Tag: amazon

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From Brad Linder at Liliputing:

The Amazon Appstore allows you to download and install apps on Amazon Fire tablets and Fire TV devices. But the Appstore actually predates the Amazon Fire ecosystem. Amazon first launched the Appstore in March, 2011 as an app that could be installed on Android phones and tablets. The first Amazon Fire-branded tablet didn’t launch until half a year later. Fourteen years later Amazon has announced that it’s discontinuing the Appstore for Android.

I learned two things here. Firstly, while I know that Amazon’s Fire OS is based on Android and I have run F-Droid (a free and open source Android app store) on Fire devices, it had never occurred to me that Amazon promoted its Appstore on regular Android devices. Note that I run GrapheneOS on my phone with no Google Play Services, so I am not up to date on the proprietary app stores. Secondly, I was even more surprised to learn that the Amazon Appstore pre-dates the first Fire OS device, meaning it was originally released for main-line Android devices. Go figure. I have some limited experience with the Amazon Appstore from my old 2013 Kindle Fire HDX (see my one and only Amazon Appstore visual novel review) and BlackBerry Classic, both of which ran Android-derived operating systems and shipped Amazon Appstore as their default app stores.

[Source: Brad Linder for Liliputing (February 20, 2025)]

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Anime News Network reported that Crunchyroll is adding Girls Band Cry, a spring 2024 anime, on November 6. Girls Band Cry was perhaps the only high profile anime of 2024 to not be officially simulcast. News of Crunchyroll’s picking it up is bittersweet for me. I am a Crunchyroll subscriber. But I purchased Girls Band Cry on Amazon (in the digital purchase is really a rental sense) early last month. Fortunately, I actually watched all 13 episodes in early-to-mid September, so I got some value from the “purchase” before it officially arrives on Crunchyroll. I had been on the fence about writing a Girls Band Cry review, but now I almost certainly will with the news that it is arriving on Crunchyroll. Now can you expect to see it ranked in my year-end top-six anime of 2024 in a couple of months (see my 2023 ranking)? I did (mostly) like Girls Band Cry, but we are close enough th the end of the year that I will issue a no comment on its prospects.

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Wired wrote an article about Amazon’s dream of having its AI buy stuff on behalf of customers. I am not going to dignify this inane, anti-competitive idea with my patented full analysis. Instead, I will note that Amazon’s current AI summaries of product reviews, most of which are probably fake anyway, are not ringing endorsements of the company’s prowess in this area.