Why Do We Keep Letting Amazon Kill Kindles?

On May 20, 2026, Amazon is slapping long-time Kindle users in the face. In mere days, devices older than 2012 will be barred from the Kindle store. That means no new books, and if you happen to log out of it, that device loses access to your library, too. This isn’t just sunsetting security updates. It’s literal forced obsolescence.

We’re joining our allies at the consumer advocate organization PIRG to call on Amazon to stop its plan to junk older Kindles. Sign the petition yourself here.

But even if Amazon doesn’t listen, there’s hope. In the case of the Kindle, you can install alternate firmware, or rescue your books (see below) and store them safely elsewhere. And there’s even some fairly good news on the legal horizon: a new California bill aims to force manufacturers to provide a time of death up-front, and to provide at least five years of software support for a product.

Hardware Needs Software

With physical fixes—opening stuff up, rummaging around, replacing parts, and (hopefully) putting everything back together—you know where you stand. But there’s another failure mode for gadgets, computers, and appliances, one that’s much more deadly than a cracked screen or a disconnected flux capacitor. When a company cuts off software support, the hardware is rendered useless. And when pretty much everything from your book reader to your fridge has a computer inside, that’s a big problem.

Here’s a short list of some of the many devices that have been deliberately broken by their makers, turning perfectly good machines into junk.

Amazon (again) removed cloud support from its Halo Rise sleep tracker after just 11 months. It offered refunds, but all those sold units became instant landfill.

And Amazon Kindle (yes, again) owners suffered when 3G cellular networks shut down, making their use-anywhere WhisperSync feature useless. 

Logitech’s killed its Alexa-based Harmony Express universal remote after less than a year and a half, when it pulled cloud support. It, too, offered refunds for the $250 device, or the option to get a Harmony Elite remote as a replacement. The result? Hassle, and yet more e-waste. 

And Juicero’s juicer, a $699 juice press (hardware) that squeezed juice out of proprietary bags of diced fruit and vegetables, was doomed when the startup behind it stopped selling the juice bags (…software?). Special credit goes to Juicero for adding QR codes on the juice packs, which had to be scanned and verified (with an internet connection) before the machine would squeeze them. 

It’s not just quick U-turns on new products, either. Google has ended software updates for several of its Pixel and Nexus phones after just three years (this is one area where Apple does better than many, providing iPhone, Mac, and iPad OS updates for many years). And Google has done the same for many of its FitBits. Ditto Motorola and Samsung phones, and various Chromebooks, Nests, and other smart home devices. Withings removed a headline cardiac measurement feature from its $180 Body Cardio Scale with a non-avoidable software update, which rendered it functionally identical to its $80 cheaper model.

This is not a new problem either. Back in 2008, Microsoft switched off the DRM server for MSN Music, which meant that you could no longer play any of your purchased music. That was an excellent example of why DRM-encumbered media is so bad for us users, and may have been one of the reasons that Apple removed DRM from the iTunes music store catalog one year later, in 2009. 

By now, we almost expect this kind of thing from corporate behemoths, but small indie companies are also susceptible. A few years ago I bought a little Bluetooth MIDI controller, the Offgrid from Austrian company Birdkids. It was pretty good, but all configuration had to be done via  website, which shuttered mere months after I bought the device.

Finally, let’s look at computers. Desktops, laptops, phones, and tablets all require software updates to keep working. While it’s possible to keep using old computers, at some point their old web browsers will become incompatible with new SSL encryption standards. And in the case of phones, the mandatory app-store model doesn’t support legacy versions of apps for unsupported devices. 

Apple, which is actually one of the better companies when it comes to OS support for older hardware, recently started using security updates to force users to upgrade to the latest iOS. But, if your old iPhone or iPad cannot run the new iOS 26, then Apple provides critical security updates for the next-newest iOS 18. Very kind of them, but there’s a catch. If Apple decides your iPad or iPhone can run iOS 26—you’ve got no choice they actually withhold the iOS 18 update from you. If you’d rather skip the frankly terrible upgrade, too bad, Apple knows best.

The first time Apple did this, it relented after some extremely bad security breaches appeared. But as of this writing, Apple has pulled the same trick with its current 18.7.9 update. It appears to be withholding essential security updates in order to force adoption of iOS 26.

Amazon Aggression

In the case of Amazon’s latest Kindle cut-off, any Kindle released up to and including 2012 will no longer be able to connect to the Kindle Store. The most obvious effect of this is that you can’t buy new books, but neither can you download any previous purchases. If you use a Kindle as designed—as part of Amazon’s whole Kindle ecosystem—then it will be rendered useless. Amazon already ended Kindle Store support for those models in 2022, but at least you could still buy books via a computer or phone, and have them sent to the Kindle. 

It will still be possible to read the books you already have, and to load on new books via USB (but only with third-party software to convert those books to the required MOBI file format), but that’s where we discover a second kick in the teeth from Amazon. A few months ago, Amazon removed the ability to download your purchased ebooks from its website. The only way to get them is by using the Kindle. And if you own another, newer Kindle? Tough, because Amazon also updated it to block you from mounting it as a USB device and grabbing your books that way. 

Want to take all your purchased Kindle books and read them on another, non-Amazon device? Tough luck again. Most of those titles are restricted with DRM and cannot be opened in any other software. It’s possible to crack the copy-protection if you know how, but frankly, how many e-book reading folks are even going to consider that?

It’s hard to read this as anything other than a way to force users to buy new devices. It’s especially bad, because e-readers last forever. Who cares if newer models have faster CPUs? So what if the pages turn a quarter-second quicker? If anything, the ubiquity of lower-contrast color screens in newer models makes them worse than the older ones. 

Other options

As mentioned above, there are options for the nerdier amongst us. There are alternate firmwares for Kindle and Kobo e-readers, and there are also plugins for ebook management software Calibre that will strip DRM from purchased books to allow reading them on other devices.

Older computers can be brought back to life with Linux. Some smartphones can also install alternate operating systems, but iPhones and iPads are too locked down. 

But should owning your tech really require advanced hacking?

Some companies do the right thing. IConnectivity makes audio gear, and when it launched new configuration software, it open-sourced the existing software. This led to ongoing support, and even to an iPad version of the software, which was never available before. 

Another option for consumer hardware is to not rely on proprietary software in the first place. Instead of requiring an app to manage a smart device, the manufacturer should instead build a web server into the machine, allowing you to configure it from any web browser, just by connecting to it over the Wi-Fi. And this web server should not use https, which can cause problems with expired SSL certificates and the like in the future. The device is already secured on your home network after all. 

But of course we cannot cross our fingers and hope for beneficence from Big Tech. What’s needed—and what’s coming—is a law forcing them to behave. 

Law

Californian Senate bill  SB-898, connected consumer products just passed the Senate Appropriations committee, which means it next goes to the full Senate floor. SB-898 says that any company selling a connected consumer product (a device that relies at least partly on an internet connection) will have to

• Tell a prospective buyer the minimum guaranteed support timeframe.
• Provide support for a minimum of five years.
• Provide notice of that product’s end of life, to the customer, and to the public.

It’s a start, but it also doesn’t go nearly far enough. For example, a company is only required to give that end-of-life notice six months before that end, which means you could drop hundreds on a product and have it rendered useless just six months later. And of course it doesn’t help in the case of legacy Kindles.

Is it a burden on tech companies to keep updating code on older devices so that they can, say, still connect to a server and log in? Yes, of course. But in the case of Amazon, it’s less about the support burden, and more about closing off all avenues for the Kindle other than buying direct from the Kindle store. I mean, come on. How can removing USB support and direct-to-computer downloads be seen as anything other than a way to force lock-in? 

But the current situation, where huge corporations like Amazon can shirk all responsibility and drop support for a brand new product even before its one-year warranty has expired, is a huge burden on the buyer. We cannot trust that any product will last more than the time it takes to learn to use it. 

Many tech products now exist as part of a locked-in ecosystem—iOS and iCloud, Kindle, Google’s Android, and so on—which means that you cannot just up and move to a new (if equally bad) platform. The EU’s DMCA is pushing for better data portability, but again that puts the responsibility on us, the users. 

The solution is to force tech companies to support their products from the beginning, including provisions for keeping the software viable after they finally do stop end support. We already have laws that govern the “lifecycle” of the physical device. We need that for the software, too.