As an Apple owner of all their hardware and devices this is pretty lame and really hope it does not affect Amazon/Kindle. I have never owned a Kindle but prefer Kindle books and love them. I read them on PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, but mainly my iPad. If it weren't for Kindle, I may have bought a few more books on iBooks just for the iPad, but there are far fewer books and I like being able to read them on multiple devices.
The whole point of an ebook is to read them on multiple devices.
I also read my Kindle books on the iPad, Nexus One and my MeeGo netbook, depending which device I happen to take with me on a trip. This move would make the iPad practically useless for me as a travel computer. Then again, the announced Honeycomb tablets look already quite interesting...
Another slight concern with Kindle is that I'm seeing more and more "this Kindle book is not available in Europe" messages from Amazon. Region coding sucked on DVDs, and sucks even more when you're not even buying physical media.
Or any other reader, really, like the Sony's or the Nook. The Kobo is sold at about the same price as a Nook but is limited in a number of very annoying ways (no book wide search, no way to jump to a particular page etc.)
That's fair. Those are some major features. I don't find them to be of any particular hindrance though. Frankly, I find I read more quickly on the Kobo, as opposed to traditional book formats.
I can connect my Kindle to any Mac, Windows or Linux computer using a USB cable, the OS sees the Kindle as an external drive ... You can transfer as many documents as you want to your Kindle this way (actually as many as your Kindle can store, about 3GB for a Kindle 3).
>The whole point of an ebook is to read them on multiple devices.
From a publisher's perspective, the point of an ebook is to cut down on manufacturing, storage, shipping, and other costs associated with a physical book. Since publishers own this game, I think we'll start seeing things get played increasingly by their rules as executives catch glimpse of potential savings in an ebook-dominant distribution chain.
And for Apple, it's a mechanism to lock-in, just like iTunes et al. Amazon doesn't have an interest in locking you in, so keeps books free, and has thus far been able to convince publishers that this is appropriate. Publishers may one day decide they can make double the money if people buy an iPad verison and a PC version, so I don't know how likely it is that Amazon will be able to keep that up.
No, they don't. There is not and never will be an OPEC of books. Publishers did not create the ePub standard. It was all the work of techies and book lovers who pushed for a standard file format. The Big 6 publishers are too busy fighting the future with their price-fixing Agency Model.
Publishers own the game because they own the content that most users are going to want. Of course, one can establish a good indie community, but you're not going to get mainstream acceptance until you have availability of mainstream publications, and as we know all too well from movies, music, and other media, big content owners are usually not very intelligent about digital formats.
Mainstream? The Big 6 have been dredging the self-pub field as a minor league for their majors. This is how desperate they've gotten -- well, that and lazy too. Their business model is unsustainable and will inevitably collapse.
The whole point of an ebook is to read them on multiple devices.