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Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
... And oh, yes, Apple will keep track of everything you've bought, and everything you've searched for, in perpetuity.
Guess what? People went for that one.
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An iPod is more of a fashion statement than an MP3 player. And they've figured that less than 25% of the music that is on iPods came from iTunes.
So you are incorrect: people didn't go for that one.
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Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
.It's easy to make something sound bad, if you only describe it in terms of what sounds bad.
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It's also easy to mislead people.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
Tell someone that they can buy an e-book online, anywhere, anytime, for the computer, laptop, handheld, smartphone, UMPC, gameboy, or blackberry that they already have.
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You've already stepped outside of reality.
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Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
The e-book will cost less than a printed book.
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Misleading. Because of DRM used eBooks cannot exist. I have yet to see any DRMed eBooks going for less than a used paper book. Mostly they are more than the price of the hardcover edition.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
And they can share the files with other devices.
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No, they can't. That's the whole purpose of DRM.
So let's apply reality to your statement:
Tell someone that they can buy an e-book online, from a small subset of companies that support a certain format (let's make it Mobipocket to keep it simple), anytime (as long as Mobipocket's DRM servers don't crash - again), for some of the the computers, handheld, smartphone, UMPC, gameboy, or blackberry that they already have - as long as you use closed, proprietary operating systems like Windows - If you use Linux, you are out of luck.
The e-book will probably cost more than a hardcover price of the printed book. Don't think about buying it used - you can't. The same goes for borrowing your friend's copy. Oh, and guess what? You really didn't "buy" that eBook like you would have bought a paper book. You really bought a license to read it on a small number of devices for a limited time.
They can read it anywhere. They can change the font size to their liking... also the font color and background, making it easier on the eyes. They can bookmark files. They can search. (But only if the reader software supports it.)
They can even buy specialized e-book readers, if they want to, that make the reading more enjoyable, for as little as $300.
They can store entire libraries on a single CD, saving scads of space. But when you go back to try to re-read the books in that library, you may not be able to. All you can do is repurchase the eBook.
Buying e-books help to limit the clear-cutting of our planet for paper.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
Suddenly, e-books don't sound so bad.
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Once reality is applied, it sounds pretty bad to me.