Comments on: The mysterious case of the missing iPhone Mobipocket reader

By: Clytie Siddall

Clytie Siddall — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:43:49 +0000

According to the threads on the Mobi forum, not only development for OSX/iPhone but Mobi development in general has been moribund for several months now. Like other posters here and on the fora, I have hundreds of “Secure Mobipocket” books, bought either because the title was only available in that format, or because Mobipocket ran on my previous device. Both categories are significant, because for some peculiar reason some publishers will ONLY release as Mobi DRM, and because Mobipocket was a leading ereader, certainly better than eReader on my Palm T3 at that time.

It no longer seems worthwhile to wait for Mobipocket to wake up and smell the coffee. Natural selection is passing them by.

It’s a pity, because the Mobi app. I used on my Palm T3 was really good work. I respect those developers, and I hope wherever they are now, that their lives are rewarding and rewarded.

By: Chris Meadows

Chris Meadows — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 14:24:47 +0000

Mobipocket doesn’t care. They don’t have to care. They get paid when someone uses their encryption, not when the book sells. (Well, they get paid when the book sells through the Mobipocket.com book store, but that’s just a sideline to their main business of making the reader software and selling the right to use the encryption.)

It’s the publishers who need to be convinced it’s a toxin, because they’re the ones who make the decision to use it.

By: Dana G

Dana G — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 23:57:51 +0000

I’ve used ebooks for the past 4 years. I love my iphone and use Stanza and Ereader. My problem is that there seems to be more publishers who now use the secure Mobipocket format. I don’t understand why Mobipocket doesn’t understand the secure format decreases sales. I’ve bought more print books in the past year simply because the only ebook format was Mobipocket secure. It is frustrating to read the responses on the Mobipocket forum regarding the Mac OS and the iphone.

By: Chris Meadows

Chris Meadows — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 12:19:34 +0000

Of course, Mobipocket library books’ DRM can be removed by the same method as Mobipocket sale books.

And unlike sale books, you don’t have to pay for them first.

Just another one of the flaws inherent in trying to make electronic books mimic paper books to such a great extent.

By: Karen Pollock

Karen Pollock — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 03:18:56 +0000

I myself have a love/hate relationship with my ebooks. Half of my library is eReader/Fictionwise and the other is Mobipocket. There are many and varied reasons why I choose to support both formats. Some include:

-One of my authors’ publisher started releasing her books in eReader. Then 6 books ago did a 180 and now ONLY release in Mobipocket.

-One of the websites I buy from doesn’t support eReader at all. The format is not available.

etc.

Did anyone notice the new “lending library” that Fictionwise is testing? Whoops! You can only use MOBIPOCKET software with it. You have to have the platform to take advantage. I love my itouch, but I’m starting to get more then a little annoyed.

By: Fred Kiesche

Fred Kiesche — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:31:21 +0000

Maybe Amazon (the owner) is afraid that if Mobipocket is available for the iPhone they’ll see sales of the Kindle (which is, let’s face it, a “geek” device…but not as sexy as another “geek” device, the iPhone) drop.

Put an iPhone and a Kindle next to each other. Which looks nicer? Which is more user-friendly?

By: Bill McHale

Bill McHale — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:17:51 +0000

Chris,
The publishers may want DRM, but it is frankly anti-consumer technology. My position is simple, I will not support a publisher that publishes DRM’d books. We should not want to support a publisher that doesn’t trust us enough to let us read our books where and how we want!

The Blackberry to iPhone transition is a clear example of one reason why we should oppose DRM! When you buy DRM’d books, you have no way of knowing whether you will be able to read them on your next smart-phone, computer or ebook-reader. The last thing I want to worry about when I buy a computer or new smart-phone is about whether I will be able to read my ebooks on them.

By: ficbot

ficbot — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:24:11 +0000

I think the bigger reason is that it costs Amazon less money to maintain an already existing mobipocket format than it would to open up the Kindle to non-USA customers. It continues to baffle me that they won’t do this, and in my opinion the Kindle has no hope of being taken seriously as a ‘gold standard’ and owning this niche market as long as they stubbornly remain unuseable outside of the USA. A *lot* of people—readers, even!—are not American. It’s the *world* wide web. Any ‘industry standard’ for an electronic product needs to realize this, and soon.

By: Chris Meadows

Chris Meadows — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 23:57:12 +0000

1) Perhaps not. But let’s bear in mind that even on Fictionwise—the owners of eReader and one of the main drivers of commercial e-books on the iPhone—there are still a surprising number of books that are available in encrypted Mobipocket format only because of publisher restrictions.

It’s all well and good to say, “Well, don’t buy them, then.” But for people who want those books electronically and want to support the author and publisher who brought them out, what other choice do they have?

2) Right or wrong, the presence of DRM makes it preferable to publishers. It may be due to complete stupidity on their part, given how broken Mobipocket DRM is, but it’s what they want.

And official Mobipocket reader software is available for a pretty decent variety of handheld devices—including the Blackberry, which is currently the only smartphone ahead of the iPhone in the American market (see the article I posted after this one)—not to mention also being used in the Kindle. This means that a lot of people moving to an iPhone from something Mobi supports will have a lot of legacy files to bring along.

By: Mike Cane

Mike Cane — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 23:47:29 +0000

Let me ask some questions here:

1) For all the people who are experiencing eBooks for the first time on the iPhone with eReader and Stanza, is this even an issue?

2) Is there anything in the MobiPocket file format that makes it preferable to others, say, ePub?

I’ve said it before: This is a legacy format and the sooner people move away from it, the better.