Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyMartin
Deja Vu all over again as Y Berra once said. About 15 years ago the photographic industry was going nuts over the introduction of digital cameras. The complaints were that the feel was not the same as film, that the quality was not good, the devices too expensive and would never catch on nor become reliable enough.
Unless the world economy totally tanks there is no way our beloved readers will fail. The DRM thing will get sorted out as will format issues and so on.
I don't often re read books so for me it is not an issue but reading the thread on re reading it seems lots of people do. DRM as a principle is not the problem. The problem is the hoops we are sometimes forced to jump through for DRM.
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I see your point, but I don't think we can correlate both cases.
With digital pictures, the only real problem was the digital camera's price (but only at the beggining, and even so, there were much more expensive conventional cameras too) and the photo quality. Both things common sense says will be solved in time. There was a bonus: digital pictures = 0$ cost.
To read a pBook, you don't have to buy a device. That's the first difference. The price of the ebooks is litle lower than the pbooks (many times it's the same price!). And I don't really see this go away for a very long price. Companies couldn't charge a digital photo, but they can charge ebooks and will do so. They want profit, after all.
But, most important, reading isn't as mainstream as photo shooting. This means that ereader and ebook progress will be, probably, slower.