It appears that people are assuming this is all this device is going to do. I am highly doubtful that Apple would release a product that was 'just' an eBook / print media tablet. I could see this as a huge selling point and a way for Apple to set up some recurring subscription based revenue or "subs", but it isn't like it isn't going to surf the web, play games, have other apps available for it.
As a student, I was one that kept all of my books (and still have them). If the McGraw-Hills of the world put a "time limit" on usage of their digital education content, how am I (or you) going to keep those for reference. Bad bad idea from my perspective.
Perhaps they'll be a choice of hard/soft copy for textbooks.
In any case, textbooks are not usually the ideal reference source - online is usually better, as well as dedicated reference texts...
But (newspapers and magazines) won't exist anymore, anymore than albums really exist these days. Prepackaged media is not where things are headed. It's a-la-carte where the consumers will choose for themselves what items get auto downloaded each day as they come.
You make a good point, and I agree that I only read a small portion of magazine or newspaper articles and have no need for the whole 'package'.
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If the rules for cable services were to change to a-la-carte, do you think people would stay with these companies' packages? They need a new business model or they're toast within 5 years.
But just as I was paying for the whole newspaper and reading the quarter that interests me, someone else was paying for the whole paper and reading a different quarter. If we had both JUST received the quarter we wanted, we would have needed to pay the same amount as we paid for the whole paper, in order for all the people involved to get paid.
Do you think people would stay with cable companies' packages if a-la-carte cost the same or more?
(a better example is ACTUAL restaurants how many a-la-carte restaurants are cheaper than smorgasbords? And yet, you don't eat ALL the foods offered in the smorgasbord, so by some logic a-la-carte should be cheaper right? )
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If I were them, I'd be very interested in what Apple's talking about. Whether or not Apple's defining or just understands where the market is headed is academic at this point.
This "package" system works out very cheap for someone who uses the whole package, whereas someone who doesn't read much (or watches very little TV) will do better with a-la-carte.
I wonder if we even need a newspaper.... do we need just writers from a paper or does the paper itself perform a useful 'filtering' function? Could an iApp just aggregate articles from multiple newspapers? (I'm playing with NewsOne+ on iPhone) I guess I'd like an aggregator to actually filter the quality articles from the rest... if I was paying for articles perhaps I'd pay for a filtering app (like a newspaper editor?) which found the good stuff.
1) have virtually no cost to make [most books are sent as PDFs to printers for printing]
You're not paying for the physical media - the largest portion of the purchase price of a book goes to pay for the research put into the book itself. You're paying for the content - which is why the electronic version is not "signficantly" cheaper than the printed verision.
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2) usually expire, and 3) have no resale value.
I actually don't have much of a problem with "expiring" textbooks, if that mean that the cost to access the reference decreased proportionately.
Lack of resale value is a good point - and if there is no resale, then publishers stand to make more money from selling more copies of the same title. Currently, students can choose to purchase an older textbook at a discount and have slightly outdated information; however, current DRM schemes don't allow for such a transaction or transfer in ownership. DRM certainly _could_ support resale, but it's not in either the publisher or content distributor's interest to do so (unless they get a chunk of the cash).
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For instance, I recently took a class. The e-text was $80 and the traditional text was $100. why would I pay $80 for an e-text book, when I could buy the new book at a $100? With the hundred dollar book, I can generally sell it for 40 to 60 percent of it's value when I am done whereas with the e-text you cannot.
I fear if these books catch on, budget conscious students will have no choice but to buy the much more costlier e-texts.
I am probably an anomaly but I have both the Kindle 2 and the Kindle iPhone App. When the content is available on both (i.e. books not subscriptions), I tend to prefer the iPhone app. Perhaps it's because I am often reading in places with poor lighting or poorly placed lamps, etc.
I also like the idea of more interactive media using text, video, music, etc in new ways.
There are already a number of magazines that publish rich electronic versions...
..sounds nice, but outside, sunlit viewing is going to be a killer. I don't see how Apple is going to overcome the display being impossible to read in bright ambient light...
- Jasen.
If the display can be made with LED illumination that is as bright as today's MBPs it would be fine. Something I love about my LED backlit display is the ease of viewing in even strong sunlight.
Text books are so expensive because publishers have to pay rather obscene amounts to the authors to get them to write something. My advisor once received $5K for writing a 30 page book chapter... the book itself was about 10 chapters long and cost $130. Textbooks are even worse, but publishers know they'll sell more so they lower the price a bit. ...
I was in the University textbook business for a few years and while this is accurate, you are twisting things a bit to make it seem like the publishers have no choice or that they aren't at fault. The publishers are at fault for the high prices of most textbooks, especially the large expensive "standard" texts that are sold in the highest volume and for hundreds of dollars a piece.
The truth is that the majority of textbook content is knowledge that is un-copyrightable, and in a sense "open source." When the time comes to write the latest copy of "Biology" or "Chemistry" the publishers could simply go to public open sources but they don't. What happens is "Professor A" happens to be friends with "Publisher B", or "Publisher B" actively pursues "Professor A" because he/she has a certain level of notoriety in the field. "Professor A" then writes the latest "Biology" textbook (with a lot of help from the publishers ghost writers), and "Publisher B" adds as many colour illustrations and new diagrams as possible. This is done even if the diagrams are essentially the same as last years edition, they are re-drawn and changed ever so slightly (because the information itself hasn't changed of course), and this makes the "New Edition."
"Professor A's" notoriety then comes into play. He/she of course is going to use the textbook in their classes and is going to convince most of their University to do so also. All the Biology professors are friends of course. At various conventions and meet-ups over the next couple of years, the McGraw-Hill version of "Biology" dukes it out with the "Prentice-Hall" edition (or whatever), with the professors themselves advocating for one text use over another. The professors get kick-backs in terms of royalties on sales, (one reason why these textbooks often have multiple authors), and advocate the hell out of using their book as their paycheque varies directly with the adoption it gets. The professors also get a giant ego boost (being the author of the "standard" textbook on whatever), even though it's fleeting, and they get more kickbacks and perks in the sense of "materials" for class teaching like (thousands and thousands of dollars worth of), special slides and multimedia materials created especially for them as add-ons to the text which literally no one can buy due to the cost. This is kind of like a free smoking jacket, pipe, and plaque kind of deal.
Of course the dirty secret is that all the editions contain the same information and unlike in the old days when a text gained notoriety based on it's intrinsic worth, these texts are popular (or not) based on the illustrations, the marketing, the current "fame" of the writer, and the amount of money one publisher is able to spend over any other. The students pay enormous amounts of money for their texts, to support this wonderful capitalist system even though all the information in "Biology" or "Chemistry" is actually freely available, standard information somewhere. The publishers will do anything to keep people from noticing this fact, parading their new editions each year, (with new pictures!) as if something has changed when in fact they are selling you fins on a cadillac.
The new tablet, could either make this system even worse, or (if iTunes allowed public open source texts), could break it into pieces. Should be both interesting and "transformative" as they say.
I would assume that in the case of textbooks a student would need the ability to print from the book. If so, just print a copy for yourself if you are so inclined to keep a copy indefinitly for reference.
Text books are so expensive because publishers have to pay rather obscene amounts to the authors to get them to write something. My advisor once received $5K for writing a 30 page book chapter... the book itself was about 10 chapters long and cost $130. Textbooks are even worse, but publishers know they'll sell more so they lower the price a bit. Ideally most professors would prepare their own class notes and distribute them for free like I had some of my undergrad and graduate professors do.
$5K/chapter hardly seems like an obscene amount. For the 10 chapter book you referenced, that's $5OK total. That's peanuts to what Dan Brown gets as an advance for churning out pulp. The reason that (college) text books are expensive is that they have relatively limited sales, and relatively high production costs.
If I were these companies, I'd be careful to cede so much control to one company, especially when your industry is failing. If this "Apple product" succeeds so much that it has no viable competition, then Apple can hold you by the balls.
I don't agree. They can easily re-work their content for any other devices that come out. If they want to go digital, they should go with whatever gives them the opportunity to do so in a way that preserves their original concepts, and even adds to it.
Why would this be worse than going with the Kindle, or Sony? Or for that matter the iPhone or Touch? It wouldn't. After all, I was reading books in Palm's format on my Palm phones for 9 years.
This depends on other manufacturers as well. If they insist on using B/W e-ink, which isn't very good overall, then their products will fall way behind. Despite what those companies say, and the few people who have bought them. Most people don't want to read using dark grey letters on a light grey background. They want full color.
And also, the Kindle and others are one trick ponies. What else can they do other to maybe play music?
Apple's tablet will have to do more than play media though. If it will be priced where we all think it will be, it's got to be a computer as well, a GPS, and everything else the Touch is, and more.
If it's not, and it's big, people won't want to carry it around with them all the time. The carrying around all the time is what makes the iPhone/Touch so powerful. It's what makes them ubiquitous.
If someone looks at a device and thinks that they don't want to bother carrying it with them that time, eventually, they will carry it less and less. That's death.
This has to be so compelling that people will look beyond the inconvenience of carrying something they wouldn't otherwise.
If Apple isn't perfect with this, other manufacturers will either step in after a while, or the entire category will be seen as impossible.
Someone must put their foot in the water, and Apple seems to be the one.
ePaper is great...I like the readability and long battery life. Kindle lacks the interactivity option (you can't put notes into your text, which is important "feature" of plain paper and marker or pencil) and is too attached to Amazon's content (I'd like to be able to view my own PDF files, plus webpages).
It would be great to have a tablet as complimentary device to iPhone (connected through bluetooth), all the "brain" would be in the iPhone, tablet would serve as extra screen estate for iPhone..but I doubt this is going to happen.
I found the kindle to be more annoying than anything else. I don't like the screen at all. At best, I would rate readability as fair. The only time I found it to be good was in sunlight. But the truth is that most reading doesn't take place in sunlight.
It's too limiting, and a color version is a while off, and will cost a fair amount more. Where is the value?
I think that devices like this are in between products. They are intended to gain hype for digital reading, but aren't expected to last as a product type, at least not by Amazon. Sony, who doesn't sell books for a "living" as Amazon does, will want to sell the device itself, but neither has done well here.
It's interesting that just like Palm and Sprint, neither Amazon nor Sony will say how many they've actually sold, leaving it to supporting writers to come up with estimates.
That usually means that sales haven't lived up to the hype, or otherwise the numbers would be paraded out.
Look at all the controversy about sales of Apple's Tv. Numbers have never been released, and so assumptions are that sales haven't been good.
If I'm not mistaken the (print) Magazine Industry by and large is very much a shadow of its former self and Amazon with it's Kindle isn't doing anything meaningful to change the bleak future they face.
Can Steve do better?
Yes! Steve is a showman like no other (Perhaps P.T. Barnum would have given Steve a run for his money), anyway a showman in every sense of the word. Watching him live on stage is an experience you have to have for yourself. Once you do you'll understand, he has what some of us old timers call an RDF. Reality distortion field, he can get you truly excited over fairly mundane features and something mildly unique will have you wide-eyed and amazed.
The main question I have is this:
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Q: Is the magazine market still worth pursuing or has that form of media been totally replaced by the up to the second information available on the net?
How many of you computer geeks still subscribe to monthly (or bi-weekly if they still exist) magazines? I'm not wrong in thinking many of you have long since given up on most if not all of them. I think I'm seeing this in such a bleak way because my background IS computers and lets face it the value we once got from a monthly magazine is gone. We get our information a million times faster and in more detail then the magazines ever provided us.
I'd imagine most 'hobby' type magazines subscribers are feeling the same way or will eventually because just about every hobby is covered in much more detail via the web then you could ever dream of doing in a print publication. Perhaps other magazine sectors are in better shape, but I still have my doubts.
But again if anyone could save what I see as a sinking ship it's Steve.
Textbooks... yes this could clearly be something to work with. You have a CAPTIVE client base and if done right, everyone has a chance to win... Well everyone EXCEPT for the paper companies, printing companies, warehouse storage, shipping industry and privately owned campus bookstores.
Steve could sell this concept PURLY on the 'BE GREEN' aspects.
Yea I can see they keynote presentation now...
X MILLION college text books sold each year with average page count of Y = TWO HUDRED ZILLION TREES cut down PER DAY! (numbers yea but remember I'm STEVE).
The CO2 used in the printing and trucking: a JILLION METIC TONS!
The pains of carrying X number of books on a daily basis unmeasurable!
All for texts that are OFTEN inaccurate and/or out of date before they even hit the store shelves.
Yea he'd certainly have fun with that, it would be an easy sell.
Sure sounds like some fun times ahead.
Dave
P.S. Also for any old timers... Do you happen to remember the iBrary rumors, perhaps there was a connection after all.
Students should be very leery of this type of service catching on. First, from what I have seen so far, e-textbooks don't cost significantly less, which is strange since they 1) have virtually no cost to make [most books are sent as PDFs to printers for printing], 2) usually expire, and 3) have no resale value.
For instance, I recently took a class. The e-text was $80 and the traditional text was $100. why would I pay $80 for an e-text book, when I could buy the new book at a $100? With the hundred dollar book, I can generally sell it for 40 to 60 percent of it's value when I am done whereas with the e-text you cannot.
I fear if these books catch on, budget conscious students will have no choice but to buy the much more costlier e-texts.
It's very likely that if Apple did this, they would get the cost of the book down much further, the same way they did with music. Before Apple convinced music companies to sell songs for 99 cents, they were selling online for between $2.50 and $3.75, with much stricter DRM.
So far, publishers have had no reason to want to lower prices much. Sales are very small, and brick and mortar stores, and even Amazon and other online booksellers have wanted to keep those prices high so as not to take their business away.
Remember the problems Apple had with movie sales, with both WalMart and Target not wanting the movie companies to allow Apple to sell movies for less than they sold DVD's?
Once digital sales move up, they have less influence. Only Apple, with its almost guaranteed sales base can force the issue.
Text books are so expensive because publishers have to pay rather obscene amounts to the authors to get them to write something. My advisor once received $5K for writing a 30 page book chapter... the book itself was about 10 chapters long and cost $130. Textbooks are even worse, but publishers know they'll sell more so they lower the price a bit. Ideally most professors would prepare their own class notes and distribute them for free like I had some of my undergrad and graduate professors do.
As for the tablet. I can't see Steve ever putting it out as an e-reader. That would be way too uni-purpose. The iPhone is a hit because it's more multi-purpose than any other phone out there. I could see this being sold with e-new/magazine subscriptions as a feature, but not as the focus.
That's not the problem. In fact, paying $5,000 for a chapter is peanuts.
The problem is that not very many textbooks of one edition are sold. At most they are sold in the thousands a year, with most sales being for used editions, where the publisher gets nothing. Printing large textbooks is expensive, as is shipping etc.
I know someone who has been asked to write a new textbook to replace the old one used in universities around the world for photography BFA's. He expects a nice income from it, but not enough to retire on.
finding out that apple with the iTunes distribution is another cash cow for apple growth
NO ONE has this like apple it allows many possibilities
colleges, all schools could deploy this, maybe that's why apple is changing its licensing for schools
why HUGE, look at the untapped potential.
single device to hold all your textbooks, the server (server farm) keeps copies so even if your unit crashes you can download another just like the app store does.
right now i must deal with back pain for my daughter because of the weight of her book bag
but books just like LP's, cd's are a waste of resources, time and energy
publishers are looking hard at this and learning from the mistakes of the music industry looking to embrace this as a huge revenue stream for them as well and the only product/ company that can deliver with the tried and true system is APPLE
wow, many are kicking themselves for not seeing the integration potential of smart phones and tablets,app store . this is where the tablets should have been. the iphone interface is the key
WOW WOW WOW
sign me up and my children, schools will go gaga for an easy update, lower cost book option
Totally agree with the point that it will need to be a multi-featured device to be successful. Apple will certainly not produce a dedicated device like a Kindle. I think this is a smoke screen / fake rumor leak.
Apple Tablet, if it exists, should fill a niche somewhere between the MacBook and the Touch. Question remains, will the OS be closer to OS X or closer to iPhone OS. I really think people want it to save and edit files. Personally I don't need another device in between my MBP and my iPhone, but for people who have neither something in the middle might appeal to them.
For instance, I recently took a class. The e-text was $80 and the traditional text was $100. why would I pay $80 for an e-text book, when I could buy the new book at a $100? With the hundred dollar book, I can generally sell it for 40 to 60 percent of it's value when I am done whereas with the e-text you cannot.
Because
- you can carry ALL of your books with you (even ones from earlier classes related to the ones you are taking now - you never know when you might need to look something up from a prior class) and have it all weigh less than a pound.
- you can search the content
- you presumably can do other things you can't do with a printed book (named bookmarks, embed your own content/highlights/underlines that you can erase if needed)
- these note could sync with your computer and your phone
I expect Apple to go beyond simply reproducing printed books. Digital copies should have added value that takes advantage of the fact they are being displayed by a computer. The article hints at some of this.
I do agree that if a book is going to expire - i.e. you are renting it - the price difference for renting should take the resale value of printed text into account. For text books, you need to have a choice of buying vs renting because some text books you want to keep beyond the end of the semester/year.
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As a student, I was one that kept all of my books (and still have them). If the McGraw-Hills of the world put a "time limit" on usage of their digital education content, how am I (or you) going to keep those for reference. Bad bad idea from my perspective.
Perhaps they'll be a choice of hard/soft copy for textbooks.
In any case, textbooks are not usually the ideal reference source - online is usually better, as well as dedicated reference texts...
But (newspapers and magazines) won't exist anymore, anymore than albums really exist these days. Prepackaged media is not where things are headed. It's a-la-carte where the consumers will choose for themselves what items get auto downloaded each day as they come.
You make a good point, and I agree that I only read a small portion of magazine or newspaper articles and have no need for the whole 'package'.
If the rules for cable services were to change to a-la-carte, do you think people would stay with these companies' packages? They need a new business model or they're toast within 5 years.
But just as I was paying for the whole newspaper and reading the quarter that interests me, someone else was paying for the whole paper and reading a different quarter. If we had both JUST received the quarter we wanted, we would have needed to pay the same amount as we paid for the whole paper, in order for all the people involved to get paid.
Do you think people would stay with cable companies' packages if a-la-carte cost the same or more?
(a better example is ACTUAL restaurants
If I were them, I'd be very interested in what Apple's talking about. Whether or not Apple's defining or just understands where the market is headed is academic at this point.
This "package" system works out very cheap for someone who uses the whole package, whereas someone who doesn't read much (or watches very little TV) will do better with a-la-carte.
I wonder if we even need a newspaper.... do we need just writers from a paper or does the paper itself perform a useful 'filtering' function? Could an iApp just aggregate articles from multiple newspapers? (I'm playing with NewsOne+ on iPhone) I guess I'd like an aggregator to actually filter the quality articles from the rest... if I was paying for articles perhaps I'd pay for a filtering app (like a newspaper editor?) which found the good stuff.
1) have virtually no cost to make [most books are sent as PDFs to printers for printing]
You're not paying for the physical media - the largest portion of the purchase price of a book goes to pay for the research put into the book itself. You're paying for the content - which is why the electronic version is not "signficantly" cheaper than the printed verision.
2) usually expire, and 3) have no resale value.
I actually don't have much of a problem with "expiring" textbooks, if that mean that the cost to access the reference decreased proportionately.
Lack of resale value is a good point - and if there is no resale, then publishers stand to make more money from selling more copies of the same title. Currently, students can choose to purchase an older textbook at a discount and have slightly outdated information; however, current DRM schemes don't allow for such a transaction or transfer in ownership. DRM certainly _could_ support resale, but it's not in either the publisher or content distributor's interest to do so (unless they get a chunk of the cash).
For instance, I recently took a class. The e-text was $80 and the traditional text was $100. why would I pay $80 for an e-text book, when I could buy the new book at a $100? With the hundred dollar book, I can generally sell it for 40 to 60 percent of it's value when I am done whereas with the e-text you cannot.
I fear if these books catch on, budget conscious students will have no choice but to buy the much more costlier e-texts.
Agreed.
I also like the idea of more interactive media using text, video, music, etc in new ways.
There are already a number of magazines that publish rich electronic versions...
..sounds nice, but outside, sunlit viewing is going to be a killer. I don't see how Apple is going to overcome the display being impossible to read in bright ambient light...
- Jasen.
If the display can be made with LED illumination that is as bright as today's MBPs it would be fine. Something I love about my LED backlit display is the ease of viewing in even strong sunlight.
Text books are so expensive because publishers have to pay rather obscene amounts to the authors to get them to write something. My advisor once received $5K for writing a 30 page book chapter... the book itself was about 10 chapters long and cost $130. Textbooks are even worse, but publishers know they'll sell more so they lower the price a bit. ...
I was in the University textbook business for a few years and while this is accurate, you are twisting things a bit to make it seem like the publishers have no choice or that they aren't at fault. The publishers are at fault for the high prices of most textbooks, especially the large expensive "standard" texts that are sold in the highest volume and for hundreds of dollars a piece.
The truth is that the majority of textbook content is knowledge that is un-copyrightable, and in a sense "open source." When the time comes to write the latest copy of "Biology" or "Chemistry" the publishers could simply go to public open sources but they don't. What happens is "Professor A" happens to be friends with "Publisher B", or "Publisher B" actively pursues "Professor A" because he/she has a certain level of notoriety in the field. "Professor A" then writes the latest "Biology" textbook (with a lot of help from the publishers ghost writers), and "Publisher B" adds as many colour illustrations and new diagrams as possible. This is done even if the diagrams are essentially the same as last years edition, they are re-drawn and changed ever so slightly (because the information itself hasn't changed of course), and this makes the "New Edition."
"Professor A's" notoriety then comes into play. He/she of course is going to use the textbook in their classes and is going to convince most of their University to do so also. All the Biology professors are friends of course. At various conventions and meet-ups over the next couple of years, the McGraw-Hill version of "Biology" dukes it out with the "Prentice-Hall" edition (or whatever), with the professors themselves advocating for one text use over another. The professors get kick-backs in terms of royalties on sales, (one reason why these textbooks often have multiple authors), and advocate the hell out of using their book as their paycheque varies directly with the adoption it gets. The professors also get a giant ego boost (being the author of the "standard" textbook on whatever), even though it's fleeting, and they get more kickbacks and perks in the sense of "materials" for class teaching like (thousands and thousands of dollars worth of), special slides and multimedia materials created especially for them as add-ons to the text which literally no one can buy due to the cost. This is kind of like a free smoking jacket, pipe, and plaque kind of deal.
Of course the dirty secret is that all the editions contain the same information and unlike in the old days when a text gained notoriety based on it's intrinsic worth, these texts are popular (or not) based on the illustrations, the marketing, the current "fame" of the writer, and the amount of money one publisher is able to spend over any other. The students pay enormous amounts of money for their texts, to support this wonderful capitalist system even though all the information in "Biology" or "Chemistry" is actually freely available, standard information somewhere. The publishers will do anything to keep people from noticing this fact, parading their new editions each year, (with new pictures!) as if something has changed when in fact they are selling you fins on a cadillac.
The new tablet, could either make this system even worse, or (if iTunes allowed public open source texts), could break it into pieces. Should be both interesting and "transformative" as they say.
The end of traditional print media is inevitable. I would be most interested in digital subscriptions to my favorite newspapers and magazines.
Newspaper > hand held. YMMV.
Text books are so expensive because publishers have to pay rather obscene amounts to the authors to get them to write something. My advisor once received $5K for writing a 30 page book chapter... the book itself was about 10 chapters long and cost $130. Textbooks are even worse, but publishers know they'll sell more so they lower the price a bit. Ideally most professors would prepare their own class notes and distribute them for free like I had some of my undergrad and graduate professors do.
$5K/chapter hardly seems like an obscene amount. For the 10 chapter book you referenced, that's $5OK total. That's peanuts to what Dan Brown gets as an advance for churning out pulp. The reason that (college) text books are expensive is that they have relatively limited sales, and relatively high production costs.
If I were these companies, I'd be careful to cede so much control to one company, especially when your industry is failing. If this "Apple product" succeeds so much that it has no viable competition, then Apple can hold you by the balls.
I don't agree. They can easily re-work their content for any other devices that come out. If they want to go digital, they should go with whatever gives them the opportunity to do so in a way that preserves their original concepts, and even adds to it.
Why would this be worse than going with the Kindle, or Sony? Or for that matter the iPhone or Touch? It wouldn't. After all, I was reading books in Palm's format on my Palm phones for 9 years.
This depends on other manufacturers as well. If they insist on using B/W e-ink, which isn't very good overall, then their products will fall way behind. Despite what those companies say, and the few people who have bought them. Most people don't want to read using dark grey letters on a light grey background. They want full color.
And also, the Kindle and others are one trick ponies. What else can they do other to maybe play music?
Apple's tablet will have to do more than play media though. If it will be priced where we all think it will be, it's got to be a computer as well, a GPS, and everything else the Touch is, and more.
If it's not, and it's big, people won't want to carry it around with them all the time. The carrying around all the time is what makes the iPhone/Touch so powerful. It's what makes them ubiquitous.
If someone looks at a device and thinks that they don't want to bother carrying it with them that time, eventually, they will carry it less and less. That's death.
This has to be so compelling that people will look beyond the inconvenience of carrying something they wouldn't otherwise.
If Apple isn't perfect with this, other manufacturers will either step in after a while, or the entire category will be seen as impossible.
Someone must put their foot in the water, and Apple seems to be the one.
ePaper is great...I like the readability and long battery life. Kindle lacks the interactivity option (you can't put notes into your text, which is important "feature" of plain paper and marker or pencil) and is too attached to Amazon's content (I'd like to be able to view my own PDF files, plus webpages).
It would be great to have a tablet as complimentary device to iPhone (connected through bluetooth), all the "brain" would be in the iPhone, tablet would serve as extra screen estate for iPhone..but I doubt this is going to happen.
I found the kindle to be more annoying than anything else. I don't like the screen at all. At best, I would rate readability as fair. The only time I found it to be good was in sunlight. But the truth is that most reading doesn't take place in sunlight.
It's too limiting, and a color version is a while off, and will cost a fair amount more. Where is the value?
I think that devices like this are in between products. They are intended to gain hype for digital reading, but aren't expected to last as a product type, at least not by Amazon. Sony, who doesn't sell books for a "living" as Amazon does, will want to sell the device itself, but neither has done well here.
It's interesting that just like Palm and Sprint, neither Amazon nor Sony will say how many they've actually sold, leaving it to supporting writers to come up with estimates.
That usually means that sales haven't lived up to the hype, or otherwise the numbers would be paraded out.
Look at all the controversy about sales of Apple's Tv. Numbers have never been released, and so assumptions are that sales haven't been good.
Can Steve do better?
Yes! Steve is a showman like no other (Perhaps P.T. Barnum would have given Steve a run for his money), anyway a showman in every sense of the word. Watching him live on stage is an experience you have to have for yourself. Once you do you'll understand, he has what some of us old timers call an RDF. Reality distortion field, he can get you truly excited over fairly mundane features and something mildly unique will have you wide-eyed and amazed.
The main question I have is this:
Q: Is the magazine market still worth pursuing or has that form of media been totally replaced by the up to the second information available on the net?
How many of you computer geeks still subscribe to monthly (or bi-weekly if they still exist) magazines? I'm not wrong in thinking many of you have long since given up on most if not all of them. I think I'm seeing this in such a bleak way because my background IS computers and lets face it the value we once got from a monthly magazine is gone. We get our information a million times faster and in more detail then the magazines ever provided us.
I'd imagine most 'hobby' type magazines subscribers are feeling the same way or will eventually because just about every hobby is covered in much more detail via the web then you could ever dream of doing in a print publication. Perhaps other magazine sectors are in better shape, but I still have my doubts.
But again if anyone could save what I see as a sinking ship it's Steve.
Textbooks... yes this could clearly be something to work with. You have a CAPTIVE client base and if done right, everyone has a chance to win... Well everyone EXCEPT for the paper companies, printing companies, warehouse storage, shipping industry and privately owned campus bookstores.
Steve could sell this concept PURLY on the 'BE GREEN' aspects.
Yea I can see they keynote presentation now...
X MILLION college text books sold each year with average page count of Y = TWO HUDRED ZILLION TREES cut down PER DAY! (numbers yea but remember I'm STEVE).
The CO2 used in the printing and trucking: a JILLION METIC TONS!
The pains of carrying X number of books on a daily basis unmeasurable!
All for texts that are OFTEN inaccurate and/or out of date before they even hit the store shelves.
Yea he'd certainly have fun with that, it would be an easy sell.
Sure sounds like some fun times ahead.
Dave
P.S. Also for any old timers... Do you happen to remember the iBrary rumors, perhaps there was a connection after all.
Students should be very leery of this type of service catching on. First, from what I have seen so far, e-textbooks don't cost significantly less, which is strange since they 1) have virtually no cost to make [most books are sent as PDFs to printers for printing], 2) usually expire, and 3) have no resale value.
For instance, I recently took a class. The e-text was $80 and the traditional text was $100. why would I pay $80 for an e-text book, when I could buy the new book at a $100? With the hundred dollar book, I can generally sell it for 40 to 60 percent of it's value when I am done whereas with the e-text you cannot.
I fear if these books catch on, budget conscious students will have no choice but to buy the much more costlier e-texts.
It's very likely that if Apple did this, they would get the cost of the book down much further, the same way they did with music. Before Apple convinced music companies to sell songs for 99 cents, they were selling online for between $2.50 and $3.75, with much stricter DRM.
So far, publishers have had no reason to want to lower prices much. Sales are very small, and brick and mortar stores, and even Amazon and other online booksellers have wanted to keep those prices high so as not to take their business away.
Remember the problems Apple had with movie sales, with both WalMart and Target not wanting the movie companies to allow Apple to sell movies for less than they sold DVD's?
Once digital sales move up, they have less influence. Only Apple, with its almost guaranteed sales base can force the issue.
Text books are so expensive because publishers have to pay rather obscene amounts to the authors to get them to write something. My advisor once received $5K for writing a 30 page book chapter... the book itself was about 10 chapters long and cost $130. Textbooks are even worse, but publishers know they'll sell more so they lower the price a bit. Ideally most professors would prepare their own class notes and distribute them for free like I had some of my undergrad and graduate professors do.
As for the tablet. I can't see Steve ever putting it out as an e-reader. That would be way too uni-purpose. The iPhone is a hit because it's more multi-purpose than any other phone out there. I could see this being sold with e-new/magazine subscriptions as a feature, but not as the focus.
That's not the problem. In fact, paying $5,000 for a chapter is peanuts.
The problem is that not very many textbooks of one edition are sold. At most they are sold in the thousands a year, with most sales being for used editions, where the publisher gets nothing. Printing large textbooks is expensive, as is shipping etc.
I know someone who has been asked to write a new textbook to replace the old one used in universities around the world for photography BFA's. He expects a nice income from it, but not enough to retire on.
We all need to take a step back and put down the kool-aid for a moment.
You are the one who has been pouring the Kool-aid for years now.
NO ONE has this like apple it allows many possibilities
colleges, all schools could deploy this, maybe that's why apple is changing its licensing for schools
why HUGE, look at the untapped potential.
single device to hold all your textbooks, the server (server farm) keeps copies so even if your unit crashes you can download another just like the app store does.
right now i must deal with back pain for my daughter because of the weight of her book bag
but books just like LP's, cd's are a waste of resources, time and energy
publishers are looking hard at this and learning from the mistakes of the music industry looking to embrace this as a huge revenue stream for them as well and the only product/ company that can deliver with the tried and true system is APPLE
wow, many are kicking themselves for not seeing the integration potential of smart phones and tablets,app store . this is where the tablets should have been. the iphone interface is the key
WOW WOW WOW
sign me up and my children, schools will go gaga for an easy update, lower cost book option
JUST WOW.
Apple Tablet, if it exists, should fill a niche somewhere between the MacBook and the Touch. Question remains, will the OS be closer to OS X or closer to iPhone OS. I really think people want it to save and edit files. Personally I don't need another device in between my MBP and my iPhone, but for people who have neither something in the middle might appeal to them.
Stop the presses!!
That will probably be a key phrase in the advertising campaign.
For instance, I recently took a class. The e-text was $80 and the traditional text was $100. why would I pay $80 for an e-text book, when I could buy the new book at a $100? With the hundred dollar book, I can generally sell it for 40 to 60 percent of it's value when I am done whereas with the e-text you cannot.
Because
- you can carry ALL of your books with you (even ones from earlier classes related to the ones you are taking now - you never know when you might need to look something up from a prior class) and have it all weigh less than a pound.
- you can search the content
- you presumably can do other things you can't do with a printed book (named bookmarks, embed your own content/highlights/underlines that you can erase if needed)
- these note could sync with your computer and your phone
I expect Apple to go beyond simply reproducing printed books. Digital copies should have added value that takes advantage of the fact they are being displayed by a computer. The article hints at some of this.
I do agree that if a book is going to expire - i.e. you are renting it - the price difference for renting should take the resale value of printed text into account. For text books, you need to have a choice of buying vs renting because some text books you want to keep beyond the end of the semester/year.