They are far smaller than that. Here is the breakdown for the 10 textbooks on iBookstore:
929 MB
934 MB
970 MB
1.11 GB
1.22 GB
1.26 GB
1.50 GB
2.31 GB
2.35 GB
2.79 GB
Why are these books so big? I have several 1000+ page medical textbook PDFs that are chock full of images and well under 75MB. Granted, they don't have "interactive features", but are interactive features really the main selling point of a digital textbook?
The convenience of carrying a single iPad instead of several 5+lbs books and the ability to search the full text for every occurrence of a word/topic within a book without resorting to thumbing through the index were what made it worthwhile for me.
I admittedly tend to be conservative with regard to technology and education. I don't think that the vast majority of high school textbooks need any sort of interactive feature. The student's initial job is to attempt to learn the material through reading and creative thinking, and the teacher's job should be to help clarify difficult concepts. In my experience, the largest obstacle to learning is not the inability of the teacher to clarify difficult concepts, but lack of student interest or initiative to attempt to learn any of the material through self-study. Interactive features, in most cases, distract from the methodical sort of study crucial to elementary and secondary school curriculum. If spending money on technology was the answer to declining grades and content mastery, then the internet and broad computer access at home should have led to tremendous advances in both...but it hasn't.
Why are these books so big? I have several 1000+ page medical textbook PDFs that are chock full of images and well under 75MB. Granted, they don't have "interactive features", but are interactive features really the main selling point of a digital textbook?
The convenience of carrying a single iPad instead of several 5+lbs books and the ability to search the full text for every occurrence of a word/topic within a book without resorting to thumbing through the index were what made it worthwhile for me.
I admittedly tend to be conservative with regard to technology and education. I don't think that the vast majority of high school textbooks need any sort of interactive feature. The student's initial job is to attempt to learn the material through reading and creative thinking, and the teacher's job should be to help clarify difficult concepts. In my experience, the largest obstacle to learning is not the inability of the teacher to clarify difficult concepts, but lack of student interest or initiative to attempt to learn any of the material through self-study. Interactive features, in most cases, distract from the methodical sort of study crucial to elementary and secondary school curriculum. If spending money on technology was the answer to declining grades and content mastery, then the internet and broad computer access at home should have led to tremendous advances in both...but it hasn't.
Formatting, interactive features, and quality of images and videos. I suspect that a proper medical textbook for a college level course will be much larger than the sizes for the current HS textbooks listed above.
...The Kindle Fire selling units is not an issue for Apple if it means that to compete they would lose profit. That's a fool's errand.
....
How do you know they would loose money on a $299 iPad? iSupply tear downs suggest that isn't the case. Obviously they wouldn't make as much profit but a $299 might sell a lot of units and new users might upgrade to the latest and greatest version down the road.
How do you know they would loose money on a $299 iPad? iSupply tear downs suggest that isn't the case. Obviously they wouldn't make as much profit but a $299 might sell a lot of units and new users might upgrade to the latest and greatest version down the road.
Note that iSupply only includes the materials costs. To that, you have to add:
- Labor
- Manufacturing overhead
- Quality costs
- Rework costs
- Warranty costs
- Sales and marketing costs
- Administrative overhead
- Packaging costs
- Shipping costs
- Licensing costs
And lots more.
And Apple isn't interested in selling their hardware at break even.
How do you know they would loose money on a $299 iPad? iSupply tear downs suggest that isn't the case. Obviously they wouldn't make as much profit but a $299 might sell a lot of units and new users might upgrade to the latest and greatest version down the road.
Q: Johnny has 10 Apples to sell. He sells them at $3 each with a profit of $2 per Apple. How much profit does Johnny make?
A: $20
Q: Johnny has 10 Apples to sell. He sells them at $2 each with a profit of $1 per Apple. How much profit does Johnny make?
A: $10
Q: Johnny will sell all 10 Apples at either price. Which price is better for Johnny's bottom line?
I don't see this as an issue. It's clearly not the most effective or efficient method but it is only version 1 and I can't see too many scenarios where many of the same images and/or videos would be reused multiple times in the same book to the point that it significantly increases the size. Still, this is something I would expect to be including at some point.
Well perhaps not a video. That is just an example of gross inefficiency but we do have chapter header graphic and subtopic header graphics that repeat on almost every single page. Same background image over and over.
Well perhaps not a video. That is just an example of gross inefficiency but we do have chapter header graphic and subtopic header graphics that repeat on almost every single page. Same background image over and over.
What are the sizes for these images and how many pages are in your book. Better yet, what is the added book size for this inefficiency?
PS: The biggest issue I see for iBooks/iBooks Author right now is that 1) you have to test it on an iPad which means keeping it connected, and 2) You can't read iBooks on the Mac. Both of these limitations seem odd to me.
Hey I'm fine with that but that is not how Apple designed it. It is even worse than you might imagine. If you include an image or video on one page and then repeat the same image or video on another page iBooks includes it twice instead of reusing the same object.
Sure, but you don't know how Apple processes it after you upload it. Maybe they strip out the duplicate copy. Or maybe they will in the future.
What I was suggesting is what Apple might do in the future. I don't think it caches stuff now--it just downloads everything, as you say.
What is an iBook? It's just a text file with a bunch of videos, pictures, audio, and code. What does that sound like? A web page. So how do web pages handle this (or even iApps)? They download the text first, then the images, then download the video and audio only as users access it.
iBooks could use the same model. It could be a little smarter--say, download the video for the current chapter into a cache, and purge the cache 30 days after it's last accessed.
Think outside the box.
Good response. I still think there will be a storage problem at some point fairly soon after digital textbooks gets going. Perhaps anobit will play a role. Maybe we'll get to add storage to the device someday and it will be able to manage the different cards along with the web where available. I often wonder what rural areas will be able to do. Wonder when the glass pipes are ready for delivery from sea to shining sea?
Well perhaps not a video. That is just an example of gross inefficiency but we do have chapter header graphic and subtopic header graphics that repeat on almost every single page. Same background image over and over.
I hope you will report this to Apple so they can fix it. Most animation software has the concept of a numbered 'instance' of an object which are just references to the original object/image, instead of multiple copies of the actual image repeated over and over. To save space in the file.
For the life of me I can't fathom why you are so against digital textbooks. i'm not sure if you are just overwhelmed in thinking that every worst case scenario you have imagined will be included from day one (we are well past day, BTW) or you are just grasping at straws with your argument. If what you say is true about textbooks on the iPad then why are half of the full textbooks under 1.5GB? They could have 1080p video but they didn't because they didn't have it and/or deemed it wasn't needed.
Wow! Somewhere between what I wanted to convey and what you extracted from my post there is a HUGE disconnect.
I am not at all against eTextbooks. In fact, I have been a major proponent at our local school district to adopt tablets and eTextbooks. I love the idea of eTextbooks and tablets.
What I am trying to get across is the reality of the way that schools are and have been implementing eTextbooks and tablets. Also, I am trying to convey how the teachers that I know are planning on implementing self-made eTextbooks.
And from what I have seen done and being discussed the 16GB iPad is a bare minimum in local storage that is acceptable and has invariably led to sacrifices in their implementation. Thus, many new proposals that I have heard about have been for 32GBs of storage based on current school's usage and projected future eTextbook features.
You have to keep in mind that most schools plan on a four or five year life for the tablets that they purchase. This means that they cannot simply look at what is out now, but try to predict what is likely to exist in the next four to five years.
Given the high likelihood that the iPad will implement a retina display in their iPad within the next handful of years then it is also highly likely that eTextbooks will take advantage of the increased resolution to include higher definition video and graphics, will in turn lead to larger sized eTextbooks.
This is not meant as a point against eTextbooks, this is simply to inform about what I have been a part of and privy to regarding many local school's usage or plans for tablets and eTextbooks. And as part of that knowledge I see the 16GB lower end of local storage as becoming a version that will not be acceptable as an educational version of tablet due to its amount of local storage.
On a related note, no school considers cloud storage as an acceptable substitute for local storage as there are some students who do not have access to the internet at their homes. If a school moves to a digital version of their educational material than they have to insure that all students have access to their materials, which is not achievable when relying on an internet connection.
With Apple expected to introduce its third-generation iPad next week, a survey of consumers not planning to buy an iPad shows that 20 percent would change their minds and buy an iPad 2 if Apple continues to sell last year's model for $100 less.
...
Among those who indicated they were not planning to buy an iPad 2 in the next 90 days, 20 percent indicated they would be "likely" to buy Apple's second-generation tablet if it were sold for $399 and up.
What were they asked?
If it was $100 less or if it was $399 and up?
I know it means the same but how a question worded will definitely change the outcome.
Also, 20% of those people will actually purchase and iPad 3.
PS: The biggest issue I see for iBooks/iBooks Author right now is that 1) you have to test it on an iPad which means keeping it connected, and 2) You can't read iBooks on the Mac. Both of these limitations seem odd to me.
Yeah, I have never been able to figure out why Apple doesn't allow for reading their iBooks on a Mac. Heck, they need to make it so that users can read their iBooks on a Window's computer. Think about how poorly the iPod would have done if users couldn't listen to their music on their computer, especially Window's computers.
I accept jragosta's reasoning but I think your example above misses the point.
Apple should be striving for a Windows type market share in tablets. That means choking competitors like the Kindle in their infancy.
1) The Kindle Fire loses money on every sale. Have you seen Amazon's profits? Have you seen their revenue? Have you seen their P/E? The only area that Apple needs to be concerned with in regards to Amazon is eBooks.
2) If Apple wanted "Windows type market share" in anything they would have licensed their OSes a lot time ago. Fortunately for Apple and those that are invested with them they don't want marketshare at the expense of profit. Note that Apple, with around 5% PC market share is by far the most profitable PC maker in the world.
3) You don't cook your magic beans with the goose that lays the golden eggs. (Still working on the phrasing).
1) The Kindle Fire loses money on every sale. Have you seen Amazon's profits? Have you seen their revenue? Have you seen their P/E? The only area that Apple needs to be concerned with in regards to Amazon is eBooks.
2) If Apple wanted "Windows type market share" in anything they would have licensed their OSes a lot time ago. Fortunately for Apple and those that are invested with them they don't want marketshare at the expense of profit. Note that Apple, with around 5% PC market share is by far the most profitable PC maker in the world.
3) You don't cook your magic beans with the goose that lays the golden eggs. (Still working on the phrasing).
1) Yes I understand that Amazon looses money on every Kindle they sell. And I have seen their profits, (oddly Amazon has a higher P/E, not sure why) ect .... But Apple should sell a lower cost iPad to try to blunt any momentum the Kindle is gaining. Perhaps a $299 isn't possible but a sub $500 iPad 2 certainly is possible that can still be profitable. Remember that Amazon does not have the same cost structure and economy of scale in manufacturing that Apple enjoys.
2) I don't accept that Apple can't get a Windows type market share all on their own. I think Apple are uniquely positioned to be capable of achieving this but will have to address the low end of the tablet market to some degree while still maintaining some profitability. Yes Apple are very profitable and have engineered a remarkable turn around over the last decade. But some of that is related to missteps on MS's part. If they hadn't had some tremendous mis-streps Apple might very well be a niche player struggling to scratch out an existence.
1) Yes I understand that Amazon looses money on every Kindle they sell. And I have seen their profits, (oddly Amazon has a higher P/E, not sure why) ect .... But Apple should sell a lower cost iPad to try to blunt any momentum the Kindle is gaining. Perhaps a $299 isn't possible but a sub $500 iPad 2 certainly is possible that can still be profitable. Remember that Amazon does not have the same cost structure and economy of scale in manufacturing that Apple enjoys.
Dropping to $399 ($100 off last year's model makes sense and is in line with their previous pricing). What doesn't make sense is a $200 drop because a 7" eReader with some multimedia functions with 8GB storage that has worse HW in every way or lacks the HW completely is being sold by Amazon.
Quote:
2) I don't accept that Apple can't get a Windows type market share all on their own. I think Apple are uniquely positioned to be capable of achieving this but will have to address the low end of the tablet market to some degree while still maintaining some profitability. Yes Apple are very profitable and have engineered a remarkable turn around over the last decade. But some of that is related to missteps on MS's part. If they hadn't had some tremendous mis-streps Apple might very well be a niche player struggling to scratch out an existence.
You should accept it. Apple never once had a 95% marketshare with the iPod so expecting that a HW marker can achieve such a goal without an indication of how this would be possible except to suggest that Apple should make less profit is not a good business model.
Comments
They are far smaller than that. Here is the breakdown for the 10 textbooks on iBookstore:
Why are these books so big? I have several 1000+ page medical textbook PDFs that are chock full of images and well under 75MB. Granted, they don't have "interactive features", but are interactive features really the main selling point of a digital textbook?
The convenience of carrying a single iPad instead of several 5+lbs books and the ability to search the full text for every occurrence of a word/topic within a book without resorting to thumbing through the index were what made it worthwhile for me.
I admittedly tend to be conservative with regard to technology and education. I don't think that the vast majority of high school textbooks need any sort of interactive feature. The student's initial job is to attempt to learn the material through reading and creative thinking, and the teacher's job should be to help clarify difficult concepts. In my experience, the largest obstacle to learning is not the inability of the teacher to clarify difficult concepts, but lack of student interest or initiative to attempt to learn any of the material through self-study. Interactive features, in most cases, distract from the methodical sort of study crucial to elementary and secondary school curriculum. If spending money on technology was the answer to declining grades and content mastery, then the internet and broad computer access at home should have led to tremendous advances in both...but it hasn't.
Why are these books so big? I have several 1000+ page medical textbook PDFs that are chock full of images and well under 75MB. Granted, they don't have "interactive features", but are interactive features really the main selling point of a digital textbook?
The convenience of carrying a single iPad instead of several 5+lbs books and the ability to search the full text for every occurrence of a word/topic within a book without resorting to thumbing through the index were what made it worthwhile for me.
I admittedly tend to be conservative with regard to technology and education. I don't think that the vast majority of high school textbooks need any sort of interactive feature. The student's initial job is to attempt to learn the material through reading and creative thinking, and the teacher's job should be to help clarify difficult concepts. In my experience, the largest obstacle to learning is not the inability of the teacher to clarify difficult concepts, but lack of student interest or initiative to attempt to learn any of the material through self-study. Interactive features, in most cases, distract from the methodical sort of study crucial to elementary and secondary school curriculum. If spending money on technology was the answer to declining grades and content mastery, then the internet and broad computer access at home should have led to tremendous advances in both...but it hasn't.
Formatting, interactive features, and quality of images and videos. I suspect that a proper medical textbook for a college level course will be much larger than the sizes for the current HS textbooks listed above.
...The Kindle Fire selling units is not an issue for Apple if it means that to compete they would lose profit. That's a fool's errand.
....
How do you know they would loose money on a $299 iPad? iSupply tear downs suggest that isn't the case. Obviously they wouldn't make as much profit but a $299 might sell a lot of units and new users might upgrade to the latest and greatest version down the road.
How do you know they would loose money on a $299 iPad? iSupply tear downs suggest that isn't the case. Obviously they wouldn't make as much profit but a $299 might sell a lot of units and new users might upgrade to the latest and greatest version down the road.
Note that iSupply only includes the materials costs. To that, you have to add:
- Labor
- Manufacturing overhead
- Quality costs
- Rework costs
- Warranty costs
- Sales and marketing costs
- Administrative overhead
- Packaging costs
- Shipping costs
- Licensing costs
And lots more.
And Apple isn't interested in selling their hardware at break even.
How do you know they would loose money on a $299 iPad? iSupply tear downs suggest that isn't the case. Obviously they wouldn't make as much profit but a $299 might sell a lot of units and new users might upgrade to the latest and greatest version down the road.
Q: Johnny has 10 Apples to sell. He sells them at $3 each with a profit of $2 per Apple. How much profit does Johnny make?
A: $20
Q: Johnny has 10 Apples to sell. He sells them at $2 each with a profit of $1 per Apple. How much profit does Johnny make?
A: $10
Q: Johnny will sell all 10 Apples at either price. Which price is better for Johnny's bottom line?
A: ???
I don't see this as an issue. It's clearly not the most effective or efficient method but it is only version 1 and I can't see too many scenarios where many of the same images and/or videos would be reused multiple times in the same book to the point that it significantly increases the size. Still, this is something I would expect to be including at some point.
Well perhaps not a video. That is just an example of gross inefficiency but we do have chapter header graphic and subtopic header graphics that repeat on almost every single page. Same background image over and over.
Well perhaps not a video. That is just an example of gross inefficiency but we do have chapter header graphic and subtopic header graphics that repeat on almost every single page. Same background image over and over.
What are the sizes for these images and how many pages are in your book. Better yet, what is the added book size for this inefficiency?
PS: The biggest issue I see for iBooks/iBooks Author right now is that 1) you have to test it on an iPad which means keeping it connected, and 2) You can't read iBooks on the Mac. Both of these limitations seem odd to me.
Hey I'm fine with that but that is not how Apple designed it. It is even worse than you might imagine. If you include an image or video on one page and then repeat the same image or video on another page iBooks includes it twice instead of reusing the same object.
Sure, but you don't know how Apple processes it after you upload it. Maybe they strip out the duplicate copy. Or maybe they will in the future.
What I was suggesting is what Apple might do in the future. I don't think it caches stuff now--it just downloads everything, as you say.
What is an iBook? It's just a text file with a bunch of videos, pictures, audio, and code. What does that sound like? A web page. So how do web pages handle this (or even iApps)? They download the text first, then the images, then download the video and audio only as users access it.
iBooks could use the same model. It could be a little smarter--say, download the video for the current chapter into a cache, and purge the cache 30 days after it's last accessed.
Think outside the box.
Good response. I still think there will be a storage problem at some point fairly soon after digital textbooks gets going. Perhaps anobit will play a role. Maybe we'll get to add storage to the device someday and it will be able to manage the different cards along with the web where available. I often wonder what rural areas will be able to do. Wonder when the glass pipes are ready for delivery from sea to shining sea?
... except they're doing exactly that for the last 2 generations of the iPhone.
So how can you say that?
Ok I was thinking Macs I guess ... my bad.
Thanks. I like to make serious points in an entertaining manner.
The exclusive 'little' club was the funny part ... exclusive maybe ... but little?
Well perhaps not a video. That is just an example of gross inefficiency but we do have chapter header graphic and subtopic header graphics that repeat on almost every single page. Same background image over and over.
I hope you will report this to Apple so they can fix it. Most animation software has the concept of a numbered 'instance' of an object which are just references to the original object/image, instead of multiple copies of the actual image repeated over and over. To save space in the file.
For the life of me I can't fathom why you are so against digital textbooks. i'm not sure if you are just overwhelmed in thinking that every worst case scenario you have imagined will be included from day one (we are well past day, BTW) or you are just grasping at straws with your argument. If what you say is true about textbooks on the iPad then why are half of the full textbooks under 1.5GB? They could have 1080p video but they didn't because they didn't have it and/or deemed it wasn't needed.
Wow! Somewhere between what I wanted to convey and what you extracted from my post there is a HUGE disconnect.
I am not at all against eTextbooks. In fact, I have been a major proponent at our local school district to adopt tablets and eTextbooks. I love the idea of eTextbooks and tablets.
What I am trying to get across is the reality of the way that schools are and have been implementing eTextbooks and tablets. Also, I am trying to convey how the teachers that I know are planning on implementing self-made eTextbooks.
And from what I have seen done and being discussed the 16GB iPad is a bare minimum in local storage that is acceptable and has invariably led to sacrifices in their implementation. Thus, many new proposals that I have heard about have been for 32GBs of storage based on current school's usage and projected future eTextbook features.
You have to keep in mind that most schools plan on a four or five year life for the tablets that they purchase. This means that they cannot simply look at what is out now, but try to predict what is likely to exist in the next four to five years.
Given the high likelihood that the iPad will implement a retina display in their iPad within the next handful of years then it is also highly likely that eTextbooks will take advantage of the increased resolution to include higher definition video and graphics, will in turn lead to larger sized eTextbooks.
This is not meant as a point against eTextbooks, this is simply to inform about what I have been a part of and privy to regarding many local school's usage or plans for tablets and eTextbooks. And as part of that knowledge I see the 16GB lower end of local storage as becoming a version that will not be acceptable as an educational version of tablet due to its amount of local storage.
On a related note, no school considers cloud storage as an acceptable substitute for local storage as there are some students who do not have access to the internet at their homes. If a school moves to a digital version of their educational material than they have to insure that all students have access to their materials, which is not achievable when relying on an internet connection.
With Apple expected to introduce its third-generation iPad next week, a survey of consumers not planning to buy an iPad shows that 20 percent would change their minds and buy an iPad 2 if Apple continues to sell last year's model for $100 less.
...
Among those who indicated they were not planning to buy an iPad 2 in the next 90 days, 20 percent indicated they would be "likely" to buy Apple's second-generation tablet if it were sold for $399 and up.
What were they asked?
If it was $100 less or if it was $399 and up?
I know it means the same but how a question worded will definitely change the outcome.
Also, 20% of those people will actually purchase and iPad 3.
PS: The biggest issue I see for iBooks/iBooks Author right now is that 1) you have to test it on an iPad which means keeping it connected, and 2) You can't read iBooks on the Mac. Both of these limitations seem odd to me.
Yeah, I have never been able to figure out why Apple doesn't allow for reading their iBooks on a Mac. Heck, they need to make it so that users can read their iBooks on a Window's computer. Think about how poorly the iPod would have done if users couldn't listen to their music on their computer, especially Window's computers.
Note that iSupply only includes the materials costs. To that, you have to add:
- Labor
- Manufacturing overhead
- Quality costs
- Rework costs
- Warranty costs
- Sales and marketing costs
- Administrative overhead
- Packaging costs
- Shipping costs
- Licensing costs
....
OK. That makes sense. Fair enough.
Q: Johnny has 10 Apples to sell. He sells them at $3 each with a profit of $2 per Apple. How much profit does Johnny make?
A: $20
Q: Johnny has 10 Apples to sell. He sells them at $2 each with a profit of $1 per Apple. How much profit does Johnny make?
A: $10
Q: Johnny will sell all 10 Apples at either price. Which price is better for Johnny's bottom line?
A: ???
I accept jragosta's reasoning but I think your example above misses the point.
Apple should be striving for a Windows type market share in tablets. That means choking competitors like the Kindle in their infancy.
I accept jragosta's reasoning but I think your example above misses the point.
Apple should be striving for a Windows type market share in tablets. That means choking competitors like the Kindle in their infancy.
1) The Kindle Fire loses money on every sale. Have you seen Amazon's profits? Have you seen their revenue? Have you seen their P/E? The only area that Apple needs to be concerned with in regards to Amazon is eBooks.
2) If Apple wanted "Windows type market share" in anything they would have licensed their OSes a lot time ago. Fortunately for Apple and those that are invested with them they don't want marketshare at the expense of profit. Note that Apple, with around 5% PC market share is by far the most profitable PC maker in the world.
3) You don't cook your magic beans with the goose that lays the golden eggs. (Still working on the phrasing).
1) The Kindle Fire loses money on every sale. Have you seen Amazon's profits? Have you seen their revenue? Have you seen their P/E? The only area that Apple needs to be concerned with in regards to Amazon is eBooks.
2) If Apple wanted "Windows type market share" in anything they would have licensed their OSes a lot time ago. Fortunately for Apple and those that are invested with them they don't want marketshare at the expense of profit. Note that Apple, with around 5% PC market share is by far the most profitable PC maker in the world.
3) You don't cook your magic beans with the goose that lays the golden eggs. (Still working on the phrasing).
1) Yes I understand that Amazon looses money on every Kindle they sell. And I have seen their profits, (oddly Amazon has a higher P/E, not sure why) ect .... But Apple should sell a lower cost iPad to try to blunt any momentum the Kindle is gaining. Perhaps a $299 isn't possible but a sub $500 iPad 2 certainly is possible that can still be profitable. Remember that Amazon does not have the same cost structure and economy of scale in manufacturing that Apple enjoys.
2) I don't accept that Apple can't get a Windows type market share all on their own. I think Apple are uniquely positioned to be capable of achieving this but will have to address the low end of the tablet market to some degree while still maintaining some profitability. Yes Apple are very profitable and have engineered a remarkable turn around over the last decade. But some of that is related to missteps on MS's part. If they hadn't had some tremendous mis-streps Apple might very well be a niche player struggling to scratch out an existence.
1) Yes I understand that Amazon looses money on every Kindle they sell. And I have seen their profits, (oddly Amazon has a higher P/E, not sure why) ect .... But Apple should sell a lower cost iPad to try to blunt any momentum the Kindle is gaining. Perhaps a $299 isn't possible but a sub $500 iPad 2 certainly is possible that can still be profitable. Remember that Amazon does not have the same cost structure and economy of scale in manufacturing that Apple enjoys.
Dropping to $399 ($100 off last year's model makes sense and is in line with their previous pricing). What doesn't make sense is a $200 drop because a 7" eReader with some multimedia functions with 8GB storage that has worse HW in every way or lacks the HW completely is being sold by Amazon.
2) I don't accept that Apple can't get a Windows type market share all on their own. I think Apple are uniquely positioned to be capable of achieving this but will have to address the low end of the tablet market to some degree while still maintaining some profitability. Yes Apple are very profitable and have engineered a remarkable turn around over the last decade. But some of that is related to missteps on MS's part. If they hadn't had some tremendous mis-streps Apple might very well be a niche player struggling to scratch out an existence.
You should accept it. Apple never once had a 95% marketshare with the iPod so expecting that a HW marker can achieve such a goal without an indication of how this would be possible except to suggest that Apple should make less profit is not a good business model.