There’s confirmation on the name from Jobs himself…
Jan 27
It’s called the iPad.
Jan 26
Is the Apple Tablet coming Wednesday, or the Messiah?
Talk about living up to your hype. The Apple Tablet (pad, slate, take your pick) certainly has a high bar waiting for it. After months and months of rumor, the ‘rumors’ have it that we’ll finally meet the device January 27th. For some reason, I suppose it’s iPhone’s amazing capabilities and growing ubiquity, everyone is predicting drastic change once Apple’s rumored Tablet takes center stage. We’ve even got the Los Angeles Times suggesting the Tablet’s impact on top of the ongoing eBook Revolution “will be a seismic change in the literary culture.”
Read the Times opinion piece here. It’s a fascinating if predictable read. Almost, one could suggest, a well-ordered reiteration of everything the Internet has been saying about eBooks and the devices that read them for the last year, or so.
Tomorrow’s the big day.
Jan 25
Streamline the Reading Process – Online and Off…
Kevin Purdy at Lifehacker.com offers us the “Top 10 Tools For Better Reading, Online And Off.” An enjoyable and interesting Monday read as we all count down to the Apple Tablet launch January 27.
(I’m not endorsing the Tablet, I’m just curious. We’ve all been waiting so long for the device, yah?
Jan 24
As we approach Apple Nirvana
Thanks again to Jorgen who dropped off this link to an excellent article at the Telegraph shaped around the notion that the rumored release of Apple’s Tablet on January 27 may be a way to end the onslaught of new hand-held devices and replace “our heaps of disorderly electronic debris with a single, all-purpose device, to use not only in the home, but at work, school and on the move.”
We’ll certainly have to see it before we believe it. And a price point of $900 keeps it out of the practical range for the average family, at least as it fits the eBook Revolution. Reading has been around too long and the behaviors surrounding it are too entrenched to be predictably co-opted into the future-world of phones, videos and email with the simple wave of a wand (or tablet or market study).
It will be up to that venerable reading culture to decide what devices it needs and prefers, yah?
Jan 23
Amazon is up to something. Allowing DRM-free eBooks for Kindle.
Many thanks to Jorgen for a link to this gem at the Nieman Journalism Lab. Apparently Amazon has given the go ahead for some authors to publish eBooks for Kindle without digital rights management (DRM). DRM controls how consumers use the eBooks they purchase: how they read them and on what.
The changes in Amazon’s Digital Text Platform were noticed by Kindle publishers around Jan. 15th.
Very interesting development. More preparation for the arrival of Apple’s Tablet?
Jan 22
Publishing Piracy Cabal Revealed!
This is so well written I’m just going to pass the link along. For your enjoyment read Go To Hellman: Offline Book “Lending” Costs U.S. Publishers Nearly $1 Trillion.
Jan 21
Amazon exhibiting Apple-phobia?
In a move that many will see as an attempt by Amazon to keep its market-share of eBook sales while soothing tensions between itself and the authors and publishers it ‘serves,’ the Internet eBook giant is going to offer them a bigger piece of the action. June 30 will see authors’ and publishers’ percentage (royalty, share) of a book’s price sold through Amazon bumped up to 70 percent (exclusive of delivery costs). See the full story here at ChannelWeb.
Isn’t that nice–oh wait, here’s the fine print. (Why can’t they just be nice?)Â The new percentage only applies to discounted books ranging in price from $2.99 to $9.99. Additionally the book must be listed at least 20 percent below “the lowest listed price for the physical book.” So, the deal has strings attached.
Apparently authors generally received a royalty of 7 – 15 percent on ‘actual’ books and 25 percent on eBooks. So this story only sounds fantastic until you read the fine print. Then it sounds like more manipulation by a jaded corporate giant–justification for the ill will that has long permeated the pre-digital publishing world. With that thinking, they deserve what Apple’s Tablet is going to give them, yah?
Jan 20
Newsstand in your Hand
Many thanks to Jorgen for a link this story at the TimesOnline about the future of digital publishing as it relates to the next generation of eReaders revealed by tech companies at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. Even though the first generation of early adopters are patiently waiting for their grayscale Kindles, Nooks, COOL-ERs and Sony Readers to arrive in the mail, the CES suggested that the future of digital publishing will be a large-display, colorful affair.
This evolution seems unavoidable when looking at machines like the twin-screened Entourage Edge that offers facing color LCD and grayscale E Ink displays. The future of Que and the Skiff will be a horse of a different color too as magazines make the transition to digital and demand the depth and detail of full color display. Apple’s ‘Tablet’ will have something to say about this too.
Hard to predict outcomes when you’re launching a new technology that will affect culture and behavior, especially when it impacts something as intimate and personal as the act of reading. I still believe the consumers will have the final say, and there’ll be room for both color and grayscale devices, yah?
Jan 19
Apple’s Being Coy, but this must be the Tablet!
CNN has a story here about Apple inviting the press to see ‘our latest creation’ at an event planned for January 27 in San Francisco, California.
After a year of online rumors and claims about Apple’s legendary beast, the cocky devils neglected to use the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as their launch site, choosing instead to watch their competition show their wares. (And hands… HP’s Slate was there in all its glory…)
What else could it be? It’s time for the Tablet, yah?
Good Reads
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