AZW is essentially the same thing as mobi with a couple of byte changes as I recall. Amazon has owned mobipocket since 2005 and they could have just used the mobi format on the Kindle unmodified. Guess they didn't want to make their books compatible with other mobipocket clients out there (even though DRM would have prevented that from happening on at least the free clients).
Yeah. They don't want you using Kindle books elsewhere and they don't want you using ebooks from other stores on the Kindle.
AZW is a Mobi file with a flag set differently in the header. The other difference is that the Kindle PID has a * instead of the regular $ that a Mobi device PID has e.g. 1234567*AB vs 1234567$AB.
People have managed to load DRMed Mobi books into the Kindle by registering the Kindle PID with the store and then patching the book file to turn on that flag. Amazon don't like you doing this so have made it harder to find the Kindle PID.
Previous Topic
Index
