Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
For most Kindle users eBooks, Amazon is a walled garden when you talk about eBooks with DRM. Most don't use Calibre. Most don't strip DRM. Most have no choice but to buy from Amazon or get from the library (if in the US and there's a Kindle version). The thing is, I'm not sure that it would just be DRM making the garden walled. Most people would not know what do to if you handed them a DRM free ePub and asked them how to put it on a Kindle to read.
For that matter, having a Reader that handles ePub can be the same sort of walled garden as a Kindle, DRM or not.
What really makes the walled garden the lack of access to the knowledge to break out of the walled garden. The information is there and it's easy to use once you have it. But you have to know it's there, find it and be able to use it. For a lot, that's not easy or possible.
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Exactly -- and that makes the walled garden something that the user carries around and erects on top of whatever device s/he owns, regardless of brand.
There are some true walled gardens, but they require a much higher level of obstruction to qualify.
For instance, iDevices which only allow official appstore apps to run, unless you want to fight with jailbreaking (and maintaining the jailbreak) which is a tremendous hassle even for the knowledgeable user. And getting data onto an iDevice without using either iTunes to sync, or downloading via the mobile browser/Dropboxing everything.