Early impressions and mini-review of Sprint’s 4G Overdrive hotspot
Posted on 25 March 2010 | View Comments
In my continuing quest to keep up with the latest and greatest mobile Internet stuff, I’m trying out the new Sprint 3G/4G Overdrive, pictured above. Made by Sierra Wireless and slightly more portly than first generation mobile hotspots like my Verizon Mifi 2200, the Overdrive retains the same basic yet great feature set of its predecessors. It’s a mobile broadband modem combined with a wifi router. So you can take it almost anywhere, link up to the mobile network and then up to five devices can get online via wifi — laptops, iPhones, Nintendo DS’s, whatever. Sprint is even advertising it as a way to get your iPhone online at 4G speed!
This post isn’t a full-blown review as I’ve just had the Overdrive for a few days. But I can tell you already that the Overdrive provides several improvements over the Mifi and its peers — at least in theory. It can connect not just to 3G wireless broadband but also to Sprint’s newly rolling out and faster 4G service. Sprint says download speeds at 2 to 10 times faster than 3G while upload speeds are up to 3 times faster. The Overdrive also has a built-in GPS sensor that can be accessed via your web browser. And, although it’s much chubbier than the mifi, it has a small screen that displays a variety of useful information.
It costs $99 after rebate and with a 2-year contract. Broadband service is the same price and terms as Verizon — $60/month for 5 GB of 3G service, though 4G service has no usage caps. That’s actually kind of irrelevant for me so far because Sprint hasn’t extended its 4G service to the Boston area yet. It’s promised real soon now, or at least by the end of the year.
It seems like the Overdrive gets a stronger signal in several places where the Verizon Mifi had problems, like the neighborhood around my office in Boston. That could because of the device or the Sprint/Verizon difference. I’m not sure.
Here’s a couple of comparison pictures of the Overdrive and the Mifi:
I am also impressed with the little status display screen on the top of the Overdrive. It shows signal and battery strength, number of connections via wifi, length of online session and amount of data transferred, among other indicators. With the Mifi, you were always left guessing about how much time was left on your battery and whether a poor a connection was due to weak 3G signals or some other reason.
And that’s all I’ve got so far. I’ll post a more in-depth review at some point but if you have any questions, fire away in the comments.
Recommending the Vers 1.5R clock/radio for iPod
Posted on 20 March 2010 | View Comments
Just a quick entry today. We’ve been looking for new something or other to put on the bedside table that’s iPod-compatible, nice looking and includes an alarm clock and AM/FM radio. Turns out, that’s a tougher slate of requirements to fill than expected. Most of the iPod-compatible clock/radios are either on the ugly side or don’t have AM/FM radios.
Then I discovered a cool offering from Vers Audio. It’s called the 1.5R radio/alarm clock for iPod. It’s small and comes in a couple good looking wood finishes like cherry, walnut and bamboo or a white glossy look. The front is very plain, with the black cloth speaker grill, small bluish clock/radio display and two friendly dials (which control volume and tuning). Most of the controls, including the incredibly important and easily reached “snooze” button are on top.
Feature-wise, the 1.5R has two alarms, an iPod dock that fits all the usual dock adaptors, a backlit LCD display and so on. It has plugs on the bottom for audio in and audio out (3.5 mm). The dimensions of the whole unit are 8.2″ long by 6.7″ deep by 5.6″ high.
The sound quality is superb for such a small device, which I’m sure relates to the design but I’m not enough of an audiophile to explain why. Bass seems to emanate from a separate speaker bit in the back. Vers offers quite a bit of explanation but I have no idea if what they’re saying is accurate.
There are a few extras. The remote control is, well, fine. Not much need for it so far. There are also external AM and FM antennas which can be attached if the internal antennas aren’t adequate for reception in your local area.
For what it’s worth, when I plugged my iPhone into the dock, the iPhone beeped and told me it might interfere with the reception of my device and did I want it to go into “airplane” mode. Handy. Not sure I noticed any difference in radio reception with all the iPhone’s various wireless bits running, bit glad to know someone is watching out for me.
And that’s about it. A handsome, full-featured clock/radio that’s iPod compatible. Check.
p.s. Changed my header image today with a Spring update. Taken with the awesome new pocket cam, Canon’s S90. More on the camera here for now — blog review coming soon.
Kindle for Mac review: Just the basics
Posted on 18 March 2010 | View Comments
Well, the free Kindle application for Macintosh computers has finally arrived. The press release is here, which repeats the promise that there will be an app for the iPad as well. It’s pretty much what you would expect, with all the flaws and strengths of the prior apps, starting with the iPhone/iPod Touch app released about a year ago. Like the earlier extensions of the Kindle platform, many features are curtailed or missing in the Mac app but it’s still a great if basic ebook reader.
First off, it’s finally possible to read your Kindle ebooks on a Mac without any need for the Kindle device. In fact, it’s now easier than ever to start buying and reading Kindle ebooks without ever buying the Kindle.
Start the program and you get a standard screen of ebooks you’ve previously downloaded to the computer. A quick click away is your entire library of Kindle ebooks stored on Amazon’s servers in the “cloud” (see picture below). It’s handy and convenient but still no access to files you’ve loaded manually on your Kindle device, ebooks from other vendors or any of your blog, newspaper or magazine subscriptions. I did look to see if there was some way to send subscriptions directly to the program instead of to your Kindle device but struck out.
Pages of text look great and you can switch font sizes and change the margin width with a click (see picture below). You flip to the next page by clicking with your mouse, hitting the right arrow key, enter key or space key on the keyboard or using a scroll wheel on a magic mouse. Page turns are instantaneous. And the app syncs all books to the last page you’ve read on any of your Kindle apps or devices.
But, like all the other application versions, it’s still not the holistic Kindle experience I’d like to see. Click on the big, friendly button that says “Shop in Kindle Store” and what happens? Your web browser opens separately and goes to the Kindle store web page. Likewise, if you click on the drop-down menu item “Manage your Kindle…” you get whisked off to the web page via your default browser.
There is a convenient notes and bookmarks bar that jumps off the right side of the page if you click on the “Notes & Marks” button. And you can add new bookmark spots with the Mac application. But, as far as I can tell, you can’t highlight text for a clipping or add new notes, which is a shame since you’re obviously using the app on a full computer with a real keyboard. The press release promises the ability to add and edit notes as well as full-text search will be added “in the near future.”
And you’re stuck with the usual Kindle organization issue — there are no folders and no way to see your library of ebooks except sorted by author or by title. At least there are colorful icons depicting the book jackets.
So progress for us Mac heads but no revelations in the new Kindle app for Macs.
Zenfolio iPhone photo app is great – finally!
Posted on 13 March 2010 | View Comments
The kids and I have been watching an old Bill Cosby routine lately — chocolate cake for breakfast. Of course, my favorite part is after Bill has given his kids cake for breakfast and they start singing: “Dad is great, gave us chocolate cake.” I found myself humming the tune after I downloaded and installed Zenfolio’s new iPhone app. It’s a great mobile front-end to one of the best web site services around for photographers. I only wish they had issued it sooner!
As you can see from the main screen below, the app has three basic functions. You can access your previously saved photos from the site. You can access your iPhone camera to take a picture. And you can upload pictures you’ve taken on your iPhone to Zenfolio. Each of those functions seems basic and obvious but each is enhanced with connections to Zenfolio’s existing web services with a few clever extras.
Accessing your existing photos is pretty straightforward. You can navigate through your galleries and collections in typical iPhone fashion. When you open a gallery, all the thumbnails download, which can take a minute or two depending on the number of photos. But the app saves a cache of previously downloaded thumbnails, speeding up the process after you download them once. Individual pictures can viewed with the usual pinch to zoom or emailed or downloaded to the iPhone to use as background wallpaper.
From within this section, you can also access some of the Zenfolio web site’s features, like sending out email invitations to view a gallery, adding or deleting photos from a particular collection and editing metadata like a caption or keywords.
The uploading module lets you chose a previously taken photo from the iPhone’s camera roll or take a new picture. You can add a title, keywords, a caption and apply your existing category tags from the web. You can also set access controls (to prevent an uploaded photo from being viewed by everybody), pick a gallery to upload to and select whether to upload full size or a smaller versions of each photo.
Even better, there’s a button marked “save and upload later” which lets you assemble a queue of photos you want to upload all together. That’s very convenient if, for example, you want to wait until you’re within range of wifi.
The third button, to access your camera, is handy if you want to be able to add photos to your Zenfolio upload queue right after taking them (which means you can also add all your metadata right then, too).
As a final note, I’d just add that while there are many photo sharing sites, including Google’s darn good Picassaweb, Zenfolio is where many serious photographers go to post their work. It has many, many options for displaying and selling photos that make everything look great. Prints come from a great source, Mpix Labs, that provides much higher quality than the average CVS store. There’s a good selection of other printing options, too, from tee shirts to mugs to giant posters. You can easily set up password-protected galleries. You can even use Google Analytics to track visitors to your galleries.
And now that finally we’ve got a great iPhone app, too, Zenfolio is better than ever.
Apple LED Cinema Display is the best dock for a Macbook Pro
Posted on 2 March 2010 | View Comments
I’ve been slowly devolving from a laptop with a huge screen to a laptop with a medium-sized screen to, most recently, a laptop with a small screen. But the smaller my laptop gets, the more I’d like some kind of docking solution when I bring it home. Apple hasn’t been very receptive to we would-be-dockers and the Frankenstein contraptions from other companies are too ugly to contemplate.
But I’ve just solved my dock-at-home woes with an Apple product that came out over a year ago. It’s Apple’s 24″ LED Cinema Display. How can a display be a dock? When it connects all your miniaturized laptop gear to your full-sized desktop gear. And through a little bit of creative engineering, the cinema display can do just that. In addition to its own power cable, the display has three more bright white cables emerging from the rear. Hook them up to your Macbook or Macbook Pro (see picture below) and that makes all the difference.
What is a dock supposed to do? When your laptop is at home base, you want to connect it to a bigger screen. Well, right — that’s the product itself. The display has a cable that connects directly to the “Mini Displayport” which is standard on all current Mac laptops and the Mac mini. It’s a gorgeous and bright screen measuring 1920 by 1200 pixels, just like some almost-recent iMacs.
There’s also a power cable with Apple’s annoyingly-patented MagSafe connector on the end so you can charge your laptop while it’s hooked up to the monitor.
The third connection is a USB cable. That is critical to creating a docking solution because USB can handle audio and video. The Cinema Display has its own built-in speakers and an iSight webcam with a microphone, so when you connect the USB cable to your laptop, you’re connected to the camera, mic and speakers, too. The back of the display also has three of its own USB ports. So when you connect its USB cable to your laptop, the display functions as a hub and and any peripherals you leave connected there will connect to your laptop.
So in essence, by slipping your Macbook or Macbook Pro under the display and hooking up three simple cables, you can instantly have a much bigger display, external speakers, a webcam, AC power and any other USB connections you want on a regular basis (like a keyboard and mouse). Your laptop’s own wifi can still connect to your network or, as I had to do in my office, you might need to plug in a fourth connection with an ethernet cable (it’s that bright yellow cable in the picture above).
A final great feature comes from Apple’s control over both the hardware and software in its laptops. When I want to connect to the display, I just shut the lid of my Macbook Pro, put it under the display and hook up the cables. Hit any key on my big, comfy desktop keyboard and — violá — everything appears on the big screen. When I want to leave, I put the laptop to sleep, disconnect everything and take off. Re-open the lid and everything appears. In the picture below, I’ve disconnected and what you see is the same programs that were running in the picture at the top of this post but they’ve squeezed into the smaller display space.
The software is seamlessly switching between the much smaller laptop screen (1280 by 800) and the huge cinema display screen (1920 by 1200) without requiring me to change any settings and without leaving any of my programs off-screen in an invisible limbo land (as happens constantly with a docked Dell laptop I use for work). Great feature!
There are a few downsides. The first, which is a deal breaker for some people, is that the monitor is only available with a super shiny and reflective “glossy” display. There is no option for the more subdued “matte” type of display. The upside of glossy displays is more vivid colors and a sharper picture. But you have to set them up carefully to minimize background reflections. Since this is a huge (and heavy!) desktop monitor, I think that’s less of a problem than it is on a laptop. The other issue is price. The display retails for $899, considerably more than basic 24″ monitors from other companies. Given the included peripherals and the convenience factor, if you can fit that in your budget, however, it’s well worth the price.
The real agenda of Apple’s ebook partners: death to ebooks
Posted on 31 January 2010 | View Comments
The head of one of the big book publishers, MacMillan CEO John Sargent Jr., is out with an “open” letter about his dispute with Amazon over the pricing and timing of electronic books. It’s telling that this “open” ebook letter wasn’t released publicly and isn’t directed towards readers, book lovers and customers. It was placed as an ad in a small publishing industry trade rag and the message is for publishing industry insiders. Sargent’s message, despite a bunch of misleading surrounding verbiage, is simple: let’s strangle the growth of ebooks.
If you want to understand where Sargent and other major book publishers are coming from, I strongly recommend watching this online footage from a conference New York University hosted last September. Here you can see Sargent and a couple of fellow old media dinosaurs whine and complain about the digital world, dismiss Facebook, Craig’s List and Twitter as irrelevant non-businesses that will never make money and generally explain their plans to charge everyone for everything at every opportunity.
The real critical portions come towards the very end, in part three, as Sargent grows more animated about his opposition to giving away ebooks for free, even for promotional purposes. Despite being in charge of one of the largest publishing conglomerates in the world, he’s pretty pessimistic about the future of books. Challenged by Wired editor Chris Anderson to use digital distribution and new business models to attract new readers and expand the book market, Sargent is in full rejection mode:
“As the Internet grows, as all the other types of entertainment grow, it’s hard to imagine sitting here how we are going to convince everybody in this room to spend an extra six hours every week to consume another book. So in a way, if you look at the overall demand for books, it’s pretty hard to make that grow. We’ve tried. A whole bunch of people worked very hard to try and grow that. It’s pretty hard if you look at the demographics, how people read, to actually convince yourself that we have a growth business in books.”
In other words, what we have in books is a dying audience, a shrinking audience. And the way you extract the most revenue and profit from a shrinking audience isn’t with creative promotions and new ideas. It’s with ever higher prices. As Sargent says at a another point, in a barely veiled swipe at Amazon’s $9.99 ebook price:
“What we need is variable pricing. I think you guys would agree with this, variable pricing for content. You want a range of price points. You want to find a place — what you don’t want to do is give the consumer something for less than what they’re willing to pay for it in the rush to a new business model. Because once you get it out there it’s dangerous and hard to go back.”
Again, challenged to charge less because producing ebooks cost less, Sargent obfuscates, fixating on just one bit of savings, the printing costs of books (ignoring distribution, returns, overage, lost sales from out of print etc):
“Guys I can walk you through this. How much do you think a hardcover book costs us? A buck sixty. What are we saving? Not enough for the price point to drop from $22.50 down to $8.”
Amazon has been saying that its Kindle customers buy more total books – electronic and print – than they bought previously. It’s certainly been true in our household. I don’t have the figures at my finger tips, but I’d imagine that the whole creation and growth of Amazon.com has enlarged the book market, as well. But that’s not really happening in John Sargent’s world of mega-best sellers.
So keep in mind what Sargent was saying a few months ago when you read passages like this in his letter:
“In the ink-on-paper world we sell books to retailers far and wide on a business model that provides a level playing field, and allows all retailers the possibility of selling books profitably. Looking to the future and to a growing digital business, we need to establish the same sort of business model, one that encourages new devices and new stores. One that encourages healthy competition. One that is stable and rational. It also needs to insure that intellectual property can be widely available digitally at a price that is both fair to the consumer and allows those who create it and publish it to be fairly compensated.”
Leave aside for a moment the completely dishonest portrait Sargent paints of the old print book-selling world, and remember that he doesn’t believe the there will be any growth in book sales in the future. He’s not interested in a fair price for anybody — he’s interested in making sure that he never gives the consumer something for less than what they’re willing to pay for it.
He wants to extract the big bucks from the big sellers and move on.
The great danger to MacMillan is that it’s the authors of those big best-sellers who are becoming increasingly able to cut him out. If ebooks really take off, an author like Stephen King or Nora Roberts can sell a lot more of their books direct to their audience with no publisher at all. And that’s why Sargent’s real goal here is not to increase competition or create a level playing field. It’s to squeeze as much profit out of a dying industry as quickly as he can and hold off the digital future for as long as possible.
UPDATE: Henry Blodget also really gets it in his post today called “Hey, John Sargent, CEO of Macmillan Books, Screw You!” An excerpt:
Did Steve Jobs seduce you with that temporary “charge-whatever-you-want” speech? Well, Steve has been known to seduce people from time to time. Just imagine what will happen once Steve has put the Kindle out of business and Steve owns the ebook platform instead of Jeff Bezos. That’s right: You’ll get held up even worse than Jeff’s holding you up today. Just ask the music industry. Careful what you wish for. So, bottom line, John, take your $15 ebooks and shove them. We’re with Amazon on this one.
Good work.
Apple’s iPad may be the perfect computer for kids
Posted on 30 January 2010 | View Comments
I’m excited about Apple’s new iPad for a couple of reasons. While a lot of the iPad’s features and services had been leaked in advance, I found myself gasping along with the audience in San Francisco when the price was announced. This is a product that is going to have vastly more impact for under $500 than it would have had at $800 or $1,000. And as I’ve pondered the iPad’s possibilities for the past day or so, one particular use has begun to dominate my thinking and that’s the iPad as the perfect starter computer for my pre-teen kids.
The three kids in our family are a pretty tech savvy bunch, with their iPods and Nintendos, PSPs and Wii. They’re also happy for all the time they can get with mom and dad’s laptops, desktops and the Kindle. They know how to work Tivo, download from iTunes and find stuff on YouTube. They need a lot of supervision and we’re seemingly forever in search of the perfect parental controls and web filters that will let them access all that’s good and fun while protecting them from all the garbage and viruses and worse.
But I have to say, the more I think about it, the more perfect the iPad seems as a solution. One of the biggest problem the kids have is dealing with the complexity and fragile nature of our current computers, running either Mac or Windows. It’s just too easy for the mouse cursor to get lost, file systems to overwhelm and key settings to get munged. On one computer the kids use, flash was somehow disabled one day and won’t come back no matter how much re-installing and uninstalling I’ve done. Another laptop last only a few weeks before they had it unable to boot. It’s not maliciousness or ignorance on their part. Modern PCs just remain pretty darn delicate and temperamental beasts.
The iPad does away with much of this complexity and hides much of what ails the modern PC. Simple is good. No mouse — use your finger. No searching for missing files — they’re all inside each application just when you want them. And no complicated and mysterious settings and system files just waiting to be accidentally deleted. Some people call the iPad/iPhone software platform a “sandbox” due to its limitations but what better metaphor for the kind of computing environment my kids need than a sandbox?
The kids get homework but they hardly need a full-powered copy of Word or Excel to complete it. The iWorks programs look more than adequate. They need a physical keyboard, I’d expect, for the occasional short essay but thankfully Steve Jobs has seen fit — finally — to let use Bluetooth keyboards with the iPad (a feature that would REALLY come in handy with the iPhone, but I digress). And they need a browser but one simpler and safer from malware than the average copy on a PC.
Of course, like all their little digerati friends, the kids are both big consumers and producers of digital media. They take pictures and make movies, record their own songs and even try their hand at blogging. They watch shows downloaded from iTunes or the Tivo or on YouTube or other sites. They play with Ze Frank’s funny frog, use Club Penguin and all the wonderful games PBS has created to accompany its television shows. Flash limitations aside, I think they can do most or all of this stuff on the iPad. And once Amazon ports its Kindle app, they won’t even have to borrow mine anymore. Hallelujah.
I’ve got a couple of months to keep thinking about this and I’m interested in your thoughts as well as the likely stream of additional information that will be flowing out of Cupertino. On the parental controls front, for example, I’m disappointed with what Apple offers for the iPhone/iPod Touch platform and I’m hoping for far more on the iPad. For homework, we’re really going to need to be able to connect to a printer, too. So please weigh in if you have any thoughts and stay tuned for more details.
UPDATE: Over on Twitter, Mark Nikolewski says his four- and seven-year-olds mainly use web sites with embedded games and videos that rely on Adobe’s flash plug-in. There’s no flash on the iPhone and so far none on the iPad. This is a problem but maybe Apple and Adobe get with it? Wired, John Gruber and other Mac followers are less than optimistic. Web sites could, however, offer alternatives if the iPad caught on. They already do so in some cases for the iPhone. Why wouldn’t Disney, with Steve Jobs on the board, want to make an iPad app version of Club Penguin, for example?
UPDATE2: A couple of other folks channeling this same idea include Warren Buckleitner over on the New York Times Gadgetwise blog and, surprisingly, Dallas Mavericks owner and frequent Internet buffoon Mark Cuban. He’s right on when he writes:
It will be the product that kids of this generation grow up with and look back on with affection just like we did with the first video games. Video games changed how we grew up. The iPad will change how kids today grow up.
Steve Jobs’ ebook logic: I win, All of you lose
Posted on 27 January 2010 | View Comments
Soon we’ll know just what Apple’s new tablet will really do, how much it will cost and whether it can save the world from global warming. Okay, just joking about that last bit — I think. In any event, many believe the tablet will shake things up in ebook world where Amazon’s Kindle is the leader followed by improving entries from Sony, Barnes & Noble and others.
Today, The Wall Street Journal has yet another story about Apple’s ebook strategy and efforts to woo book publishers. There’s something kind of wacky about the situation, however. The only party that comes out better under Apple’s apparent strategy is…Apple.
Start with readers, aka consumers, aka you and me. We get to read ebooks on cool Apple mobile devices. Oh wait, we can already do that on the iPhone and iPod Touch. What we do get is higher prices. $9.99 is out and the new normal is $12.99 or $14.99. Sounds kind of like last year when Apple caved to the record labels and hiked music prices across the board. I’m still waiting for all those 69 cent songs I was promised.
Okay, so we lose but what about publishers. They’re bitterly complaining about Amazon and it’s terrible prices that devalue books. So they must make out? Well, actually, no. As the article points out, Amazon pays them half the cover price of a digital book, which in most cases is more than the $9.99 retail price Amazon charges its customers. Say the hardcover price is $24 — Amazon pays the publisher $12. Amazon is subsidizing the ebooks, losing money on most of those sales. But Apple is only to pay publishers 70% of the two price points I mentioned, which means they get $9.09 0r $10.49.
So why would they do that? The Journal coimes up with this nonsensical rationale:
But there is nevertheless a strong draw: In adopting the Apple model, the balance of power would shift at least partly back to publishers, which regain control of pricing. In setting higher prices, they could provide a level playing field for all e-book retailers. The potential for publishers is that the device may generate greater volume for e-book sales.
Now, publishers could generate a greater volume of sales to tablet users through the existing crop of ereader apps, if they wanted to. They don’t need Apple for that. But how would the “balance of power” shift to them on pricing? As the article already noted, Jobs is pushing two retail price points and a fixed 70% payout. It’s also very unclear how this results in a “level playing field” for ebook sellers. In fact, publishers would be charging Apple less than they get from Amazon, Sony and Barnes & Noble. It’s a sweet heart deal that benefits…you guess it, Apple.
If I had to put a stake in the ground, I’d predict that this poorly thought-out pricing model ignores what customers want and does little to help the publishing industry. It will get vast amounts of attention and hype but will end up a dud in the marketplace.
Evernote is the best note keeper in the cloud and on the ground
Posted on 22 January 2010 | View Comments
Wall Street Journal tech reviewer Walter Mossberg doesn’t always hit the rights notes, in my view, but he was pitch perfect today in a rave about note-stashing software program and web site Evernote. This is the data storage program that runs on practically every platform — Windows and Mac desktops, iPhone, Blackberry, Palm and Android smartphones — and has a great web site. Here’s Mossberg in today’s paper:
What if you could collect, in one well-organized, searchable, private digital repository, all the notes you create, clips from Web pages and emails you want to recall, dictated audio memos, photos, key documents, and more? And what if that repository was constantly synchronized, so it was accessible through a Web browser and through apps on your various computers and smart phones?
Well, such a service exists. And it’s free. It’s called Evernote. I’ve been testing it for about a week on a multiplicity of computers and phones, and found that it works very well. Evernote is an excellent example of hybrid computing—using the “cloud” online to store data and perform tasks, while still taking advantage of the power and offline ability of local devices.
I’ve been testing Evernote since May and have accumulated some 500-odd notes so far. Search is lightening fast and the synchronization across platforms works like a charm. I wish there was an easier way to clip web articles on the iPhone and get them into the Evernote app but that may be due to Apple’s policies more than any failing of Evernote. Highly recommended.
Will Apple continue to allow competing ebook reading apps?
Posted on 20 January 2010 | View Comments
There are many, many unanswered questions about Apple’s forthcoming tablet computing device, or the “God tablet” perhaps I should call it. For those of us particularly concerned about the future of electronic books, I have one pointed question for Apple. Will the company, which at times acts against its own customer interests, allow competing ebook vendors like Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Sony onto its new tablet? Or will it boot the competition in favor of its own iTunes ebook store? You know, one ereader to rule them all and in the darkness bind them…
There’s little question among the Mac-erati that the tablet will follow the software model of the iPhone/iPod Touch and not the Mac itself. That is, customers will not be allowed to load any software they want. Customers will be limited to software offered at Apple’s iTunes app store. Apple has been much and rightly criticized for its slow and ham-handed management of the app store approval process.
But at least for right now, Apple is letting all of its potential ebook competitors offer ebook reading apps. The Kindle iPhone app is usually the top-ranked download in the book section and B&N’s app is usually second or third. If Apple sticks with this policy and just adds its own ebook store, likely with its own proprietary digital rights management lockdowned formatting, I don’t think Apple is going to have much impact on the ebook market.
Why no impact? After cozying up to the music labels and granting them an unprecedented 30% price hike last year, Apple now appears to be sucking up to book publishers. Apple will reportedly let publishers set prices and conditions for sales of all ebooks on its new platform. That’s a recipe for disaster with consumers. Publishers want to keep prices high and further reduce the value of ebooks by limiting the ability to share or resell them, prohibit computerized audio reading and generally delay the inevitable as long as possible.
To see just how little traction this kind of strategy is likely to garner, recall Apple’s former darling ebook app vendor, Scrollmotion, and its hideously overpriced Iceberg reader app. Given prime stage time at last June’s World Wide Developer Conference, Scrollmotion charges full print retail prices for ebooks that can only be read on the iPhone. I’ve rarely seen any of their editions on the top 100 best-selling apps in the books category and you don’t even hear them mentioned by Apple or publishers anymore.
But – here’s the big but – what if Apple yanks ebook competitors out of the app store. There’s some slight precedent for that after the Google Voice debacle, when Apple not only declined to approve Google’s app but went back and yanked a few minor apps that also worked with GV. On the other hand, federal regulators are looking into the GV debacle, so there may be too much pressure on Apple to pull another fast one.
If Apple does pull competitors off the entire iPhone platform, then you’d have to give their publisher-loving, consumer-hating ebook strategy more of a chance. I think it would have more of a chance of holding back the whole market than taking over the whole market but who knows.
Publishers could also “help” if they follow what I call the “slow boil a frog” strategy. That was the Barnes & Noble strategy in the 1990s when it was opening new superstores all over the country. Start with big discounts on everything for a few years to wipe out lesser competitors. Once most of the independent books stores are gone, eliminate most of the discounts.
One final aside: as I’ve said before, book publishers are clearly following the music industry’s template for getting leverage against an entrenched, market leading digital retailer. Amazon won’t do what they want to they’re going to try and help some smaller players with the ultimate aim of getting Mister Number One to cave in to their demands. Ironically, in the case of music, Apple was the leader under attack and the industry made a sweet heart deal with Amazon.
UPDATE: As the always useful Teleread blog just pointed out, GearDiary’s Carly Z was on this topic yesterday. She sounds a touch more optimistic than I am:
So who wins when Apple gets involved in ebooks? Overall, the consumer with no library tie-ins is probably going to be very happy. Assuming the pricing is reasonable, Apple will no doubt pull a rabbit out of their hats and ebooks for some time now, it’s probably going to be a mixed bag. As great as it is to see a tech giant like Apple involved in ebooks, it means big changes are no doubt in store, and it is going to be a very bumpy ride along the way.
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