Hi Ray, I always bridle when I hear Apple likened to Microsoft. Few comparisons are more unfair or more wrong. I am in the middle of something so I cannot write on this at length but let me go over just a few of the all too numerous reasons that I am a supporter of Apple and yet hope fervently that Microsoft will continue along its current slide into irrelevance.
Don't get me wrong, I know I am among like minded people in WAMUG, but a number of paid Windows commentators look for every opportunity to proclaim Apple to be as bad a Microsoft in some way or another. Apple has always been an innovator that has striven to bring stylish, indispensable devices to its customers. It aims to grow by making its products better and easier to use, and yes, by adhering where possible to open and interoperable standards. Microsoft on the other hand is a convicted monopolist that has obtained its market share generally by buying existing products and changing the underlying formats to make them incompatible and proprietary. We must remember that Apple is a hardware company not a content provider. If they could, Apple would give you other people's books, films and songs provided you bought their hardware. It was Apple that actually made mp3 a mainstream technology and overcame Microsoft in its push for the Play-for-Sure format which would not run on Macs or iPods. Apple was required by record companies to initially have copy protection on songs sold in iTunes. Record companies also fought the $0.99 price per song all the way, insisting that record albums be sold as a whole. Apple, eventually by dint of its market share convinced them to sell individual songs rather than whole albums and to remove any copy protection. That's right, songs sold in iTunes now are not copy protected. It was also Apple, going against the harassing of the record companies that allowed its users to rip their CD collections to their iPod. Given that we had already paid for a license to play the music when we bought the CD, this was only fair. The same thing is happening now with TV shows and films. Apple is pushing to sell TV episodes for $0.99 each. It has only convinced two broadcasters so far that this is a good idea. The remainder say that is way to small a price for their copyrighted property. Apple is currently pushing for HTML5, an open standards, as opposed to Adobe Flash, a closed proprietary format. This battle, is bizarrely being portrayed as Apple trying to impose a closed standard where an open one exists. eBooks is a area that I know less about, but from past form I would say the same battle is playing out. Some publishers are insisting that copy protection be applied to their intellectual property. The main area of contention is magazine subscriptions. Some magazine publishers are insisting that Apple hand over iTunes demographic information before they make their magazines available. The magazine companies say that it is their stock in trade to target advertising and fresh subscription offers at their subscribers. Apple to this point has resisted the pressure. The wonderful iBooks app can read interoperable, PDF and ePub format. All my books are in one of those two formats. The linked article mentions an additional file that can be added to the ePub format to allow more accurate layout of images etc. I would think it would be an easy process to ignore this extra file and read the original ePub book in another reader. I am sure there will be copy protected books as well, but this will be due to contracts that Apple will negotiate with the publishers. I for one do not mind paying for copyrighted material. I naturally way prefer it to be in an open format, but while pirating exists this may not always be possible. Cheers, Carlo On 2011-01-20, at 09:38, Ray Forma wrote: > > We often comment disdainfully when other companies, such as Microsoft, try to > lock in users, conveniently forgetting that Apple is often just as guilty. > The article, <http://next.blurb.com/>, from which I extracted the following, > has further details about Apple's current exploits on the eBook stage. It > also covers many other eBook readers. > > The dark ages of e-books > > If you want to read an e-Book and you remember the early days of the Web, > you’re probably having a bad flashback. Reading devices like the Kindle, > Nook, and iPad all have separate bookstores and book formats, and their > makers (and other companies) are trying to create readers ‘locked in’ to > their device and bookstores. With the Web, the same things were tried. > Microsoft wanted people to use Microsoft DOC files as Web pages instead of > HTML. Apple wanted people to pay to use eWorld instead of the Web, for free. > AOL merged with Time Warner so that the combined companies could “extract > more value from our content than the Internet will allow.” > > Eventually, these business tactics always fail, but it doesn’t seem to stop > people from trying them. What really works, over and over again, is giving > the user more freedom, ownership and choice, not less. The Web, based on > simpler, publicly-available standards and software, beat all the best > attempts by many slick and well-financed companies to produce a more > attractive closed experience. > > And so it is with e-Books. Amazon’s Mobi format is not nearly as good as > ePub, but it is a closed format that Amazon owns and locks users to Amazon > for their books forever. ePub is an open standard, but the makers of reading > devices that use it (Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony) make it egregiously, > unnecessarily difficult to transfer books, read purchased books on other > devices, or buy books from a competing bookstore. Books should be simple and > accessible, a safe place to store good ideas for the future and a durable way > to have a personal library. eBooks right now are the opposite of that. There > is simply no good reason for this, and it’s terrible for the future of the > book. > > That is why, with some sadness, it’s our opinion that specialized ebook > formats should be dumped (yes, even ePub). It’s fine to use them during this, > the dark ages of e-Books, but if you want to preserve your ideas for the > future, none of these formats have the prospect of being around to be read on > future readers. What is a good bet, however, is HTML5. We believe it is a > completely safe bet to make books with HTML (after all, humble HTML is at the > heart of Mobi and ePub anyway). HTML5 plays video, can store itself for > offline reading, has all the abilities to be packaged up, sold, loaned, > excerpted, gifted, saved, and can be read by billions of devices now. Doesn’t > that sound more like a book? In fact, all that’s missing to allow authors and > creators the freedom to make and offer books on their own terms is a few > tools (already on the way). > > The Web became a vast, freely available tide that lifted all boats, free from > the clutches of any one company and a marketplace of ideas open to all. It > can do the same for e-Books. > > Regards, > > Ray Forma > Tel +61 (0)8 9335 6568 > Mob +61 (0) 428 596938 -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Unsubscribe - <mailto:[email protected]>
