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actually, i don't think apple will smother everyone else in the book market. the reason they did in the music market was because they were pretty much the only game in town at the time. itunes was there, the ipod was out, apple got into the content. apple is a late-comer to the ebook game and they allow other players in their field (kindle, kobo, b&n, etc.) which is a good thing for consumers, imho.
i don't care for kindle because i don't like amazon's big-brother tactics with the whole 1984 fiasco and how they resolved it, but i could see them dominating the book market. they are the only player who can offer their ebooks on a multitude of platforms, including the ipad, and the iphone (which apple won't do for several more months), macs, pc's, their own hardware, etc. in addition to syncing across all devices. if anything, amazon should give up on the hardware business (can't imagine it makes a lot of money for them in the long run) and concentrate on their ebook store, offerings and software. ok. so apple can sell ebooks to XXX million iphone/ipad users. amazon can sell to them AND everyone else too.
the only thing i'd like to see amazon do is incorporate the best features of stanza into their kindle app, including importing drm-free epub documents, and i'd ditch ibooks in a heartbeat.
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