Apple is being jerky again:Apple's end user license agreement for the iBooks Author app has generated extensive controversy among authors and publishers. Namely, the agreement restricts paid distribution of "works" created with the software to the iBookstore only. Technical limitations may make the restriction a moot point for the time being, as only Apple's own iBooks apps can even read the files generated by iBooks Author. But forcing users to sell content through the iBookstore, governed by a separate contract with its own terms, might not survive an antitrust challenge in court if it were to come up.
A point:
But the control issue is mooted by the fact that only iBooks 2 on the iPad can even read the files generated by iBooks Author. As it currently stands, iBooks Author can only generate an "iBook," not any sort of standards-based e-book. While the format largely relies on the ePub 2 standard for text and images, the interactivity and advanced layout capabilities are added via proprietary extensions that only iBooks can interpret,. And, for now, iBooks made with iBooks Author can only be "experienced" on an iPad—we confirmed that trying to open such iBooks files on an iPhone only generates an error message.
That might be true for now, but I don't know many useful file-types that didn't make a jump to another machine somehow.
13 comments:
Autodesk spent an awful long time trying to continually break the .dxf translation algorithm in each new release, but it seems like they've given up, finally.
I hate to say Apple could maybe learn something from losers like Autodesk, but there you are.
Now that Jobs is gone, again, I hope they don't start swirling down the same path they did when the sugar-water guy was running them, but signs like these are not good.
Update: Apple reported revenue in the three months ended in December rose to $46.3 billion, yielding EPS of $13.87 per share.
The company sold 37 million iPhones in the quarter, 15.4 million iPads, 5.2 million Mac computers, and 15.4 million iPods, it said. The Mac and iPod numbers seem to be in line with Street expectations, but those iPhone and iPad numbers are way, way above even the most bullish expectations.
#just for the halibut
~
Some further ubiquity attempts.
exactly
Autodesk spent an awful long time trying to continually break the .dxf translation algorithm in each new release, but it seems like they've given up, finally.
You know, it seems unlikely to me that the files themselves in this Apple thingie are going to be inscrutable. They're liking a lot of XML these days and it's pretty easy to figure out what has this or that effect. It's gonna be the interaction with this or that graphic module that causes the problem, but there are enough people with Apple tools out there hacking them - the developer tools are still mercifully free - that if the file-type takes off there WILL be an interpreter.
Mind you, I could download the app and have a look instead of pretending I know something about it.
Or I could read the article I'm linking to and investigate what IT links to.
reeks of effort.
It looks like the kind of thing some smartypants will come up with a quick Perl script for: instant iBook conversion (as nobody seems to mind the capabilities of the software itself).
Yep. It's really just a matter of parsing the text and commenting out/deleting the non-standard stuff and reformatting what remains to epub. It's probably already done, but if enough people use it, there'll be dozens of em, complete with elaborate graphical front ends.
Not a lot of people are old enough to remember, but for its first years of existence, pdf reader was not free. It took a surprising amount of time for Adobe to figure out that if everyone couldn't read a publishing standard then you weren't going to become ubiquitous. Let alone omnipotent. Apple will ultimately learn the lessons of history, and emerge unscathed from the fuckery once again, as anyone who raises their voice in complaint will be shouted down by the fanbois, the ron paul activists of the intert00bz...
the ron paul activists of the intert00bz...
Hey now.
Appologists.
Apple will ultimately learn the lessons of history,
You'd think that with iTunes, they would have already gotten this lesson. But I guess not.
Hey, now I am going to have my Apple Fanboi card revoked! See what you made me do!
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