ZDNET: Apple sabotaging ePub?

[Katsunami]

Being a tool that creates iPad-only stuff isn't the problem here.

Apple says "We can refuse to put your book in our store", "If it's in the store, we can take it out whenever we want" *and* "We are not responsible for any loss you may suffer because of it" *and* tell you at the same time "If you used our program, then you are not allowed to sell it anywhere else"...

If you're all fine with such draconian conditions, then I give up.

Please write a book (or a multimedia application, however you want to call it), using iBook Author. Put it into the Apple store. Create a complete company out of it that provides for your entire income. You would not be the first to do anything like that.

Then see what happens if Apple does not like you anymore for whatever reason.

And don't say it will not happen. Google has been dragged to court, because they merely changed their pageranking algorithm; which caused companies to drop off the first page of the search results, losing most of their revenues.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Apple says "We can refuse to put your book in our store", "If it's in the store, we can take it out whenever we want" *and* "We are not responsible for any loss you may suffer because of it" *and* tell you at the same time "If you used our program, then you are not allowed to sell it anywhere else"...

If you're all fine with such draconian conditions, then I give up.

Please write a book (or a multimedia application, however you want to call it), using iBook Author. Put it into the Apple store. Create a complete company out of it that provides for your entire income. You would not be the first to do anything like that.

Then see what happens if Apple does not like you anymore for whatever reason.

And, again, I agree with all of that.
But the main audience for iBooks Author is firms who would otherwise be creating custom iOS apps to deliver their books instead. So already have exactly those problems. They have already decided they are happy with that deal with the devil. For them, this is a simpler, quicker, cheaper way of creating content, with no additional downsides.
This is not intended to be a general-purpose ebook creation tool.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

So already have exactly those problems.

No, they don't... By writing a small iOS app to display their book, they can port that book very quickly to any other operating system, if need be, by just writing an app for the other OS. That is a trivial matter, if you build the iOS app well. You may actually build the apps anyway, to put your book on as many platforms as possible.

If using iBooks, you're done for if Apple decides to be evil (and that's indeed also true if you go with iOS-only when writing apps for smartphones and tablets), because you can't sell your book anywhere else, and so you will have to create it from scratch in another authoring program, which is not trivial to do.

[heySkippy]

So how long will it be until there's a conversion app that turns the output of this app into something compatible with another similar app where it could be re-exported and become a "clean" file in its own right?

Once something like that exists, would it be a TOS violation to convert the output into another format and sell that?

IMO this is a very minor problem that will sort itself out.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by heySkippy

So how long will it be until there's a conversion app that turns the output of this app into something compatible with another similar app where it could be re-exported and become a "clean" file in its own right?

If you just want to create standard ePub2s with no extras (then why use this?), then there are reports that just renaming the file to .epub allows it to be opened in a Nook.
For flashy multi-media stuff, what similar app?
There are no ePub3 readers to open it in.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

If you just want to create standard ePub2s with no extras (then why use this?), then there are reports that just renaming the file to .epub allows it to be opened in a Nook.
For flashy multi-media stuff, what similar app?
There are no ePub3 readers to open it in.

Yes, that's precisely the point that I was making. Unfortunately, though, we're never going to convince the "Apple are the spawn of Satan" crowd of this.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

The point of iBooks Author is to allow these media-rich books to be produced without having to write custom apps. That is why it exists.
If you want to write a normal book, there is no need to use this tool, just create it in ePub instead.
So for the people it is likely to benefit, they are no more constrained than they were beforehand.
I understand that there are lots of people who wish the tool was intended to do a lot more than that, but it isn't.

Well, people like to use just one tool. So people will start to write ordinary books in iBooks Author also. They will not be aware of the Eula.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

For flashy multi-media stuff, what similar app?

You could use Flash from Adobe to create a rich multimedia app. It will even run on iOS as an app, using the AIR framework. Another way would be to support Microsoft's Silverlight. The best way would be to create an app that can run HTML5, CCS3 and Javascript code, all zipped into a single file. That's the direction the web is moving into.

Oh, wait... Isn't that last option just like EPUB3?

I don't know if Safari already supports HTML5 and CSS3, but I would find it strange if it doesn't have at least preliminary support already. They could re-use part of the Safari engine for the EPUB3 app. They'd be setting a good example, and thereby supporting the standard and committee of which they are a member. They could even tout the fact that they are the first to have a fully compliant EPUB3 reader.

But they just *had* to go and create a new format that is partly EPUB(3) and partly not, and attach some crazy EULA to it.

Originally Posted by HarryT

Yes, that's precisely the point that I was making. Unfortunately, though, we're never going to convince the "Apple are the spawn of Satan" crowd of this.

If the spec is already (partly) there, then flesh that out, and support it. They're in the IPDF, for gods sake. Write the EPUB3 reader app, and creation software to go with it. Be the first to support the standard and tout that. There is no reason, besides money, to create a hybrid "standard" that is partly EPUB3 and partly not and tying it to your own platform.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

You could use Flash from Adobe to create a rich multimedia app. It will even run on iOS as an app, using the AIR framework. Another way would be to support Microsoft's Silverlight. The best way would be to create an app that can run HTML5, CCS3 and Javascript code, all zipped into a single file. That's the direction the web is moving into.

Oh, wait... Isn't that last option just like EPUB3?

I don't know if Safari already supports HTML5 and CSS3, but I would find it strange if it doesn't have at least preliminary support already. They could re-use part of the Safari engine for the EPUB3 app. They'd be setting a good example, and thereby supporting the standard and committee of which they are a member. They could even tout the fact that they are the first to have a fully compliant EPUB3 reader.

But they just *had* to go and create a new format that is partly EPUB(3) and partly not, and attach some crazy EULA to it.

There are no fully compliant ePub 2 readers yet. I understand what you're saying, but a fully compliant ePub 3 reader would have been a huge amount of additional effort. Of course, the work that's gone into producing iBooks 2 could be leveraged at a later date to make it ePub 3 compliant, but the standard is at such an early stage of its life currently, that nobody is going to be producing ePub 3 readers (or content) for a long time yet.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

You could use Flash from Adobe to create a rich multimedia app. It will even run on iOS as an app, using the AIR framework. Another way would be to support Microsoft's Silverlight. The best way would be to create an app that can run HTML5, CCS3 and Javascript code, all zipped into a single file. That's the direction the web is moving into.

Lots of coulds, but the point is still that at the moment, there aren't any.

[ATimson]

Originally Posted by kartu

When Microsoft tried to "enhance" Java, it ended up in court and that cost Microsoft about 1 billion $.

Only because Microsoft violated their licensing agreement with Sun for Java. If they hadn't called it Java, or had kept it compatible, they wouldn't have had a problem.

[ATimson]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

If using iBooks, you're done for if Apple decides to be evil (and that's indeed also true if you go with iOS-only when writing apps for smartphones and tablets), because you can't sell your book anywhere else, and so you will have to create it from scratch in another authoring program, which is not trivial to do.

As a programmer: it's even less trivial to port an app from iOS to Android or Windows Phone 7.

[JoeD]

I generally agree with most of the things people throw at Apple, but in this case, I really don't see the issue. Apple are giving away a piece of software for the sole purpose of making books for their store.

If you want to make a book for another store, use another piece of software, chances are media rich books would be incompatible between stores even if apple didn't place restrictions on the software use.

If you want to complain about something, a better target to consider is whether you want to put time/effort into something you can only sell on iOS when apple can turn down any app/book on a whim. As far as this software goes, it's free, if it's useful to you, use it, if it's not or you want better cross plat support, find an alternative.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by ATimson

As a programmer: it's even less trivial to port an app from iOS to Android or Windows Phone 7.

Many non-GUI parts can be re-used, or quite quickly rewritten, I have experienced, because it's just algorithms... If you (need to) create an elaborate GUI, or are porting a game, then you will indeed be in trouble, true enough.

[leebase]

Epub is the same today as it was the day before Apple's announcement. You CAN'T accomplish with EPub the interactivity of the new Apple text books. Apple doesn't call it's new format "epub"....but .ibooks. It's based on epub, but it is not epub.

Apple still supports epub in ALL the ways it did before the announcement. Unlike the Amazon and the Kindle....Apple supports ePub. If you publish a book in epub...Apple's iBook at can read it. Apple's Pages still produces epub files.

The new interactive text books are not epub.

Lee