I have a Kindle.

I have a Mac.

So, naturally when Amazon announced that there would be a “Kindle for Mac” application, I was excited. So excited, in fact, that I signed up to be notified by e-mail when the application would be available.

Yesterday, I read on the blogs that the much-awaiting “Kindle for Mac” Beta had been released. Naturally, I immediately downloaded and installed it.

Then I thought, “Hey, didn’t I sign up for an e-mail notification months ago?” I thought it was odd that Amazon wouldn’t have made good on their promise to let me know when they released the application. I looked through my Inbox for an old confirmation e-mail, but couldn’t find one. I was pretty sure I had signed up, but finally, I decided that I was misremembering.

To my surprise I got an e-mail today from Amazon telling me:

Since you requested to be notified about the new Kindle for Mac app, we are excited to tell you that it is now available for free download.

Amazon really missed an opportunity here. Clearly, I and presumably thousands of other people signed up for the notification, because we were interested in the software. However, Amazon notified us after the general press release to the rest of the world. Why have the sign-up in the first place if you’re not going to tell everyone the news until after it’s old news?

You might say that I downloaded the software anyway, so I should quit whining about it. But what if instead, Amazon let those of us who signed up know about “Kindle for Mac” the day before the general public? They had a chance to make us feel more connected and “inside” by saying, “Hey, we wanted to let you know, Kindle for Mac will be released tomorrow. Since you signed up for the e-mail notification, we’re giving you a sneak peek.” Even better, what if they gave us special codes to download the app … gasp … one day before everyone else?

How cool would that have been? Would that have affected my review of the app for the positive?

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My Review of Kindle for Mac

Kindle for Mac is thoroughly mediocre, with severely limited functionality. The only positive is that you can finally read your Kindle books on your Mac. However, you can’t zoom, annotate, or search any of your books. It’s actually less functional than a paper book.

My take: Amazon feels Apple breathing down its neck with iPad and is spending the bulk of its development budget on Kindle v3. Kindle for Mac is a total afterthought.