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Ebook Industry Changes (linkspam)
Five things make a linkspam? Lots of changes in the ebookery world:
Overdrive stops supporting Mobipocket--a side effect of the new Kindle library ebooks. Most of those older ebooks will be converted to Kindle (which is Mobipocket format with different DRM setup); some will be lost entirely. Overdrive is planning to refund library purchases of those books.
CONCLUSION: Digital purchases are not intended to be forever; they're "until the company that manages the servers decides they're not worth supporting anymore."
Vook stops making content to focus on software. Vookbooks, if you didn't know (I'm fairly oblivious & only know they exist because I hang out in too many ebook forums) are interactive, app-like ebooks.
CONCLUSION: If there's a substantial market for "enhanced" ebooks, nobody knows what to do with it yet. (My thoughts: There's a market, but it's not the book market, just like the market for movies is not "enhanced stage plays.")
California Reader Privacy Act signed into law; a nice step towards treating ebook access like pbook access: something that the gov't doesn't have the right to spy on without a compelling (read: court-provable) reason.
CONCLUSION: Yay, someone's paying attention to the frightening amount of personal info moving through the business world with no controls.
Kindle Fire could be iPad killer; skeptics are dismissing it because of the limited functions and "paltry" 8gb storage (wtF? how many movies do you need in your pocket?) without noticing that very few people need the full capabilities of an iPad.
CONCLUSION: There's a long history of small, focused, inexpensive devices driving out large, powerful, costly ones. All the Fire has to be to sweep the market is reliable, not ultra-powerful.
Ebook price-fixing lawsuit focuses on Apple in collusion w/publishers; 5 publishers insist that they spontaneously decided to switch to the "agency model" because it seemed like the best business practice; they didn't coordinate with Apple to squeeze Amazon and convince consumers that ebooks "should" cost more than $10 nope nope nope.
CONCLUSION: While this looks like a very simple, "obviously pricefixing" case, I gather the legalities are complicated. While we can all recognize "companies working together to get more profits," not all of that translates to illegal business practices; companies aren't barred from grabbing business habits from each other--just from coordinating them in advance.
Overdrive stops supporting Mobipocket--a side effect of the new Kindle library ebooks. Most of those older ebooks will be converted to Kindle (which is Mobipocket format with different DRM setup); some will be lost entirely. Overdrive is planning to refund library purchases of those books.
CONCLUSION: Digital purchases are not intended to be forever; they're "until the company that manages the servers decides they're not worth supporting anymore."
Vook stops making content to focus on software. Vookbooks, if you didn't know (I'm fairly oblivious & only know they exist because I hang out in too many ebook forums) are interactive, app-like ebooks.
CONCLUSION: If there's a substantial market for "enhanced" ebooks, nobody knows what to do with it yet. (My thoughts: There's a market, but it's not the book market, just like the market for movies is not "enhanced stage plays.")
California Reader Privacy Act signed into law; a nice step towards treating ebook access like pbook access: something that the gov't doesn't have the right to spy on without a compelling (read: court-provable) reason.
CONCLUSION: Yay, someone's paying attention to the frightening amount of personal info moving through the business world with no controls.
Kindle Fire could be iPad killer; skeptics are dismissing it because of the limited functions and "paltry" 8gb storage (wtF? how many movies do you need in your pocket?) without noticing that very few people need the full capabilities of an iPad.
CONCLUSION: There's a long history of small, focused, inexpensive devices driving out large, powerful, costly ones. All the Fire has to be to sweep the market is reliable, not ultra-powerful.
Ebook price-fixing lawsuit focuses on Apple in collusion w/publishers; 5 publishers insist that they spontaneously decided to switch to the "agency model" because it seemed like the best business practice; they didn't coordinate with Apple to squeeze Amazon and convince consumers that ebooks "should" cost more than $10 nope nope nope.
CONCLUSION: While this looks like a very simple, "obviously pricefixing" case, I gather the legalities are complicated. While we can all recognize "companies working together to get more profits," not all of that translates to illegal business practices; companies aren't barred from grabbing business habits from each other--just from coordinating them in advance.
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But I agree about basically everything else.
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Well, fuck. I actually borrow the mobipocket books from my library.
Kindle Fire could be iPad killer
Based on the comments I've been seeing around DW, people are pretty excited about the Fire. If I wasn't so anti-Amazon, I'd look into it.
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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2043663/Kindle-Fire-privacy-issues-Amazon-blasted-worse-Google-OR-Facebook.html
I wouldn't use it if someone GAVE it to me. :)
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Another thing to add to my "Reasons Why I Won't Use Amazon" list.
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b) you can download a different browser from the amazon market (there's at least 2 good ones, and eleventy billion ones I've never heard of which might be good.)
c) Both Opera and Skyfire already do this. it is not a practice original to Amazon, no matter how much their engineers want to pretend they thought up something super brand new.
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b) And right now you can download different apps, but what happens when everyone buys a Fire tablet and then Amazon starts to act like Apple and starts to restrict the apps people can use?
c) Opera promises not to retain data. (From the article I linked) and I probably wouldn't use either of those browsers either anyway. My privacy is important to me.
Amazon's selling these at a loss. People should be asking themselves why.
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I don't have any reason to think that the Fire's webbrowsing would be drastically slower than any other browsing I do on wireless on, say, my phone, and I do ... let's just say a lot.
b) If you find that the apps in Amazon's app store are too restrictive, wait until December, when instructions on how to jailbreak the Fire are posted to the internet, and then you can use alternate app stores, like people do for other Android devices.
c) I don't know what privacy policy Amazon is going to have or Skyfire currently has. My point is merely that Amazon isn't unique in providing this sort of service. Everyone will have to decide whether or not they are comfortable with trading having a second third party monitoring your internet traffic (because, of course, your ISP already has all of these records of what you've downloaded over the internet, from where, when) or not. But Amazon isn't trying to trick anyone into giving them info, unlike, say Facebook. They've made a helpful explanatory commercial explaining what's in it for you.
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Where did you see that reported? I read a fair amount of Kindle Fire coverage, and nobody hinted that they were selling these things below cost.
But, also, it's really clear why Amazon is selling these tablets so cheaply. it's the same reason printers are cheap and ink is expensive. They want you to buy your video and ebooks and apps from Amazon. They want you to get an Amazon prime account, so any time you think about buying a physical object via the internet, the first place you think about buying it is Amazon, because you won't have to pay shipping. This isn't evil mastermind time.
(Now, yes, absolutely, because Amazon will have EVEN MORE records about your personal habits, one may be concerned about all of this centralized store of info about you. If a record exists, it can subpoenaed in a lawsuit or a criminal prosecution. It can be hacked and used to torment you. It can be sold and used to sell you shit you don't want. But these concerns don't warrant anyone imagining Jeff Bezos sitting around cackling and stroking a cat to celebrate his evil dominance over the world.)
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Or even if not driving out, changing the overall market. The Wii is a recent example, especially given its launch in proximity to the complex and expensive PS3.
That news about Overdrive is disturbing.
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I'd love to see publishers of language learning books take full advantage of it, personally. It'd certainly help make learning dead languages a bit more easier.
skeptics are dismissing it because of the limited functions and "paltry" 8gb storage (wtF? how many movies do you need in your pocket?) without noticing that very few people need the full capabilities of an iPad.
Everyone has different needs, and tons of moves in one's pocket is perfect for a lot of people. Personally I don't even see the point of getting a laptop if it didn't have at least a half terabyte hard drive, it's too easy to fill a device with tons of software and multimedia. I don't want just audio on my machine, I want quality audio, and lots of it. The smaller the harddrive, the less variety you can put on. Anyway, this isn't the 90's anymore, and needs have changed.
CONCLUSION: There's a long history of small, focused, inexpensive devices driving out large, powerful, costly ones. All the Fire has to be to sweep the market is reliable, not ultra-powerful.
No doubt. But the iPad verses Kindle tablet is (pardon the pun) really more of an Apples verses Oranges thing. Currently, there are simply a lot more apps in general for the iPad, and for the people in the metaphysical community, makers of astrology software are already working on ones for the iPad and iPhone right now, not Android (no, those pointless and random computer generated affirmations don't count, you need chart making capabilities and software that settles all the problems of daylight savings for you so you won't have to put much effort in to using it, and so on).
This will change eventually, but from a practical standpoint, but if I was running a business right now I'd rather use an iPad instead of most tablets instead simply due to the fact that there's more business software available for it, and I'm not impressed by Google's offerings one bit.
What tablet makers really need to do is focus on relationships with developers from the very beginning (this isn't to say Apple has been perfect at this in their history, far from it). I have no doubt Android tablets will eventually become more competitive, but that success, as with Windows, more often than not comes with more software choices. I used to want a non-iPad tablet instead, but due to some practical considerations the alternatives still do not fulfill-hard drive size and app choices-I just don't see myself getting one any time soon.
That being said
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But for a lot of people, especially a lot of home consumers (which is the market Amazon cares about, because people buy copies of Fast Five, not corporations), an iPad does more than they really need, especially if they already have some other computer on which to commit Srs Bzns. What they don't have is a tv/web browser/ebook/Angry Birds/jukebox in their pocket. And the Kindle Fire promises to be just that tv/web browser/ebook/Angry Birds/jukebox in their pocket, and it's cheap enough that you can get one for every member of a (small, middle class) family, instead of everybody having to share (draw straws for/start a war over) an iPad.
Not really
...an iPad does more than they really need, especially if they already have some other computer on which to commit Srs Bzns.
It's better to do more than what's needed than not enough, and if anything, sales indication that Apple doesn't have anything to worry about just yet, and its not only rich or middle class people buying it. There's also the fact it's not only corporations that can find the iPad very useful.
I alsi feel like adding here that I do think most if not all IT companies are pure slime, including the corporation that made my MacBook, so I'm only speaking of practical reasons to use it. The choices and lack there of out there still suck, and I'm not happy about the fact I'll still be staying with Apple for awhile, but hey, that's life, and there's no point in being a lifestyle activist.
Thus the criticisms I'm making isn't because I think, much less want, just Apple to succeed. I want the competitors to also succeed, but they need to be serious about making their products truly competitive in the long run, not just a knock off clone with not many apps available, thus the importance of working with developers from the very beginning.
You also have to keep in mind tablets will eventually become as popular as netbooks and laptops, but like netbooks and laptops in the early years, will have to mostly catch up when it comes to both price and performance. They will probably due that eventually, but it will take some time for that to happen, and portable terabyte hard drives are popular for a reason.
Re: Not really
That is not categorically true, especially if doing more than enough has a considerable cost. (Since an entry level iPad is more than double the cost of a Kindle Fire, doing more has a considerable cost.)
I'm not saying, no one is saying, that Apple is going to close tomorrow because the Kindle Fire is shipping in November. Apple has plenty of time…to come up with a cheaper tablet which does less. (It's not like Apple has never made a great product, and then turned around and made a less expensive version when third parties started manufactoring cheap, less capable products similar to what Apple made great. You've heard of the iPod nano?)
I also don't understand what you mean about Amazon not working with developers? The app store is all about Amazon working with developers and knowing that it needs apps in order to make the Kindle Fire work. No, it doesn't have as many apps as the iPad. But Apple didn't always have as many apps as the iPad does now. And if a bazillion people buy Kindle Fires, you know what developers are going to do? Make Android apps, because people will have something to buy them with.
Look, there is a well-established business historical practice where a cheap, less capable product does, actually, compete an expensive and extremely capable product out of business, or, at least, into a niche of the 200 people on Earth who need everything that the super-expensive thing can do. It is not inevitable that that will happen to Apple, and it's not inevitable that, should that happen, the Kindle Fire will be the tablet that does it to Apple. But the Fire does point out that there's an opening, for something that's cheap, does a specific set of things really well, and doesn't pretend to do everything an iPad does. Because, again, a lot of people who were mulling over buying an iPad don't need everything an iPad does.