So, basically the whole article is just a complete nothing-burger.

Good call out. Clickbait article.

………. So is there any attempt by Amazon here to limit users transferring their ebooks to their computers?

Amazon is slower than pretty much everyone else in Germany, and it's been like that for literal decades. To get almost universal next-day delivery nation-wide a shop needs to do exactly two things: Have the parcels ready by evening, and not be located in the absolute boondonks (which would mean two-day delivery).

Amazon, unless when ordering via premium shipping (included in prime but not worth it for that), takes days to even pack the parcel. Then they can spend a day or two sending it from one of their logistics centres to the other until handing it over to the actual parcel service.

What they do have going for them is the mindbogglingly huge selection. Pretty much the only upside, if you need five small things from what would be five different stores each having their order minimums for free shipping amazon is the sane choice.

Kobo and Boox are better at making eReaders anyway.

Yeah, I try to avoid Amazon as well, and just cancelling Prime went a long way toward motivating me to shop elsewhere. But we still order from Amazon a fair amount (far less than before we cancelled Prime), it just takes a bit longer.

Sometimes there's an obscure item I need that I can't find anywhere else. That's what I usually buy on Amazon. Other times it's cheap Chineseum stuff that I want to be able to return without hassle or get refunded if I never receive the item.

But yeah, generally I try to buy directly from the seller, and especially try to buy locally if I can.

B&H and Home Depot have been two solid services for things they sell. Former is computers and photography. Both of them ship pretty damn fast.

Honestly, what convinced me to start using them was how increasingly difficult it is to get quality items on Amazon. Sifting through garbage gets old fast.

Calibre has always been a small price to pay, but if sideloading goes away, I'll certainly never "upgrade" again, and I'll trash my 11th gen Paperwhite if they somehow make it stop working. Usable e-ink ereaders are even doable as DIY projects now, and Kobo will probably stay less closed-off than Amazon for a good while.

That said, reading the comments and the article it seems like as long as your OS (or some app) supports MTP, everything should still work more or less as it has, which is to say kind of annoying and with Amazon pulling little microaggressions like deleting your cover thumbnails, but overall sideloading should still function.

Abolish patent law.

Maybe replace it with some very strict non-extensible protection, based on time since patent registration or profit made with it, maybe something else, whichever happens earlier.

Either that or get used to oligopoly in every area of economics affected by electronics and computers and even all scientific advancement.

That this takes time to happen, doesn't change the fact.

Critically, while they wont appear as drives, they will appear as MTP devices (the same way Android phones do) and will still allow you to transfer files. The communication protocol is different, but "New Kindle e-readers no longer appear on computers" isn't true unless your OS of choice doesn't support MTP.

I usually just borrow e-books from the library, download as epub and strip the DRM from the file so I can read it, and return the eBook to the library right away for the next person to borrow it.

Yep. Kobo is much better nowadays.

I'm considering a Clara BW, just waiting to see if it'll go on sale for Black Friday.

Kobo can connect to libraries via apps like Libby (or others), right?