Apple And eBooks: A Horror Story

This is the most difficult post I’ve ever had to write.

Steve Jobs hates ePub. He hates eBooks.

How can anyone with his refined sense of taste not hate them?

They’re an abomination. A tasteless — and incompetent — techie committee solution to electronic books.

Seriously, can any of you see Apple creating ePub? (If you can, leave now. You don’t know Jobs or Apple.)

And iBooks? iBooks?!!!?

From the company that gave us the delightful CoverFlow …

… we now get shelves?!

Apple Wednesday January 27, 2010 Preview

Not a timeline; an aggregation:

1) New version of iWork
– demonstrated on a conventional Mac
– later demonstrated on the iSlate/iPad
– then demonstrated on the iPhone
– digital book creation demonstrated — writers pay attention to this!

2) iSlate/iPad
– new UI demonstrated
– gaming demonstrations
– video demonstration
– eBook demonstration
– digital book demonstration — with a sample from Disney

3) iSlate/iPad dock
– with surprises

4) Apple Digital Book Store
– Children
– Young Adult
– Adult

5) New iWork.com
– collaboration features via iSlate/iPad

And one hell of a surprise.

Sales for the first year of iSlate/iPod will exceed sales of all models of Macintosh combined for that year, at least in the U.S..

Apple’s iSlate Gives Book Publishers False Hope

Disney bought Marvel for over four billion dollars.

Four billion dollars!

In my lifetime I have seen a comic book company aimed at children go from being printed on rotten paper with the worst four-color printing and a rotten distribution system to something that became worth four billion dollars.

Marvel. Comic books. Adults were ashamed to work in comic books!

Marvel! Home of Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, Thor, Hulk, Man-Thing, Ant-Man, X-Men.

Think about those characters.

Disney + Apple + RFID = BIG!

Disney’s ‘NextGen’ may heighten visitors’ enjoyment

The Walt Disney Co.’s theme-park division is quietly working on a major technology initiative that boosters hope could radically transform the theme-park experience.

Details of the project, dubbed within Walt Disney Parks and Resorts as “next generation experience” or “NextGen,” are being closely guarded. But there is widespread speculation among former Disney executives and bloggers who follow the company that at least part of the project involves wireless-communication technology that could be used in concepts ranging from keyless hotel-room doors to rides and shows in which the experience varies based on an individual guest’s preferences.

And:

The secrecy, of course, hasn’t stopped speculation. Though the “NextGen” work has multiple components, several Disney bloggers, including Crawford, have reported that a key part involves the development of radio-frequency identification microchips that could be implanted into park passes or wristbands. Guests would supply personal information ahead of their arrival — from their names and credit-card numbers to their favorite Disney characters — that would be downloaded onto the RFID microchips, which would then interact with sensors deployed throughout Disney’s resorts.

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

Others would expound on this with a few thousand words of their own. All of them pompous and boring.

All you need to know is to keep an eye on Disney if you want hints of what Apple is up to. Steve Jobs is majority shareholder of Disney. He wants to protect that investment and will push Disney into the 21st century bit by bit.

And all of it will tie into Apple too.

He’s already been involved in redesigning Disney Stores.

Why not Disneyland and Disney World too?

Now we wait to see what sort of RFID/NFC capability the new iPod Touch, iSlate, and iPhone will have.

Additional:

Apple testing RFID-enabled iPhone?

Previously here:

The iPod Decade And The Steve Jobs Effect
Disney + Pixar + Marvel + Apple + iTablet

Disney Doing Digital Comics

This is very strange.

A blog post back in July of this year covered it first: Disney comics going mobile with Disney DigiComics

Today, Bloomberg came out with this: Disney to Sell Digital Comics on IPhone, Other Devices

Dec. 15 (Bloomberg) — Walt Disney Co., the world’s largest media company, will start selling comics to users of Apple Inc.’s iPhone and other devices tomorrow to take advantage of increased demand for digital content.

The original timeframe was a September release, so perhaps it took longer than they expected to launch?

How Book Publishing Will Lose: eBooks Vs. Smart Digital Books

Two Major Publishers To Hold Back E-Books

“The right place for the e-book is after the hardcover but before the paperback,” said Carolyn Reidy, CEO of Simon & Schuster, which is owned by CBS Corp. “We believe some people will be disappointed. But with new [electronic] readers coming and sales booming, we need to do this now, before the installed base of e-book reading devices gets to a size where doing it would be impossible.“

Boldfaced emphasis added by me.

Carolyn Reidy, is it difficult to be this clueless?

Let’s see … not a single Harry Potter book has been released in electronic format.

Yet is every Harry Potter book available in every electronic format?

Yes.

All you’re doing with this delay is saying: “Hey, kids! Rev up your scanners and bleed our writers to death!”

Hybrid iPhone/Print Book Glimpse Of The Future

Thanks to the folks over at Vook who tweeted this to me:

What most people will fixate on is the paper.

Look beyond that.

With a 10″-screen tablet, there can be virtual pages bookending the interactivity in the center of the screen. In other words, imagine what you’re looking at above is a single screen.

I think Disney will be looking at this video keenly.

The iPod Decade And The Steve Jobs Effect

We used to label decades. The 1970s were infamously “The Me Decade.”

Pondering this the other day, the first decade of the 21st century clearly needs to be named “The iPod Decade.”

We could argue about how terrorism has affected the world, but clearly it’s been the iPod that’s dominated everyday, normal life these first ten years.

It’s remade music distribution and purchasing, changed how people can listen to their music, how much of that music they can carry, and has led to the inevitable FAIL-filled imitators.

If Apple keeps this up, the next ten years could be “The iTablet Decade.”

And there is every indication that, granted good health, Steve Jobs will go on to remake many things.

Marvel Digital Comics For Sony PlayStation Portable

I wasn’t paying attention when this was announced. Thanks to Q.E.D. pointing it out to me in a Comment.

It’s important too — because it now pits Steve Jobs (largest shareholder of Disney, which now owns Marvel) squarely against Sony.

In short: iPod Touch versus PSP/P2G (PlayStation To Go).

Sony Playstation Network Digital Comics Trailer

Playstation Network brings the world of marvel comics straight into your PS3 or PSP.

Click that link to see the video. Screensnaps after the break.

Electronic Arts Enters Digital Books

This is a shock!

EA Announces FLIPS on the Nintendo DS

Each FLIPS title features multiple books and the first four titles will be released exclusively on Nintendo DS in the UK on 4th December 2009.

Titles include:

Enid Blyton (Egmont) – The Enchanted Wood(R), The Magic Faraway Tree, The Folk of the Faraway Tree, Enchanted World(R) – Petal and the Eternal Bloom, Enchanted World – Melody and the Enchanted Harp, Enchanted World – Silky and the Rainbow Feather

Cathy Cassidy (Penguin)- Scarlett, Angel Cake, Sundae Girl, Shine on Daizy Star, GingerSnaps, Driftwood

Eoin Colfer (Penguin) – Artemis Fowl, Artemis Fowl and the Arctic Incident, Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code, Artemis Fowl and the Opal Deception, Artemis Fowl and the Lost Colony, Artemis Fowl and the Time Paradox

Too Ghoul For School (Egmont) – Silent but Deadly, The In-Spectres Call, Ghoul Dinners, The Bubonic Builders, Attack of the Zombie Nits, School Spooks Day, French Fright, Terror In Cubical Four

FLIPS uses the DS touch screen and stylus to enable children to read and interact by combining the world of storytelling with quizzes and references to characters, encouraging greater concentration and incentive to finish every chapter. Within the books, links appear to give the reader a unique way of interacting with the story and enhancing their experience.

I’m really stunned by this.

Who ever expected Electronic Arts to do digital books?

Yet it makes sense that a game producer would jump in.

And while Disney requires children to sit at a tabletop to read their books, kids can read these anywhere with the Nintendo DS.

What also fascinates me about this: Nothing for the Sony PSP?