The one thing that bugs me the most about this piece (and there are a more than a few annoying things going on here) is that at no time was the Fire Phone a competitor with the iphone. Fire phone is a crippled version of android. Almost no one who uses a iphone would ever consider this thing, I'm guessing every android user who wanted a new phone the month this thing came out took a look and backed away quickly.

If you have ever used the Amazon app store you know how awkward it is. Updates come at a glacial pace compared to the play store. When there is an update for an app, it prompts you to perform the update several times a day. When I've tried to update I'd say the success rate is about 40%. When faced with an update for a little used app, I'm about as likely to delete it as update it. I've bought an app that wouldn't load (the service was good in this instance).

I've read that it's a pain in the ass to get the Play store on to a fire phone. If it were a great phone you might consider going through the trouble but it's a shitty phone running a gimped version of android with a less functional app store.

If they wanted to sell phones they would make it as open and usable as humanly possible and incentivise the use of Amazon services. Instead they crippled it to force the use of Amazon services. We buy lots of stuff off amazon, because we have prime people in my family use their free and some of their pay streaming services. The only time I buy music from the I Tunes store is if someone gives me a gift certificate, the rest of the time it's Amazon or direct from the label. Amazon even has a wider selection of digital music than apple is always a few buck cheaper. Amazon has a compelling line up of products that might have been able to make an Amazon phone successful but instead they crippled their phone with an apple style walled garden and a line up of useless features that no one wanted.

I'm sure Jeff is fuming right now, it was a pretty harsh piece but maybe not as harsh as it should have been.