Is Apple anti-book? Moriah Jovan—censored—wonders
CNET editor David Carnoy, I suspect, is far from the only writer to be censored by the Apple App Store.
Moriah Jovan, in fact, a TeleBlog commenter, writes of her own brush with Apple’s prudes.
In protesting, “MoJo” raises the issue of whether Apple is anti-book. Perhaps she’s being a little facetious, but if nothing else, I wonder why the company is acting so illogically. Isn’t it in business to enrich shareholders? And can’t e-books help build profits?
But compared to the App Store, MoJo notes, “I can get a better selection of books to read at Wal-Mart, albeit I have to go there and buy dead-tree books.” Could Apple’s censorship—and, yes, I’ll call it such even if Apple isn’t the government—be one reason? Not the best way to attract good books. Meanwhile Apple isn’t nearly as tough on violence in video games.
What’s going on? Doesn’t Apple see the merits of fiction and other recreational reading as a literacy builder? Instead the company’s limited e-book efforts seem to be focused so far on an alliance with ScrollMotion, the DRM-crazed provider of a horrid e-reading program intended to push overpriced books.
The irony is that thanks to third-party apps like Stanza, the iPhone is proving to be a terrific platform for e-reading, especially among young people on the go. But for how long? I still wonder if Apple will seek to choke off Lexcycle and other independents or at least seriously crimp them.
January 16th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
Yes, Apple is anti-book. Books aren’t sexy or sleek enough and there’s no real way to make an “Apple Book” that’s totally closed and costs twice as much as everyone else’s books.
January 16th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
the ipod is a bit different, it’s not actually designed at apple and is the brainchild of a apple executive thats since left apple, and the music deals they made was negotiated on the music publishers terms and they probably dictates that apple cant just pull music off the itunes shelf. there was some trouble early on with podcast, the original head of the ipod division stepped in and made the calls to keept it relatively censorship free.
The ipod shares some common traits with the LC series of low end desktops, the LC machines being developed in outright defience of Jobs orders, and the iphone development halfway outsourced.
Apple have always chased a certain niche of the market and this is wry they are sensitive about not getting associated with the wrong kind of content.
With the iphone they got caught up in a whirlwind and just have to follow it and make versions they might not even wanted to make because theres too much money in it. like with the scaled down LC series it’s something apple does to stay in business. The purified iphone is closer to the grand vision.
January 26th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
So I was alerted to this little application to enable a real-life sniper to do his job.