E-book-friendly iPod said to be on the way–and this rumor sounds true
The current rumors actually could be true about Apple doing e-books on an iPod. I’m a sucker for this one after hearing that a publisher actually is involved. From Engadget:
… according to a source at a major publishing house, they were just ordered to archive all their manuscripts — every single one — and send them over to Apple’s Cupertino HQ. A separate trusted source let us know that the next iPod will have a substantial amount of screen real estate (as we’d all suspected), as well as a book reading mode that pumps up the contrast and drops into monochrome for easy reading. It’s no e-ink, sure, but a widescreen iPod would be well suited for the purpose, and according to our source, the books you’d buy (presumably through iTunes) won’t have an expiration — kind of like Apple-bought music, as well, but contradictory to the movie rental scheme we’ve heard rumored.
Funny, isn’t it? Sony is portraying its Reader as the iPod of e-books, and now it may have competition from the actual iPod.
Publishers, can you read between the lines? Don’t tarry on e-books standards if you’d rather not see Apple run the book biz. Heed the one and only Hilary Rosen, who has called for interoperability in the digital music industry–in no small part because Apple dominates it so much. Significantly the former RIAA boss worries about DRM as a proprietary tool used against interoperability. Rosen was talking about music, not e-books, but the same rules apply.
Software companies belonging to the IDPF should also pay attention. I wonder how much of the e-book pie will be left over for Adobe and ETI in the long run if Apple and Microsoft duke it out. Microsoft has made it clear it’s gunning for PDF-type apps, and over the long run I doubt Redmond will leave out e-books. The short-term? Maybe. But this will be a protracted war, and I can’t help but think of the final results of Microsoft-WordPerfect battles.
Adobe and ETI should agree ASAP to move e-book standards to a neutral venue such as an OASIS technical committee. “Who you gonna trust” on DRM if the usual suspects are the ones involved?
OASIS could offer some much-needed outside perspective.
As for IDPF, it can go on as a trade organization rather than pretend to be a credible standards forum. I remain baffled why one company, ETI, can control both of the two most crucial technical committees within IDPF. The ETI folks are no dummies, but this cozy arrangement does not exactly indicate a great depth of tech talent at the IDPF. A little diversity, please.
July 23rd, 2006 at 9:50 pm
How useful this will be depends on how Apple treats DRM. With both Music and Video, you *can* buy DRM-ed AAC and MP4 videos if you want to. But you can also rip your CDs to non-DRMed MP3 and rip your DVDs to non-DRMed MP4.
Lets hope Apple follows this and has their DRMed format but also supports open formats as well (I’d be happy with straight HTML support).
July 24th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
And don’t forget that Apple was the first company to have a complete reading & publishing ebook software, back in the ‘90 with the NewtonBook software for the NewtonOS ( http://www.chuma.org/newton/faq/newton-faq-books.html ), IMHO still one of the best ebook software around even today…
Cheers
Ervino
August 2nd, 2006 at 6:11 am
[...] I think about how organized my reading could be — about the Google notebook equivalents available to the e-book reader, the infinite number of possible links and e-references to other e-texts, and the embarrassingly nerdy folder and annotated bib system I could generate — or how convenient, efficient, and space-conserving e-books on my iPod would be, not to mention the opening of the e-book market to wifi. [...]
September 9th, 2006 at 4:11 pm
hi
i have a mp4 player and he is have a option of e-book and i cant active this option pecouse i dont have any aidia about this option how can work on mp4
egypt