AppleInsider Staff
Amazon was among the numerous companies that rolled out app updates on Thursday, the eve of the new iPad's debut, to ensure that its Kindle e-reader software would be Retina Display-compatible.
Kindle 3.0 for iPad brings optimization for the new tablet's high pixel density and features a redesigned user interface, among unseen backend bug fixes.
The Kindle reader app was released for iPad well before the launch of the Kindle Fire tablet, and many users have opted to stay with the Apple device rather than move over to Amazon's offering.
Despite having its own tablet, Amazon continues to update its iOS app for users of the platform mostly due to the huge installed customer base. The move to continue iOS support should come as no surprise, as the content-driven app is nothing but a money maker for the online sales giant.
In a previous report, Amazon was said to be taking a $50 loss on every unit sold, gambling on content purchases to make up for the initial hit.
Alongside the Kindle app update, popular iOS apps like Vimeo and Evernote also received similar updates on Thursday.
Christine McKee
Malcolm Owen
William Gallagher
Amber Neely
Andrew O'Hara
17 Comments
So I guess even older iPad users and even iPhone users of universal apps are going to experience doubling and tripling of app sizes because all of the enlarged iPad retina display images have to be downloaded and stored in the app bundle regardless of whether or not the are ever viewed.
So I guess even older iPad users and even iPhone users of universal apps are going to experience doubling and tripling of app sizes because all of the enlarged iPad retina display images have to be downloaded and stored in the app bundle regardless of whether or not the are ever viewed.
Or they could deploy a mechanism to determine the target client and fetch the non-retna based app build for them.
Kindle books app always did look better on the iPad then on the Kindle itself, now who would bother with a kindle at all?
That's great, I was hoping for this update.
Well it's 8:19am Friday here in Australia, the new iPad officially went on sale 19 min ago, I'm going out to see if I can find one...
So I guess even older iPad users and even iPhone users of universal apps are going to experience doubling and tripling of app sizes because all of the enlarged iPad retina display images have to be downloaded and stored in the app bundle regardless of whether or not the are ever viewed.
That's an erroneous assumption. Apps don't scale that way because apps aren't just a collection of bitmapped images. Especially not Kindle which needs the update so TEXT doesn't look poor compared to iBooks.
Kindle v3.0 universal with 4 resolutions and 7 languages comes in at 18.3 MB. Looks to be about 1 MB more than v2.9 but OS X now show BASE-10 not BASE-2 so there is a little play.