I think the point he was pushing on the fire is being $200 doesn't make it good. The software/OS sounds like it needs a bit of work to get up to good. Someone else described it as meeting all of amazons business goals of getting tablets in front of users but rarely makes a decent user experience.
Does yours have stuttering for page turns? They railed on that as an example, remove the animation or make it simpler etc.
Still think this tablet has the best chance to usurp the iPad of any of the tablets out there. Hopefully it sells well enough to get software updates to fix and improve things. Maybe next year a version with much improved hardware too.
The software definitely needs some work and my hope and faith in Amazon is that they will make progress here and release updates. I often times have the back button not respond on the first, second, and sometimes third press. The main menu is often times too sensative to the touch when scrolling through the most recently used items. The audio playback quality through the headphone jack is sub-par in my experieince. The screen is over-sensative to the touch. There are times when I swear my finger hasn't touched the glass and it's recognizing my movement. This becomes frustrating when reading magazines. There is occasional stutter when changing magazine pages, but I haven't noticed anything of mention with a book. Standard magazine views can be a pain to manage. The screen ppi isn't high enough to have the entire page readable when zoomed out so this means you'll need to pinch and zoom in order to read the content. There is an annoying problem with this in that if you get too close to the edge of the page, the Fire will switch pages even if you only meant to move your current page view just to scroll and see content.
Wired is the only magazine I've downloaded (and a whopping 260MB+) that is formatted to fit the Kindle. It has interactive content, video, and animation. I did notice on one specific page that the animation locked up the magazine and I had to exit and relaunch in order to continue reading.
I've submitted all this feedback within the built-in feedback feature and hope that it will add to other people complaining about the same things which will eventually result in software updates.
Given that this is my first tablet, I don't have a lot to compare it to. I do find it to be useful and given the cost of the other devices out there, it fits my needs pretty well despite the problems it has. I expected the first release would have some issue like any new device. The question remains is if Amazon will improve it in a reasonable amount of time. The audio output quality is about the only one they may not be able to address with software updates. I find myself listening to music on my iPhone while using the Fire where as I'd rather just use one device. I would say this device would be a better bragain at $150-$175 for what it offers, but that will likely not happen until the next version hits the shelves.
