Actually, literally in this case. I’m guessing it happened last night at midnight. I happened to be using it and noticed that my WiFi was down, but couldn’t understand why. So I shut it off and went to bed shortly thereafter. I awoke this morning to a little notification that the update had been completed.
I’d been using it since Christmas and fortunately I’d already sideloaded some apps I was most interested in. I’d intended to root it to prevent just this sort of thing, but my complacency undid me in the end.
For the record, I agree with everyone else saying it’s a bad move. And not just because it affects me personally. It’s a bad business decision because the only content B&N allows out of the box is their own.
The problem with that approach is people with lots of Amazon content, and there are a lot of them, won’t take the plunge if they can’t access their content. B&N isn’t going to convert those people wholesale under any circumstances. The best they can hope for is to entice potential new customers with a better reader product (and the Tablet is a superior hardware device to the Fire) that gives them (the new customer) access to sales they (B&N) otherwise would not get. By not giving those potential customers access to their current content, they completely cut themselves off from that segment of the market. It’s a foolish business decision- they are essentially choosing all of nothing, rather than part of something.
I recall reading a comment by B&N’s CEO stating something to the effect that they wanted people to be able to access their content, but only on terms of B&N’s choosing. The exact wrong mindset for the market. The Tablet is not some single-task piece of hardware. It’s a computer and the expectations people have regarding computers are that it’s theirs and they can do what they want with it, including hacking it. The best opportunity for B&N’s apparent current strategy to work is if they had the infrastructure in place to deliver content on a par with Apple or Amazon and the simple fact is they have only 1 piece. That’s why they paired with Netflix and Pandora. But it won’t be enough.
I intend to continue with my Tablet as is for the moment- it may well be that I’ve installed all the additional apps I need making it as functional as I’d like. But still, the whole business definitely rankles.