Quote:
Originally Posted by GeoffC
Until Amazon introduced the kindle, readers were independent of books
|
Uh, no...
Sony LRF was only available on... Sony readers.
And *they* were the first to do eink readers.
They only switched to the Adobe camp *after* Kindle came out.
Before them, Rocketbook and Nuvomedia *also* used proprietary formats.
Ditto the asian readers in between.
When Kindle came out there were no ePub readers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_...riginal_Kindle
ePub itself was only a paper document two months old:
http://www.google.com/search?q=epub+...rlz=1I7ACAW_en
What Amazon did was what Sony was doing. They just did it better.
(shrug)
Competitors compete.
Amazon has their way of competing, the Adobe ADEPT camp has theirs, Apple has theirs.
We choose from the available options, not from a hypothetical Platonian ideal universe. Our choices of commercial ebooks are all tied to one camp or another. None is ideal. Each has strengths, each has weaknesses. (Just try reading an ADEPT ePub on a cellphone. Just try reading an Apple iBook on anything not made by Apple.)
"Is this fair? No.
"Is it unfair? No.
"It simply is." (With apologies to J.M. Straczinski.)
We have choices in life.
Sometimes the choices simply boil down to whining impotently or sucking it in and dealing with it. Pouting serves nobody.
Can't we just get on with the series business of reading and pontificating about it?
