Apart from media playback, and nice colors, I can't see what advantage this would have over an eBook, and therefore why it would be even near a succes.
Referencing the success of the the iPod, I would say that negotiated content and an ergonomic synergy of software and hardware would be the success factors Apple might bring to the product.
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.
"so much control"? I think you mean "too" much, don't you? As nothing has been ceded at all at this point.
As for Apple and people's balls; can you provide an example? As far as I know, people/companies are making money off of Apple, hand-over-fist.
The quote below is from the almost daily e-mails I get from The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. Nevertheless, he does often have some real news, though he still puts it in an odd way.
It does show why the Kindle will fail for textbooks (among other things).
Quote:
College kids: Kindle blows
Posted: 29 Sep 2009 02:27 PM PDT
Students and faculty at Princeton find the Kindle "disappointing and difficult to use." My God we are so going to destroy that poor ugly piece of plastic crap.
The really astounding thing is that Princeton gave the Kindles out free -- and the kids still friggin hate them. Money quote:
?I hate to sound like a Luddite, but this technology is a poor excuse of an academic tool,? said Aaron Horvath ?10, a student in Civil Society and Public Policy. ?It?s clunky, slow and a real pain to operate.?
Once again, it's all about design -- and not in the sense of making a pretty object (though let's face it, on that front, Kindle fails big time) but in the sense of creating technology that vanishes, so that the user doesn't have any sense of encountering technology at all and instead just experiences the magic and wonder of being able to do something effortlessly, intuitively.
Remember that old line from Alan Turing about how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic? Kindle never came close to that. My prediction: If you own a Kindle, get ready to put it down in that shelf in the basement that you jokingly refer to as "the museum," where you keep your old Kaypro computer and your TRS-80. Tell yourself that maybe that Kindle will be worth money someday. Or at least it will be a great conversation piece with your grandkids -- the device that came along first but got wiped out by Apple.
I would buy it. I have loads of old paperbacks that I would like to buy digital copies so I can search for certain passages I remember. Then I could give the physical books to charity, and when I move house I wouldn't have to cart them around each time.
Does that mean you will or won't buy one of these things, or that you haven't decided?
What are you talking about? We need to see the thing first before we sell our children and decide how much of a revolution it actually is. If this thing runs iPhone OS I won't buy it.
Here in Australia, today, our largest national classifieds newspaper "The Trading Post" sent me an email saying they are stopping physical print resorting to online only. However part of their email I find most interesting. Emphasis mine.
"?will help you continue to reach the right buyers at the right time whoever they are and on whatever device they are using, PC, laptop, phone and whatever else is next."
I got this today... And thought tablet whilst reading it.
I really don't think that this implies knowledge of anything Apple related. What it reflects is agressive competition from Internet sources. Craigs List is a perfect example in the US.
In the future I can see electronic subscriptions only working for a few type of newspapers and Magazine publications. Things like swapsheets, autotraders and other classifieds really don't work well as weekly or monthly publications in the modern net enabled world. The need is for more dynamic forms of trading.
The end of traditional print media is inevitable. I would be most interested in digital subscriptions to my favorite newspapers and magazines.
The end of large-scale traditional newspaper and magazine production and delivery may be at hand, but print will still be with us in many specialized forms for centuries to come.
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.
Instead of e-textbook 'sales', they should reposition them as rentals, since the DRM'ed format prevents one from reselling the information. Just rent your book for part of your school year, then the book disappears after the rental period.
It will also be hard for Apple to have better readability than my Kindle 2 e-ink. I love that device. If apple could get that problem under control so we all don't go blind by the age of 30, they may have something.
I wouldn't be worried too much right now if I were Amazon but I think I would be on alert.
Both Amazon and Google are well positioned to take advantage of whatever developments come in the e-book/magazine arena.
What are you talking about? We need to see the thing first before we sell our children and decide how much of a revolution it actually is. If this thing runs iPhone OS I won't buy it.
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.
I completely agree.
Since the device will already have the brains to play video, it would be a small step to allow for other things as well. The e-book aspect will be just one of several features.
The iTunes store will be what makes it a huge success.
Nice as MS's Courier looks, it wont have the iTunes store, so it wont be able to compete.
Instead of e-textbook 'sales', they should reposition them as rentals, since the DRM'ed format prevents one from reselling the information. Just rent your book for part of your school year, then the book disappears after the rental period.
They can call it what they want, but rentals, or subscriptions, are what they are.
Actually, this is one area where a subscription service would work best.
After all, students normally follow a course of study for some time. This requires related courses, as well as some electives etc.
A student could work out their course of study perhaps a term or semester at a time so as to get all the books, or parts thereof, to complete that course of study.
In doing so, they could get a large discount from individual prices.
If they could lock in 50 % to 75% of their study materials over a four year period, while having an additional number of books to select from for additional, and not known until the last minute courses (like getting desert at the end of a meal) they could get an even better price.
This seems more logical to me than getting, and paying for one book at a time.
Likely the college bookstore would do this rather than a publisher directly, as no one publisher has all the books required for a course of study, even if they specialize. But it may eventually lead to a consolidation of the textbook industry as companies try to do just that, supply an entire course load of study materials.
Really I think this is just irrational, just because it will run an OS derived from iPhone doesn't imply anything about it's final capabilities. On top of that I've yet to see anybody explain to me how one would get Mac OS/X software to work usefully on a tablet. If the screen is a Touch input device Apple doesn't have any options other than iPhone OS.
The fact is the tablet will need a reason for it's existance beyound running a desktop OS because history here is starkly clear. Running a desktop user interface on a tablet has always been a huge failure. The reason is pretty clear too, you can't input data 8 hours a day on them. For that matter 15 minutes at a time is a joke.
The fact is apps need to be refactored for use on a tablet. Going to a new API forces that. Fresh apps are guarranteed with iPhone s as the programming API.
It is notable I'm talking about APIs here. Underneath iPhone OS still runs the same basic kernel. IPhone OS is extremely capable even with the acknowledged limitations in the recent distributions. We don't know though how those limitations will reveal themselves in an iPhone release on a tablet. I would imagine though the limitation on multitasking would go away in some way. Multitasking would be a huge improvement and is just one limitation that a more powerful tablet could enable.
The key here is that we don't know what Apples goals are here at all. They could just throw 256Meg of ram in the thing to barely get by doing movies and magazines. This to keep the tablet dirt cheap. Apple could deliver a serverly constrained tablet for under $400 to meet the needs of this target use. Now I'd rather see 2GB of RAM, physical interfaces to the world, advanced GPU and display tech, dual CPUs and a host of other goodies. That won't be a $400 dollar machine though. Either way the only rational OS is something derived from iPhone OS.
Comments
The end of traditional print media is inevitable. I would be most interested in digital subscriptions to my favorite newspapers and magazines.
Magazines especially.
I had a long response but safari on iPhone crashed on me.
Dave
Apart from media playback, and nice colors, I can't see what advantage this would have over an eBook, and therefore why it would be even near a succes.
Referencing the success of the the iPod, I would say that negotiated content and an ergonomic synergy of software and hardware would be the success factors Apple might bring to the product.
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.
"so much control"? I think you mean "too" much, don't you? As nothing has been ceded at all at this point.
As for Apple and people's balls; can you provide an example? As far as I know, people/companies are making money off of Apple, hand-over-fist.
You are the one who has been pouring the Kool-aid for years now.
I pour, but I don't drink
I pour, but I don't drink
Does that mean you will or won't buy one of these things, or that you haven't decided?
The quote below is from the almost daily e-mails I get from The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs. Nevertheless, he does often have some real news, though he still puts it in an odd way.
It does show why the Kindle will fail for textbooks (among other things).
College kids: Kindle blows
Posted: 29 Sep 2009 02:27 PM PDT
Students and faculty at Princeton find the Kindle "disappointing and difficult to use." My God we are so going to destroy that poor ugly piece of plastic crap.
The really astounding thing is that Princeton gave the Kindles out free -- and the kids still friggin hate them. Money quote:
?I hate to sound like a Luddite, but this technology is a poor excuse of an academic tool,? said Aaron Horvath ?10, a student in Civil Society and Public Policy. ?It?s clunky, slow and a real pain to operate.?
Once again, it's all about design -- and not in the sense of making a pretty object (though let's face it, on that front, Kindle fails big time) but in the sense of creating technology that vanishes, so that the user doesn't have any sense of encountering technology at all and instead just experiences the magic and wonder of being able to do something effortlessly, intuitively.
Remember that old line from Alan Turing about how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic? Kindle never came close to that. My prediction: If you own a Kindle, get ready to put it down in that shelf in the basement that you jokingly refer to as "the museum," where you keep your old Kaypro computer and your TRS-80. Tell yourself that maybe that Kindle will be worth money someday. Or at least it will be a great conversation piece with your grandkids -- the device that came along first but got wiped out by Apple.
Does that mean you will or won't buy one of these things, or that you haven't decided?
What are you talking about? We need to see the thing first before we sell our children and decide how much of a revolution it actually is. If this thing runs iPhone OS I won't buy it.
Here in Australia, today, our largest national classifieds newspaper "The Trading Post" sent me an email saying they are stopping physical print resorting to online only. However part of their email I find most interesting. Emphasis mine.
"?will help you continue to reach the right buyers at the right time whoever they are and on whatever device they are using, PC, laptop, phone and whatever else is next."
I got this today... And thought tablet whilst reading it.
I really don't think that this implies knowledge of anything Apple related. What it reflects is agressive competition from Internet sources. Craigs List is a perfect example in the US.
In the future I can see electronic subscriptions only working for a few type of newspapers and Magazine publications. Things like swapsheets, autotraders and other classifieds really don't work well as weekly or monthly publications in the modern net enabled world. The need is for more dynamic forms of trading.
Dave
The end of traditional print media is inevitable. I would be most interested in digital subscriptions to my favorite newspapers and magazines.
The end of large-scale traditional newspaper and magazine production and delivery may be at hand, but print will still be with us in many specialized forms for centuries to come.
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.
Instead of e-textbook 'sales', they should reposition them as rentals, since the DRM'ed format prevents one from reselling the information. Just rent your book for part of your school year, then the book disappears after the rental period.
Should be a business opportunity in there, scanning and cleaning up existing texts and adding hyperlinks and active media - anyone interested?
Google beat you to it.
No more stinky perfumey mags!!!!
Artificial digital scent generators will follow soon after... they got you covered.
We all need to take a step back and put down the kool-aid for a moment.
B..b..but isn't this what you've been wanting for years?
I agree with you.
It will also be hard for Apple to have better readability than my Kindle 2 e-ink. I love that device. If apple could get that problem under control so we all don't go blind by the age of 30, they may have something.
I wouldn't be worried too much right now if I were Amazon but I think I would be on alert.
Both Amazon and Google are well positioned to take advantage of whatever developments come in the e-book/magazine arena.
What are you talking about? We need to see the thing first before we sell our children and decide how much of a revolution it actually is. If this thing runs iPhone OS I won't buy it.
You answered the question. You won't buy it.
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.
I completely agree.
Since the device will already have the brains to play video, it would be a small step to allow for other things as well. The e-book aspect will be just one of several features.
The iTunes store will be what makes it a huge success.
Nice as MS's Courier looks, it wont have the iTunes store, so it wont be able to compete.
You do realize you can contact your magazine provider and request to receive ones without the perfume?
I don't have a magazine provider.... I encounter magazines....
Instead of e-textbook 'sales', they should reposition them as rentals, since the DRM'ed format prevents one from reselling the information. Just rent your book for part of your school year, then the book disappears after the rental period.
They can call it what they want, but rentals, or subscriptions, are what they are.
Actually, this is one area where a subscription service would work best.
After all, students normally follow a course of study for some time. This requires related courses, as well as some electives etc.
A student could work out their course of study perhaps a term or semester at a time so as to get all the books, or parts thereof, to complete that course of study.
In doing so, they could get a large discount from individual prices.
If they could lock in 50 % to 75% of their study materials over a four year period, while having an additional number of books to select from for additional, and not known until the last minute courses (like getting desert at the end of a meal) they could get an even better price.
This seems more logical to me than getting, and paying for one book at a time.
Likely the college bookstore would do this rather than a publisher directly, as no one publisher has all the books required for a course of study, even if they specialize. But it may eventually lead to a consolidation of the textbook industry as companies try to do just that, supply an entire course load of study materials.
It makes sense to do it this way.
.... If this thing runs iPhone OS I won't buy it.
Really I think this is just irrational, just because it will run an OS derived from iPhone doesn't imply anything about it's final capabilities. On top of that I've yet to see anybody explain to me how one would get Mac OS/X software to work usefully on a tablet. If the screen is a Touch input device Apple doesn't have any options other than iPhone OS.
The fact is the tablet will need a reason for it's existance beyound running a desktop OS because history here is starkly clear. Running a desktop user interface on a tablet has always been a huge failure. The reason is pretty clear too, you can't input data 8 hours a day on them. For that matter 15 minutes at a time is a joke.
The fact is apps need to be refactored for use on a tablet. Going to a new API forces that. Fresh apps are guarranteed with iPhone s as the programming API.
It is notable I'm talking about APIs here. Underneath iPhone OS still runs the same basic kernel. IPhone OS is extremely capable even with the acknowledged limitations in the recent distributions. We don't know though how those limitations will reveal themselves in an iPhone release on a tablet. I would imagine though the limitation on multitasking would go away in some way. Multitasking would be a huge improvement and is just one limitation that a more powerful tablet could enable.
The key here is that we don't know what Apples goals are here at all. They could just throw 256Meg of ram in the thing to barely get by doing movies and magazines. This to keep the tablet dirt cheap. Apple could deliver a serverly constrained tablet for under $400 to meet the needs of this target use. Now I'd rather see 2GB of RAM, physical interfaces to the world, advanced GPU and display tech, dual CPUs and a host of other goodies. That won't be a $400 dollar machine though. Either way the only rational OS is something derived from iPhone OS.
Dave