As I was watching the quicktime streaming of the latest Steve Jobs keynote (the one with the beat goes on) this morning, some thoughts came to my mind. For the record I am not affected by the reality distortion field, but I won’t focus now on the less than stellar business practices of Apple. This will come in a later post. I will focus only on the technology part of the keynote. So if you wish to follow my reasoning….
- The new Ipods are all OSX based as it seems, but I will focus only on the Ipod Touch and the Iphone. These 2 devices have one of the biggest and best screens in the realm of mobile devices.
- I remember, I think 5 years ago when Apple introduced OSX 10, they were bragging about PDF native support in the operating system.
- There isn’t a good pdf renderer for mobile devices (ebook readers) yet.
- Most of the ebooks are in pdf format.
- Apple announced a partnership with Starbucks.
- There is a Starbucks shop in every Barnes & Noble book store.
- Steve managed to negotiate with movie studios and music companies to put their products in the Itunes store. Somehow I think is going to be easier to negotiate with the book companies.
- The Itunes store can be easily extended to support PDFs with DRM (so Steve and the industry would be happy). But I would really like to see support for PDFs without DRM on the Ipods also
- Apple can go after Amazon’s books business
- Both devices supports software updates very nicely.
- You do not need a computer anymore to buy from Itunes.
I think everything is in place for a new line of business for Apple. I wonder if the numbers are good enough for them to create a new ecosystem and to do for the books what they did for the music.
And if you guys really do this, please make sure that multitasking is working. I would really like to listen to music while I am reading my favorite book.
Would eBooks really take off on those platforms I wonder? I find it hard to read from LCDs for long periods. It just doesn’t have the same feel they give poor battery performance if the screen is on for prolonged periods. ePaper based devices look the business though. Just WAY too expensive at the moment.
It would be great if there were more devices like the Sony reader and the Bookeen (http://www.bookeen.com/ebook/ebook-reading-device.aspx). There’s also a new UK based device. fantastic battery life and easy to read screens, even in daylight.
I would love a hybrid reader/phone, however. I mean I don’t see why a supplier like Sony or Apple couldn’t release a phone with ePaper type display instead of LCD. OK, so you won’t be able upload photos or play games, but I would be the first to purchase an MP3 Player or Phone that would support real eBook functionality.
I have no use for a camera phone & don’t play mobile games & to be honest the cameras and games on handsets are pretty crap anyway.
Sony – are you reading this