Amazon releases free beta of Kindle for Mac eBook reading software
With Apple's eBook-capable iPad looming ominously in the face Amazon's fledgeling electronic book business, the online bookseller on Thursday released a new application for Mac users as part of its ongoing bid to promote its proprietary Kindle platform and prevent defection of its existing user base to a emerging array of alternatives.
Released as a free beta application for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and higher, the software allows Mac users to purchase and download from Amazon's growing catalog of over 450,000 eBooks without the need to purchase its $259 Kindle 2 or larger $489 Kindle DX hardware. With the release, Amazon notes that Kindle books can now be read on many of the world's most popular digital devices, including the iPhone, iPod touch, BlackBerry, Windows PC, Mac, and soon the iPad.
"Kindle for Mac is the perfect companion application for customers who own a Kindle or Kindle DX," said Jay Marine, director, Amazon Kindle. "For those customers around the world who don't yet have a Kindle, Kindle for Mac is a great way to instantly access and read the most popular new releases as well as their old favorites."
Kindle for Mac features Amazon's Whispersync technology that automatically saves and synchronizes bookmarks and last page read across devices. This way, customers reading Kindle books on a Kindle, Kindle DX, or one of the free Kindle applications, can always have their reading with them and never lose their place.
Among the features of the new Mac application are:
Purchase, download, and read hundreds of thousands of books available in the Kindle Store
Access their library of previously purchased Kindle books stored on Amazon's servers for free
Choose from 10 different font sizes and adjust words per line
Add and automatically synchronize bookmarks and last page read
View notes and highlights marked on Kindle, Kindle DX, and Kindle for iPhone
Read books in full color including children's books, cookbooks, travel books and textbooks
Amazon said it plans to add several features to the Kindle for Mac app in the near future, including full text search and the ability to create and edit notes and highlights.
Released as a free beta application for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and higher, the software allows Mac users to purchase and download from Amazon's growing catalog of over 450,000 eBooks without the need to purchase its $259 Kindle 2 or larger $489 Kindle DX hardware. With the release, Amazon notes that Kindle books can now be read on many of the world's most popular digital devices, including the iPhone, iPod touch, BlackBerry, Windows PC, Mac, and soon the iPad.
"Kindle for Mac is the perfect companion application for customers who own a Kindle or Kindle DX," said Jay Marine, director, Amazon Kindle. "For those customers around the world who don't yet have a Kindle, Kindle for Mac is a great way to instantly access and read the most popular new releases as well as their old favorites."
Kindle for Mac features Amazon's Whispersync technology that automatically saves and synchronizes bookmarks and last page read across devices. This way, customers reading Kindle books on a Kindle, Kindle DX, or one of the free Kindle applications, can always have their reading with them and never lose their place.
Among the features of the new Mac application are:
Purchase, download, and read hundreds of thousands of books available in the Kindle Store
Access their library of previously purchased Kindle books stored on Amazon's servers for free
Choose from 10 different font sizes and adjust words per line
Add and automatically synchronize bookmarks and last page read
View notes and highlights marked on Kindle, Kindle DX, and Kindle for iPhone
Read books in full color including children's books, cookbooks, travel books and textbooks
Amazon said it plans to add several features to the Kindle for Mac app in the near future, including full text search and the ability to create and edit notes and highlights.
Comments
With Apple's eBook-capable iPad looming ominously in the face Amazon's fledgeling electronic book business, the online bookseller on Thursday released a new application for Mac users as part of its ongoing bid to promote its proprietary Kindle platform and prevent defection of its existing user base to a emerging array of alternatives, etc., etc.
Too little, too late!
Is this US-only? Pls note the internet is available in other territories now.
I suppose only in the US
With Apple's eBook-capable iPad looming ominously in the face Amazon's fledgeling electronic book business, the online bookseller on Thursday released a new application for Mac users as part of its ongoing bid to promote its proprietary Kindle platform and prevent defection of its existing user base to a emerging array of alternatives.
"Amazon's fledgling eBook business???"
Seriously, who writes this crap?
Amazon is THE EBOOK STORE. What about it is "fledgling?"
-Clive
Intel only. Jeepers, even the Nook e-reader can run on PPC-- so can Stanza and Tofu. This is just pathetic.
I was so excited that I could this App for my PowerBook because reading on the iPhone does get a little stale eventually. I was also hoping to put this on my Parents (Late 80s) G5 so they could look at some of the old classics they read in their youth without trying to get some of these out of print books from the Library. But the shock of it all to see the not allowed image across the App when I went to install it, boy was I bummed. Let's hope they reconsider and make it PPC compatible as well as letting it use the great text recognition software of OS X to allow the book to be read to those elderly who are vision impaired. I do love it on my iPhone and even use it to read some of those old classics to Mom when out visiting so PLEASE Amazon consider that market who cannot afford your Kindle or to upgrade their old computer.
"Amazon's fledgling eBook business???"
Seriously, who writes this crap?
Amazon is THE EBOOK STORE. What about it is "fledgling?"
-Clive
We need to nip this one in the bud. Kill Amazon dead!
2. The prices are 2X too expensive.
3. I'm convinced digital book files should be "FAR" cheaper than paper books. Because they are so quick and simple to get and cheap to produce, they should be cheap and instant. Even if publishers made half the money they do on them people would buy a lot more, and they'd end up making even more money than they do currently.
The idea of digital books being priced next to the same price a real books is a joke. DId I say it was a joke. Pricing books in this way is only going to encourage stealing of digital books. These publishers literally have no clue.
And that goes for iBooks too.
We need to nip this one in the bud. Kill Amazon dead!
Hear, hear. Say no to competition.............?
1. The Store should be in the app.
2. The prices are 2X too expensive.
3. I'm convinced digital book files should be "FAR" cheaper than paper books. Because they are so quick and simple to get and cheap to produce, they should be cheap and instant. Even if publishers made half the money they do on them people would buy a lot more, and they'd end up making even more money than they do currently.
The idea of digital books being priced next to the same price a real books is a joke. DId I say it was a joke. Pricing books in this way is only going to encourage stealing of digital books. These publishers literally have no clue.
And that goes for iBooks too.
+1 on #3.
Released as a free beta application for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard and higher, the software allows Mac users to purchase and download from Amazon's growing catalog of over 450,000 eBooks without the need to purchase its $259 Kindle 2 or larger $489 Kindle DX hardware. With the release, Amazon notes that Kindle books can now be read on many of the world's most popular digital devices, including the iPhone, iPod touch, BlackBerry, Windows PC, Mac, and soon the iPad.
YEA BABY YEA!!
Explains why the prices for e-books have suddenly gone up.
Before, the Kindle model was, buy the expensive hardware and get cheap content.
Now Apple, Amazon and publishers have gotten together to set a new model, to free content from hardware and allow it on any device, but it costs more.
So Apple will be doing the same thing, allowing the iBookStore and it's content to run on Mac's and most likely PC's too to keep Microsoft out.
My predictions are Apple is most likely going to make the e-book content more eye candy-ish to capture the upper end of the market and Amazon is going to take the rest of the bare bones market who are happy with just text on a page for a lower price.
By the way, if your deciding to buy a hard copy of a book or anything else. Check out FindersCheapers and enter the full product code.
If your looking for REAL textbooks (like the one's used in college courses) in e-book form, check out CourseSmart. One can rent textbooks at a fraction of the selling price and can read less than 20% and get a refund if one doesn't like it.
Is this US-only? Pls note the internet is available in other territories now.
Please note that UK licensing issues are not the same as US licensing issues. But you knew that.
One store hasn't gotten in done for me.
So I welcome any all for my Mac, iPod touch and my iPad.
If that could be backed up with hard evidence, it would be a pretty strong case. However, the common thinking about e-books fixates on how "easy" is to produce them, ergo it should be as cheap as possible. But this almost always ignores the complexities of how the publishing industry works*: just how "cheap" is an author, his agent, his publisher, the book designer, the graphic artist, etc., willing to sell a product and not make some money off it? While I understand the sentiment, I've not heard of an author who is willing to sell his work at a cutthroat price with the expectation this will lead to more booksales. If that author is wildly successful with that tactic, one could amost guarantee his follow-up will *not* be so cheap.
(*And I don't know how this industry works either, but I would venture to guess there's more involved in creating an e-book than doing a "Save as...." option.)
I'm convinced digital book files should be "FAR" cheaper than paper books. Because they are so quick and simple to get and cheap to produce, they should be cheap and instant
While I would also like books to be much, much cheaper, that's almost certainly not going to happen. At the volumes we're talking about, the marginal cost of making a book is negligible. Yes, they have to be shipped and stored and all that, and that costs money, but it costs far, far less money than you're probably thinking.
Publishing isn't the kind of business where people are getting stinkin' rich. There are authors out there who make a very nice living, yes, but they're the ones who sell hundreds of millions of books over decades. Generally speaking, publishing is a pretty thin-margin business.
Even if publishers made half the money they do on them people would buy a lot more, and they'd end up making even more money than they do currently.
It's nice to say that, but it doesn't add up. First of all, the reading devices are so obscure as to be basically non-existent. Second, there are considerable costs associated with producing a digital version of a book anyway, because the tools for doing so suck compared to what are highly evolved computerized book-publishing tools. Finally, nobody knows yet just what the impact of shrinkage would be on a large digital book market. The impact of shrinkage on the retail actual-book market is understood; books disappear from warehouses and book stores and all that. But nobody knows yet whether digital book piracy will be two percent of gross sales, or twenty percent, or what. It's a big unknown.
The idea of digital books being priced next to the same price a real books is a joke.
No, the idea of digital books being priced the same as real books is entirely consistent with the fact that what you're buying is the words, not the atoms.
Pricing books in this way is only going to encourage stealing of digital books.
You know what? This really pisses me off. Sorry, I don't mean to be rude, but this whole "Your product costs more than I think is appropriate so I am going to steal it" attitude is bullshit. If something costs more than you want to pay, don't buy it. Buy something else instead, or just don't spend that money at all. That's how the system is supposed to work. If people refuse to buy something on a huge scale because of price, the price will either come down, or that product will disappear from the market. That's how market forces work. If you just go out and steal the product, the company that makes it has no incentive to lower the pricing. You're just contributing to their shrinkage, and increasing their cost of doing business.
People who think "It's too much money, I'll just steal it" aren't just morally bankrupt. They're also completely wrong-headed.
Sure you can argue that your saving money on printing and distribution. But the print costs on 2 million books is actually less per book than the print costs for 1 million books. So while the over all bill is less each book costs more.
In a world where there are no printed books and only ebooks, then you could see significant cost reductions. But honestly maintaining a dual system (both print and digital) is, in the beginning, going to be more expensive than doing one or the other. More people are involved in creating the finished product and marketing it.
People who argue against eBooks being cheaper or either a blind idiot fanboy, a publisher or a fool.
Right. Cause nobody who disagrees with you could possibly be a reasonable human being, or have a legitimate point. That's just impossible.