Time for the e-book biz to get over its PDA fixation?
The PDA is the e-book platform now. But could electronic publishers and their techie overlords at places like Palm Digital Media be betting too heavily on it–without nurturing some more-consumer-friendly alternatives?
Palm Digital Media and Microsoft won’t even bother right now with e-book-reading software for the Microsoft Smartphone. But wait! Aren’t a heck of a lot more cellular phones being sold than PDAs? And won’t the displays on phones be growing in size and quality, given all the built-in digital cameras? Mightn’t other ergonomical factors improve as well? Beyond that, phones could make it much easier for people to download books than having to put up with the present challenges of buying books on the Web. The Net is my favorite way of getting a book; but not everyone feels the same.
If nothing else, remember that phones are consumer devices without all the complexities that PDAs impose on nongeeks who want to do little more than just keep lists of phone numbers and appointments. Yes, phones do have layers of features. But the basic ones are rather accessible to all.
The old Gemstar machines were also easy. Alas, however, the greedster Henry Yuen killed them off with his love of obnoxious DRM and a proprietary format.
I can’t wait for the next crop of dedicated e-book-reading machines to come along, as well as affordable Tablet PCs, just so the former devices are multi format, an impossible dream if the Yuen mindset prevails.
Oh, and incidentally, this pro-KISS rant isn’t just theoretical. The word from Dell tech support is that my Axim PDA is indeed dying. I’m not sure. Instead I may have been done in by complications from a Microsoft security upgrade to my desktop; perhaps that’s the real reason ActiveSync has gone south. The PDA life, even for an old PC hand, just isn’t as simple as it’s cracked up to be.
And to think that so many techies in the e-book industry are haughty enough to insist on both a format war and oppressive DRM–adding those book-related annoyances to the still-abundant uncertainties of PDA technology!
Thought: I suspect that impatience with the Smartphone market is a big reason why both Palm Digital Media and Microsoft haven’t done reading software. But could PDM also have another reason–some prejudices against the Microsoft, maker of a rival operating system for PDAs (PDM or at least its parent, PalmGear, supports the Palm OS and may very possibly be hoping for a variant to thrive in the PDA-phone market)? That’s yet one more argument for publishers to push for a nonproprietary e-book format. Books and their human readers shouldn’t be caught in the middle of format and OS wars.
“Open Ink Christmas Carol” update: Perhaps Tuesday or Wedneday.
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