After iOS 5 came and broke Stanza good and proper, it seemed almost certain that Amazon intended on killing off their world class e-reading app once and for all.
Thankfully, Amazon has taken pity on fans of the app with a long overdue update finally fixing Stanza under iOS 5, but with that reprieve comes a dose of bad news: according to Amazon, this will be the last Stanza update.
Although there are no new features, the new Stanza 3.2 update fixes the crashing issues that have plagued Stanza users since the very earliest iOS 5 developer betas.
Unfortunately, Macworld says that this is the last update we can likely expect from Amazon:
The company’s customer service team told one Macworld reader via email that after releasing this update, “we will no longer be updating or supporting Stanza… We would like to thank you for your interest in Stanza, and let you know that Amazon is committed to providing the best reading experience on iOS though the Kindle for iPhone, iPod and iPad apps.” A Macworld staffer received a very similarly-worded email from Amazon customer support as well, though we have yet to receive official confirmation from Amazon’s public relations team.
I suppose that keeping Stanza updated doesn’t make a lot of sense against the bottom line, but still, if Amazon simply wants to get people to switch to their Kindle app, the least they could do is implement some of Stanza’s better features, like page dimming, to help the migration along. Still, beggars can’t be choosers, and I’m personally relieved I’ll get at least another year out of what I consider to be one of the five best apps on the App Store.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
10 responses to “Amazon Releases One Last Stanza Update Before Killing Off Support For Good”
This is too bad. In addition to the UI and organizational features, one thing I liked about Stanza is that it isn’t tethered to the Amazon Store. Getting my content on it was as easy as an iTunes sync. Unlike Netflix or HP, I hope these guys change their minds in a year.
Unfortunately, this update killed Stanza for me on IOS 4.3.1
I’m wondering if its possible to retrieve my books on Stanza.
laz
Yea, I hope this isn’t the last Update coming from Amazon.com/Stanza…since this one has crashed the Stanza, making it unusable (their intention overall) on my iPod Touch 2G running 4.2.1. Help. Let’s hope they come out will at least ONE MORE update.
It killed it on the original iPhone running 3.1.3 as well. Seems to be working well on 5.0 though. Sloppy update. *shakes head*
I’ll be re-syncing the previous version off my Mac. LoL So long Stanza! You deserved a better send off.
I’m with you. And I’m wondering how I can retrieve all the books stored with Stanza and associate them with another reader. And what reader should I try?
In updating this they’ve killed the app for iOS<5
Seems to be the final nail in the coffin….
get ifunbox on your computer or ifile on your jailbroken ipod. look for the folder /var/mobile/stanza/documents/ all your books can be retrieve in there. using ifile just change your setting to view application names to see stanza and not some random letters and numbers.
i hope we could find a better replacement for stanza…. Zzzzz….
Actually Amazon release one last “update” TO KILL OFF Stanza! The so-called update that supposedly fixes Stanza for IOS 5, was actually designed to make Stanza unusable on all prior versions of IOS (thus killing off nearly the entire user base), and reports indicate that it did not fix the problems running Stanza on IOS 5.