Connect with us

Editorials

Amazon is Loading Up Kindle Fire with Apps for Launch. When Does This Become Crapware?

Published

on

We’re seeing (and reporting) that Amazon is loading up the Kindle Fire with Apps prior to its launch next week. Facebook, Netflix, Hulu+, ESPN, and I’m sure there will be more. Certainly Amazon is looking to add value and hopes its customers feel the same way. I mean how long have we been saying that Apps are what makes a Tablet?

But on a flashback level, I find this somewhat curious. It hasn’t been too long ago that we constantly ranted about new laptops or desktops that came with a bunch of application icons neatly arrayed on our screen once we first booted up. Of course that was before applications became Apps. Those applications were for everything from AOL to Microsoft Office trials, to Malware preventers, to, well, you surely can remember those applications that some of us called CRAPWARE back in the day.

These were viewed as value add back then as well. And I’m sure some customers did derive value from them, just like the computer makers and the application owners derived value from being place on that expensive home screen real estate. Remember when some computer manufacturers turned this on its ear by offering to sell you a computer without CRAPWARE for a small fee?

So, has our thinking changed? Have Tablets with their App-centric focus changed how we view pre-installed Apps?  Are we going to see this continue among Tablet makers to a point that users demand that it stop? Or will we beg for more? Already we’ve got complaints about smart phones that carry Apps from carriers that we can’t delete. And Google has announced that Ice Cream Sandwich is supposed to help us cure carrier bloat. Does our thinking depend on the App? I think it is a safe bet that many will load up Facebook and Netflix on the Kindle Fire, so is there really a value add there for the user?

Or is this just a case of one person’s App being another person’s CRAPWARE?

Thoughts?

5 Comments

5 Comments

  1. Anonymous

    11/11/2011 at 2:53 pm

    I haven’t seen anything in these announcements from Amazon to indicate that any of these applications would be pre-installed.  I’ve just assumed that the listed applications would all be available from the Amazon App Store.

  2. Ricardo Tovar

    11/11/2011 at 3:03 pm

    I hardly thing these offerings are crapware (…come on).  But the pre-loaded apps in many Android phones can certainly be annoying to say the least, and the fact that the carriers don’t let users delete them is just disrespectful to customers. I hope it doesn’t become the norm.

  3. Spikpunch

    12/27/2011 at 1:33 am

    ESPN is here and I really hate it. Nuff said?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.