Quote:
Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
Umm the mobipocket reader can be used to read books on a much wider selection of devices, and Amazon already owns it.
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Stanza has the advantage of
already working with the iPhone and iPod Touch (a not-small install base). And Stanza can already export to Mobipocket (allowing Stanza to support every device Mobipocket supports) so there's no reason at all to try to tweak Mobipocket to work with the iPhone or iPod Touch. Why bother with that, when you can get everything in one package, with no development time?
Quote:
Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
Just look at the pace of development of the Mobipocket software. It's had maybe three minor updates in a year and a half and Amazon decided to change the file extension for .mobi files to .azw for no good reason.
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The change from .mobi to .azw is a fairly trivial one, actually. The difference is with protected files. And there was a reason for that: The AZW format is more compressed than plain vanilla MOBI. (I have no way of knowing for sure, but I assume that's a consequence of Whispernet.)
Unprotected azw files can be converted easily. In this regard, AZW format is no more diabolical than MOBI format itself. In fact, the personal files that Amazon converts into AZW, if you open them up like a ZIP file, have opf files inside them. If you've got Mobipocket Creator, you just right-click on the opf file, choose Open, and it loads the necessary files into the program to build the MOBI file. Quick and easy. (ManyBooks.net's AZW files appear to be different, as they're actually just sent to you as PRC files.)
As far as "no good reason" goes, that's in the eye of the beholder, I guess. There seem to be some minor differences between the file types, so I wouldn't say it's for "no" reason.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
With respect, I suggest you go read up a little bit on the history of ebook formats. Amazon took over mobipocket, whihc was selling books to a wide variety of devices. They then simply changed the file extension to .azw keeping the DRM technology exactly the same and decided to sell their books only for the Kindle. The wild success of the iPhone got them scared so they decided to belatedly port the Mobipocket reader to the iPhone and then buy Stanza which was the most threatening iPhone based competitor.
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They never "ported Mobipocket to the iPhone". Mobipocket doesn't run on the iPhone. The Kindle iPhone app is only related to Mobipocket in the sense that they both handle MOBI format e-books (although Mobipocket doesn't handle AZW-flavored ones, obviously). If it was, it wouldn't have taken this long to get the app out. (The iPhone/iPod app doesn't let you buy from Amazon, after all. It's
strictly for reading.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
No, they didn't do that because they knew the negative press would have killed the Kindle.
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What's negative press got to do with anything? It's not like they got wonderful press by buying Lexcycle. Generally speaking, Amazon does what it wants and lets the chips fall where they may. Kind of the way Apple works.
Quote:
Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
Again, they already had the technology to sell their books on other devices if they wanted to.
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Buying Stanza gives them a leg up on it, though. Now they've got two readers on the iPhone, without having to break much of a sweat. What's more, they've got access to other computer platforms (Mac and Linux, and iPhone/iPod Touch) that they didn't have before with Mobipocket.