca/women/handbags-c-women-handbags

    For such people, a $290 ereader is almost distatefully cheap.

    –Mike

  2. I don’t understand all the anger that’s been unleashed by Amazon’s announcement of the new Oasis e-reader, all of it about a device that they’ve never touched or read with. At the Mobileread Forum, there’s a thread that’s many pages long, members expressing their anger and ridicule that the new reader isn’t configured to their liking, lacking many features that they wanted and that they expected to pay much less for.

    Well, Mr. Perry’s very sexist comments don’t apply to me. I’m a 79-year-old man who owns last year’s Voyage model. It’s the electronic device I use the most by far, reading many hours a day. There are things about it I don’t like. I found the haptic feedback page turns unreliable and turned the feature off; and I found the adaptive light feature provided too much light and I turned that off, too. I bought the origami case for it and I never have gotten over the slight discomfort in opening the cover from the bottom–it’s always felt clunky to me. I admit the origami feature was great, though, when you wanted to read while at the table eating, and the screen on the device is amazingly clear.

    But Amazon apparently feels that the haptic page turns and the adaptive light feature weren’t a success, because the Oasis doesn’t have them. And the new cover opens the way a normal book would. I’m looking forward to trying it out on May 10th, if that delivery date holds.

    There must be something in Perry’s life that gives him a lot of pleasure and that he’s willing to spend money on. Not sure why he feels the need to disparage others for receiving pleasure from a new e-reader.

    Jim

    • I agree with everything you (Jim) have said. I had the Voyage and thought the haptic page turn buzz was too distracting so I turned them off. The adaptive light never really worked the way I needed it too – sometimes flickering when it seemed to not be able to decide what the light setting should be so I turned it off. I bought the Voyage for the increased ppi. I read several books a week and 20 books a month. My reading sessions are more than a half hour long at a time. I have ordered the Oasis because I love the idea of real page turn buttons and the comfort the wedge design is going to bring. I don’t like watching tv at all – books are my true entertainment joy. The people buying the Oasis are no different than the people who love watching tv buying a 60 inch high def tv. Their 50 inch might have been okay but boy that 60 inch looks great – no one puts them down for their decision. I can’t wait to receive my Oasis. Maybe it won’t be as great as I hope, but I want to give it a try first before possibly trash talking about it.

  3. The shipping date problem does not seem to be related to 3G/wi-fi, but rather to which cover you choose. If you want merlot, and I do, there is a LONG wait Unfortunately I waffled around for a day and a half after the announcement and have a shipping date of September 2nd. No one seems to want a black cover, but if you do, the shipping date is a lot quicker. The whole thing would change if they would just ship the device early and the cover later but you know they won’t do that.

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