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Originally Posted by EatingPie
Their solution was to revert to the old dead format? Argh. It's like we're back in the "Ha Ha It's a Mac!" '90s. The Mac is (mostly) prime time these days, and even friggin Sony has a Mac app! Not to mention the low-level code (DRM decrypting, for example) should be portable to any platform, especially across Intel. Sheesh.
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Well, it's B&N. Their management, as I have mentioned, is not the brightest bulb on the technical/customer service issues chandelier.
Quote:
Originally Posted by EatingPie
The solution is to strip the thrice-damned ignoble DRM and actually have a working ePUB on the Mac. And at that point, you can totally punt on the (let's face it) totally inadequate Nook App, and use any ePUB renderer. Heck even the Sony Library app is head and shoulders above the minimalist Nook app.
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A measure of how second-class Mac users are is that we don't even have a "Nook" app yet*. It's still the B&N eReader for Mac, and they hide it under "other platforms" on their official "Nook" apps download page.
As for stripping, I get both formats and liberate anything I find interesting enough to transfer.
But it's nice to have a more-or-less working existing app that I can quickly check things upon without having to do so, even using a less-easy-to-work-with format, and also take exportable notes and highlights with. And that works on my old PPC PowerBook as well as my shiny new Intel Mac Mini.
Quote:
Originally Posted by EatingPie
We need a break between hardware and software (you don't by BMG CDs and only play them only on Sony players -- they work for every manufacturer's CD players). So we have ePub which is almost there (damn you Kindle!), but then it's crippled by the two biggest players using different, incompatible DRM formats... for no justifiable reason.
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Hey, no argument here, although I think B&N bought up Fictionwise so they could use the eReader DRM for "free" instead of paying Adobe licensing fees.
And personally, I'd rather have the B&N DRM scheme, which is far less intrusive and more user-trusting (none of this only 6-licensed devices including computers, must register them with central server inconvenience) and easier to deal with than ADE (no need to even try and install Digital Editions under Wine for Linux users, for example; any platform which supports Python will do, even the non-Intel ones) from an end-user point of view, despite B&N's own otherwise technically inadequate contributions to the e-book experience.
Once you've got a B&N-DRM file from anywhere, you can either read it straightaway on any compatible platform/software, no matter how old or new it is and without having to register your umpteen "devices"†, or you can strip it at your leisure using no more than a simple script for which you don't have to install any third-party reader software from which it must detect and derive special decoding keys and optionally have exactly the right version to go with your liberation tools because the vendor's been changing things in a way that blocks them.
Just the name and CC # used to purchase. That's it.
I am disappointed by many things about B&N, but not their excellent annotated B&N Classics line, and not the relatively sensible DRM scheme they purchased from the eReader people, and not their cute stuffed mascot bear.
The rest of it, they really could stand to work on, but they've got those three things right.
* Besides NookStudy, which barely counts because it doesn't support the format officially served to Mac users and only Snow Leopard people can use it, provided they're willing to wait a lo-o-o-ong time for it to load and perform tasks. But it's otherwise a rather nice app and I hope they continue to improve and promote it.
† Incidentally, a little-known-and-touted aspect of the Nook reader/apps is that you can put other people's B&N-DRM files on them by just having them enter the name/CC unlock info once for the first file, after which it stores a hash derived from them which will unlock future files from the same source, and thus you can "lend" to your family and friends beyond the 14-day/one-lend-ever limit of the official lending scheme.
No need to keep all the household's books on the same account and only use that while reading, especially if you want to keep purchases separate.