Interview: Panos Panay on the future of Amazon’s Kindle

Amazon launched four new Kindles this week, maybe the biggest single launch day in the 17-year history of the company’s wildly successful e-reader. One of them even comes in color! It is very much not a coincidence that the launch happened roughly a year after Panos Panay joined the company. Panay, a longtime Microsoft executive who was for years in charge of all things Windows and Surface, is now leading the devices and services team at Amazon. His big task is Alexa, and turning Amazon’s assistant into the AI platform of the future. That’s apparently coming soon. Maybe. But first: e-readers.

On this episode of The Vergecast, Panay joins the show to talk about how he decided to join Amazon, why people love their Kindles so much, the Scribe’s new note-taking features, that new color screen, and more. He also weighs in on the ongoing trend toward distraction-free gadgets, and maybe gives us a hint or two about AI features to come.

If you want to know more about everything we discuss in this episode, here are some links to get you started, beginning with the week’s gadget news:

And in the lightning round: