My friend Eric Burns of Websnark passes along a warning for users of the Kindle for Macintosh reader app who upgrade to Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion):
If one should upgrade to Mac OS X 10.7 (otherwise known as Lion), having installed Kindle-for-Mac from the Amazon website, they will be able to continue using their Kindle-for-Mac application to read what they’ve downloaded. However, when attempting to purchase new books for download or going to one’s archive of books, or even registering their account, they will find it fails. Downloading an update from Amazon will not help.
For now, if you uninstall the application, then install a new copy specifically from the Mac App Store, it will work just swimmingly and you can go on and enjoy your literary ambitions.
Some will see undoubtedly see this as some sort of conspiracy on the part of Apple to require that all Mac software be downloaded through the App Store (Apple is, after all, no longer going to carry most software boxes in its stores), especially after Apple just got finished kicking all in-app e-bookstores except its own off its iOS platforms. But I suspect it’s more likely just a bug.
In any event, Kindle for Mac users will benefit from knowing about it.
yes its a bug. no Apple is not compromising their own software on the App Store. and as kindle continues to make mediocre software it will continue to have frustrations. the App Store version works because it is a much older, more stable version. kindle stopped updating that one. much newer versions are on their site, thought every update i get is frustratingly never quite right. there is always something that doesn’t work right. for such an important platform it would be nice if amazon would quit compromising and just spend some money and make some nice software.
Thank you so much for this post! I had just updated to Lion and went to buy a new book and suddenly found that my Kindle app wouldn’t communicate with Amazon. I searched all over and finally found this. Thank you again!
Thanks for posting this – ended hours of frustration