So, for my surprise the new Kindle app released yesterday is Intel:
Amazon software is really something else!
Thank you for telling us that this new Kindle app for MacOS is available. Keeping it as an Intel app is perhaps a crude way of ensuring that it runs on all Apple computers. Iâm happy that I can now manage collections stored in the cloud under MacOSâassuming that it works. My changes to collections have yet to sync to my other devices.
I donât really think that the performance increase of direct execution in Apple Silicon would be noticeable in this book reading app. It will only become important when Rosetta is removed in a future macOS release.
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Update: the latest version update (6.85.3, released today) added universal app support.
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I uninstalled the ânewâ version after trying it for a few days, because, instead of retaining the Mac specific features (mainly being able to use most of the program via the keyboard), theyâve dumbed it down to be a straight clone of the tablet version.
Not having sensible keyboard shortcuts on the iPad is not ideal, but at least thereâs a rationale for it (the vast majority of people wonât be reading books with an external keyboard), but not having them on a laptop or desktop is just plain daft.
I know theyâve done it so they only have to write the code once, but thatâs only a convenience for them: thereâs no benefit to the user in removing features from the Mac version, even if it does look marginally prettier.
Anyway, your post prompted me to look again, and for a moment I became quite hopeful: âImprovements to keyboard and mouse supportâ it said.
I downloaded it and⌠if there are any improvements to keyboard support, then theyâve done a really good job of hiding them. Even the most basic functions (e.g.access to the library or table of contents) donât seem to have shortcuts at all, but even if they are available, thereâs no way of knowing what they are, because there are no relevant menu items and the Help menu helpfully tells you that there is no Help available. And because there are no menu items, you canât add them yourself.
Itâs a shame: but Iâll try and stick with the old (ugly but more usable) version as long as I can.
I think it should be now:
It seems to work roughly the same as the Kindle version but is missing dictionary access, which I use frequently. Also, compared to the Classic version, copying text is a PITA.
All itâs really done is add more glitter at the expense of usability. The âClassicâ Mac app wasnât brilliant, but at least youâd didnât have to use the mouse for (almost) everything.
It does have dictionary access though: double click on a word and youâll be shown three popups: Dictionary, Wikipedia and Translate. The first time round youâll be prompted to download a dictionary. This is the same as on the iPad version.
HTH.