ZDNET: Apple sabotaging ePub?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by CommonReader

Do people recall the time when the audio CD was introduced? A single standard, hardware made by many companies, available everywhere. That's an ideal way to introduce a new technology.

But that was (an still is, I believe) a proprietary standard, owned by Philips. It's much easier for a single company to enforce compliance with its own commercial property than it is for anyone to force someone to adhere to an open standard.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by CommonReader

The first audio CD was released in 1982. The DRM versions came two decades later and were quite successfully suppressed by Philips.

HTML came out quite a long time ago, which is what all the popular eBook formats are based on.
Successfully suppressed? Really?

[athlonkmf]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

iBooks itself is even more dangerous to writers than anything Apple could do to the epub standard. Read this:

http://zdnet.com/blog/bott/apples-mi...agreement/4360

That does it. I knew Apple is greedy and arrogant, but this beats anything I've ever read with regard to a software EULA, bar none. Now I won't even consider their products ever again.

is it really?
Amazon has the same policy when you use one of their service: http://wahoocorner.blogspot.com/2012...d-my-book.html

And this says a lot

At first, I wasn't sure what to think about it, especially given the exclusivity requirement. Part of me was aghast -- how dare they ask me to pull my book from the other retailers! And then something occurred to me. Between October 1 and December 31, I had sold a grand total of .... ONE book on all the non-Amazon platforms -- that one sale on Barnes & Noble.

Now replace amazon with apple...

[CommonReader]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Successfully suppressed? Really?

I haven't come across a non-format compatible CD for a long time now.

[5thWiggle]

Originally Posted by CommonReader

The first audio CD was released in 1982. The DRM versions came two decades later and were quite successfully suppressed by Philips.

All that was required by Sony-Philips was that the Compact Disc logo not be displayed on a non-Red Book standard audio disc.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by CommonReader

I haven't come across a non-format compatible CD for a long time now.

Is that because all CDs are strict red book compliant, or because CD players now work around the incompatibilities?

[CommonReader]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

Is that because all CDs are strict red book compliant, or because CD players now work around the incompatibilities?

I suppose they are red book compliant as my old PC never complained when I ripped them for my Squeezebox network.

[5thWiggle]

EMI dropped copy protection in 2006 (in Canada, we dropped it earlier except when it was forced on us by other international arms of EMI). Other companies, I have no knowledge about although I suspect they have all dropped it. Most Record companies no longer manufacture their own discs anymore. EMI shut down the last plant in 2007 and farmed production out to Cinram. Sony BMG spun off production into a new division Sony DADC, and Universal sold at least one of their plants to Disctronics.

That's not to say the discs are all red book standards though. Discs with extras (ie videos) are multisesson discs which adhere to the blue book standards. There are a number of standards, in fact a whole Rainbow.

[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by 5thWiggle

EMI dropped copy protection in 2006 (in Canada, we dropped it earlier except when it was forced on us by other international arms of EMI). Other companies, I have no knowledge about although I suspect they have all dropped it. Most Record companies no longer manufacture their own discs anymore. EMI shut down the last plant in 2007 and farmed production out to Cinram. Sony BMG spun off production into a new division Sony DADC, and Universal sold at least one of their plants to Disctronics.

That's not to say the discs are all red book standards though. Discs with extras (ie videos) are multisesson discs which adhere to the blue book standards. There are a number of standards, in fact a whole Rainbow.

From what I understand, the reason the original CD standard was called "Red Book" is because that happened to be the color of the binder that contained the standard.

[5thWiggle]

Originally Posted by Solitaire1

From what I understand, the reason the original CD standard was called "Red Book" is because that happened to be the color of the binder that contained the standard.

Yup! Then expanded to CD-ROM in the Yellow Book, CD R/W in the (of course) Orange Book. I had a whole set of them, but pretty much only used red, blue and green.

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by CommonReader

Companies can be forced to do a lot of things when they are being found guilty of abusing a dominant market position. This includes forcing them to license their solutions right up to breaking up the company. The public is entirely justified to defend an open market against companies that use their dominance to lock competitors out.

This is true. Although Apple's ~10% market share does not give it a dominant market share in e-books or e-book readers.

[leebase]

I'm happy Apple didn't go with "the standard" given THERE IS NO STANDARD that covered what Apple needed done.

Standards ALWAYS lag innovation. ePub isn't even "the standard" for ebooks. It's the "we want to topple Amazon" competitive effort because Amazon's .mobi format IS the standard due to it's market share. Amazon innovated, had first mover status (ok, first SUCCESSFUL mover) and now it's format is THE format.

In order to compete, the rest of the industry has come up with a standard, that really can never be the standard. It's simply _a_ standard. So no matter what, a publisher has to support Amazon's .mobi as it's the market leader, and ePub to reach the rest of the wannabe's (including Apple).

There is nothing like what Apple is trying to do with their interactive ebooks. Apple is working to be the first mover, market maker with it's platform and technology. Apple is doing what EVERY innovator does. No one waits for standards when they are innovating and creating a market.

If Apple succeeds in creating a market for interactive textbooks on the iPad...then Amazon and the rest of the wannabe's will then create an "open standard", which is nothing more than what "must be done" when you are not the one who defines the market.

If you want your material as interactive iBooks and as standard epubs and as .mobi/kindle -- then you are going to have to do the work to make your material available on all those platforms.

Apple has no interest in assisting folks in creating content for rival platforms. That's for the likes of Adobe to come up with software that will assist in the creation of cross platform ebooks. And they will never be as good as the single platform efforts.

Lee

[Sil_liS]

Originally Posted by leebase

I'm happy Apple didn't go with "the standard" given THERE IS NO STANDARD that covered what Apple needed done.

What was it exactly that Apple needed? I'm talking about functionality because HarryT's example isn't about functionality:

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's right. ePub 3, for example, does "programmability" using Javascript. A ".iBook" file does it using using a custom Apple scripting language.

And if Apple thought that there are different needs than what was covered by the standard then why make the standard like this?

[leebase]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

What was it exactly that Apple needed? I'm talking about functionality because HarryT's example isn't about functionality:

View any of the videos on Apple's site and you can see what iBooks do that other books don't....from the top of my head:

Quizzes
Flash Cards
Glossary Builder
Movies
360 viewing of 3D models
Plethora of mock up stuff (flow around irregular shapes, stuff to do with margins and the like)
Integration with web apps/code

Lee

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by leebase

Standards ALWAYS lag innovation. ePub isn't even "the standard" for ebooks. It's the "we want to topple Amazon" competitive effort because Amazon's .mobi format IS the standard due to it's market share. Amazon innovated, had first mover status (ok, first SUCCESSFUL mover) and now it's format is THE format.

Amazon is the standard by numbers, and it's bad, just as it's bad that Microsoft is the standard by numbers on desktop systems. Amazon runs mobi; everything else runs epub. Desktop computers (most of them) run Windows, while everything else runs some version of Unix or Linux.

In order to compete, the rest of the industry has come up with a standard, that really can never be the standard. It's simply _a_ standard. So no matter what, a publisher has to support Amazon's .mobi as it's the market leader, and ePub to reach the rest of the wannabe's (including Apple).

Yes. And IMHO, that's bad. It's not good to have one company that dominates such an important market, be it computers, phones, or (interactive) books.