It’s time for me to weigh-in again on the beef between Apple and Adobe over Flash versus HTML5. Why is this such a big deal that it seems to be verging on a blood feud? What turned these two companies so ruthlessly against each other that Apple CEO Steve Jobs is writing anti-Flash essays on the Apple web page while Adobe is giving all of its employees free Google Android phones that run Flash?
eBooks.
Forget all the BS spewing right now from the Apple camp. What’s really at the basis of this fight is the future of electronic books.
This idea, by the way, is not new with me but came originally from reader Michael L. Jones with whom I agree completely.
Some of Apple’s stated technical concerns are legit. Flash is antiquated in some respects, and isn’t nearly as cool as the HTML5 technology that Apple is using instead in its iPads, iPhones, and iPods. But since Flash is everywhere it will probably remain popular for years to come.
A decade from now Steve Jobs is convinced that paper books will be rare and electronic books will be the standard. He wants to be sure those eBooks come from Apple.
Yes, this is the same Steve Jobs who said people no longer even read books, but that was just a magician’s technique to redirect us until he could pull an iPad out of his hat.
There are two vying eBook technical standards — one clearly owned by Adobe and the other not owned by Apple but Apple’s version is the most developed. Apple doesn’t feel the need to own the eBook standard, but they don’t want Adobe to own it, either.
And so they fight.
Ironically, Microsoft last week made a statement largely supporting Apple in this “ain’t Flash terrible” campaign. Yet Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser in its current version doesn’t support HTML5 and the company of Bill Gates would appear to have as much to lose here as Adobe.
Here’s where it gets really interesting. There are two major standards for e-book formatting and display — Adobe and WebKit. Think what this means for Flash versus Apple as well as Mozilla, Internet Explorer and Chrome. Flash is the only multimedia method supported in ePub except for Apple with H.264. So the Flash brouhaha involves more than just the web. It goes to the heart of digital media itself.
WebKit is the preferred engine on iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, WebOS, Chrome, Safari and some Linux browsers. This could be the beginning of the end for major parts of Inernet Explorer and even Mozilla, for that matter, with their Gecko engine.
Digitizing the trusty old book could be the next killer app with the victims of that killer being both Adobe and Microsoft.
Sometime soon they’ll settle this technical argument, I’m sure. They always do. And the settlement will probably put just enough HTML5 inside Flash to allow Apple-standard eBooks to play anywhere. Because in the end it isn’t the player that really counts. What counts are the electronic book files, which are the razor blades in this story that purports to be about technology but is really about business.
Apple intends to sell more eBook files than any other company and will do whatever it takes to win yet another $20 billion content market.
Bob,
You lost me on adobe and webkit as the two major standards for ebook formatting and display. When you say “Adobe” do you mean PDF? And doesn’t the iPad use EPUP? And doesn’t Adobe also support EPUB with it’s Digital Editions. And Where does webkit come in? I know some ebook formats use HTML, but how is that equivalent to webkit as an ebook standard?
Ironically, the first third ofthe screen when I arrived here is the ugly ” no flash” icon. I think you make some good points, but the bottom line is the enduser who’s lost in the endless argument. Whatever happens, it’s that simple and comfortable experience that needs tohapoen for them.
Nope.
To begin with, PDF does not equal Flash.
And Microsoft is indeed pushing hard in a well-documented way on HTML5, much to everyone’s surprise.
And Apple’s anti-Flash stance has everything to do with their new platforms (iPad and iPhone) not being constrained by third-party cross-platform frameworks.
If you want something useful to read check out John Gruber / Daring Fireball.
Books? When the average US employee is exclusively managed and instructed by pictograph? Who need read? Do picture, make job money.
“You lost me on adobe and webkit as the two major standards for ebook formatting and display”
I think Robert is confused. What I think he’s picked up on is that there are two major reading engines for epub readers. See here:
http://blog.threepress.org/2010/04/02/designing-ebooks-for-epub-reading-engines/
Does it matter — except in the short term?
Most commonly epub is made from XHTML, although it can also be constituted from other forms of XML.) As an aside, note it’s *not* HTML5 but XHTML 1.1 that it’s currently based on.
Anyway, since epub books are based on XHTML 1.1 (and CSS) and various other published standards there’s no reason for Microsoft to end up as blood on the carpet. They just need an engine capable of rendering those standards. That have that in IE’s engine. Microsoft can simply use that as the reading engine in any ebook reader it might include with Windows (or with Microsoft tablets or smartphones). Current versions of IE implement far more of the standards, and more correctly, than older ones did. Anyway, it’s unlikely that most published ebooks will use any very recherche parts of CSS3 for a long time yet. And even if that were not so, since WebKit is open source, Microsoft could simply adopt it as the engine of an e-reader.
I believe you *can* get ebooks with imbedded video in them, and currently I think that is being done with Flash. Whether that’s part of the epub spec. or just the way Adobe has extended it, I don’t know. I don’t see it as a big deal. ebooks that require to have video inside them will doubtless have it imbedded in an XHTML document with the HTML5 “video” element sooner or later (same for audio). WebKit-based browsers already have support for that; IE9 will have it. No drama that I can see.
Nick,
Your right on it at the start… 🙂
From what I’ve been able to determine however (and as Liza also points out on her blog somewhat stratight away), right now the only real way to get a video file into standard validated markup is to use Flash (http://blog.threepress.org/2009/11/14/using-flash-video-in-epub/) and NOT H.264 (http://blog.threepress.org/2009/11/15/using-html5-video-in-epub/). So if you can’t write a fully validated ePub document without a hack (in XHTML 1.1 as you point out) and include H.264 encoded video, then we have a problem.
M.G. Stevens has the other half below on the other real part, which is the business case. Steve Jobs LOVES to tell you how his stuff is based on open standards (Mac on Unix/Free BSD, HTML 5, MP4/AAC, etc. etc.) and he’s in business to make money. He’s worried about the standards to the point that he can build on them to the MAXIMUM extent possible WHILE delivering the best possible experience and own the user experience. No worries on how to create the content, as long as it is standard, Apple plays. Flash gets in the way of that on many, many, many fronts (and the app thing is only one).
In that sense the iBooks reader isn’t the ‘killer app’ on the iPad in it’s current form, because the ePub spec is powerful, but not really setup for interactivity/digital media content. If their was money in the reader, iBooks would cost you money. The full color Pop Sci and comic readers are the first TASTE at what Steve sees will be the future of digital content (and probably one reason he’s pissed at the New York Times for the lame’o iPad app, which takes advantage of NOTHING new).
Content producers want artistic and creative choice in how to compose their content, get paid for their content, and control it.
Apple wants to make sure they are in position to deliver the best experience for that content on as open a platform as they can get on the coolest gadgets they can build…. and with Adobe/Flash in the way as the platform (vice standards) it must simply die.
Why are we even talking about video in relation to ebooks? Jesus Christ in Heaven.
We haven’t even managed to transition good old paper books into cyberspace. Aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves with video and annotation and all that shit?
Books mean text and static pictures. Which is perfectly doable with .txt and .html files using decade-old HTML. Hell, for 99% of literature .txt files are perfectly adequate — just let the reader pick the font, colors and wrapping.
Too bad everybody and their dog is busy imposing on the market their own proprietary format (with DRM and immutable presentation) and their own lock-in devices who attempt to do everything and cost an arm and a leg.
Lemme tell you something: whoever brings to the market a 50-100$ reader with a 6″ LCD screen, SD, USB, 2-4 buttons, NO DRM and the ability to render simple .txt and .html — will absolutely fuck over all the bigshots who are so busy fighting it out they lost perspective.
The Chinese would have been the prime candidate. Too bad reading and totalitarian regimes don’t go well together.
iBooks (as well as Safari, duh) display non DRMed text just fine. iBooks has thousands of non-DRMed books integrated — Project Gutenberg. You can also add your own DRM free files to iBooks via iTunes.
Also, reading books as txt files, produces ugly, unreadable text. Doing your own virtual typesetting is not my idea of fun. So far as DRM is concerned, it comes from the publishers. Having an eBook reader that does not support DRM ain’t gonna help you one little bit.
The fact that I need to go to iTunes to download my reading material offends me. The iTunes clinet is a poor program/system when not running on Macs and routinely screws up my W7 laptop. Besides I don’t want Steve to filter my reading/listening sources.
Apple is fast becoming Microsoft lite and in an ironic twist, aspire to be bigger than the “big brother” they railed against in their early days.
Go to China, walk into any bookstore, and you will see the aisles filled with people reading books.
Reading books about the Tiananmen Square Massacre? Nope… point made…
Like the other commenters I also don’t agree. I think it’s all about the applications & not about video. If an iPhone or iPad can run Flash then people can play Farmville, Mafia Wars, etc and totally bypass the iTunes store. Keeping Flash and any other app engine off of the iPhone and iPad means that every application has to be obtained from iTunes including the in-game add-ons. More money for Apple this way – plain and simple.
The money is not as important as the control. There are already plenty of free, dopey games in the app store which Apple hosts for free.
Apple would rather have a smaller market it controls completely, than a larger market, where everyone’s kids and pets are making a mess of things.
And yes, Apple always uses its own software (Safari, iLife, Final Cut, Aperture, etc.) or open source/open standards (webkit, H.264, HTML 5, Apache, AAC, etc.), but it doesn’t want a third party to control any strategic part of its ecosystem. What’s amazing is that even though Apple doesn’t allow anyone to control a strategic part of the ecosystem, Apple is allowing third parties to make gobs of money off the ecosystem, like no one else has managed before.
And no, I have no idea what Cringely was saying in this article.
DRM.
What the hell is wrong with a PDF with no DRM (there are also DRMed PDFs)?
Who the hell wants to buy a Betmax or HD-DVD machine? PDF is here to stay, why doesn’t everyone just publish DRM-free PDFs.
Look, protected MP3s are going the way of the dodo bird, why the hell do we need a new, proprietary eBook format?!?!? So these cigar-chomping bigwigs can suck all our cash away like Hoover vacuums!
Oh, you want that ebook for your Wii, in addition to your iPad? Step right up, step right up, and buy another copy.
Why isn’t anyone addressing or discussing this bigger issue?
RR
Finally, people start waking the hell up. And now other people get the damned credit!
The Ugliest Fight Ever: Apple Versus Google
http://ebooktest.wordpress.com/2009/12/12/the-ugliest-fight-ever-apple-versus-google/
Apple Will Break Open The Digital Book Floodgates
http://ebooktest.wordpress.com/2009/11/02/apple-will-break-open-the-digital-book-floodgates/
Here’s a bloody tip for you to wake up about in six months too. I can wait!
Why The iTunes/App Store Model Will Ultimately Fail
http://ebooktest.wordpress.com/2010/01/23/why-the-itunesapp-store-model-will-ultimately-fail/
Wow- do you really work in Technology journalism? That article confused some many technologies and platforms I can’t even keep them straight. Either did not express yourself very clearly or you have no understanding of the technology at all.
EPUB- standard publishing format support by most all eReaders but the Kindle (which has its own proprietary format).
FLASH- proprietary Adobe multimedia format that have NOTHING to do with books. That is Adobe’s PDF format.
Still confused after reading the article twice.
I agree with other posters that this post is pretty bizarre. Webkit isn’t a format, and HTML5 is hardly a webkit exclusive. The only thing holding back Gecko is the idiotic adherence to Ogg/Theora thanks to an FSF hardcore following in Mozilla. (I wonder if Google started working on Chrome because it found Mozilla so intractable.)
As for PDF != Flash — well that’s pretty debatable. It’s a pretty open secret that Adobe acquired Macromedia specifically to merge PDF and Flash because Flash was the main threat to PDF (along with Adobe itself — the fact that no-one can stand Adobe’s PDF plugin speaks volumes).
I’m not exactly sure why Flash and PDF haven’t simply merged, but it’s probably a consequence of Adobe’s desire to push Flash (the real thing) into the mobile space, which is hard enough without bloating it with a full PDF engine (especially a full PDF engine with a bunch of half-assed interactivity features orthogonal to Flash’s). The other possibility is that Adobe’s and Macromedia’s codebases are simply too incompatible. (“swf” stands for “shockwave flash”. “shockwave” is/was the product name for Director’s web plugin. Hmmm.)
Are you talking about Adobe’s Evida format? This is mainly for “multimedia” books and depends upon Flash. PDF is another Adobe format, but that’s open and Apple supports PDF documents on its devices. ePub is also open source
WebKit isn’t a format. WebKit is an open source browser engine Apple designed from the KHTML browser engine. WebKit is fast, small and efficient which makes it wonderful on mobile devices. Google, Palm, and Apple mobile devices all have WebKit based browsers. RIM is currently creating one. FireFox has so far refused to abandon its Gecko engine although there’s a lot of pressure to do just that. I’ve even heard that much of the Trident engine in IE9 is based upon WebKit’s source.
I’m not sure how much Flash plays a role in this market. Apple’s problem with Flash are pretty simple: Apple wants to make sure that they are not dependent upon third parties for their devices to work. Apple devices are proprietary, but support public standard protocols. Basically, Apple can write it’s own PDF engine and its own HTML engine and its own JavaScript engine. But, Apple cannot write a Flash client.
That means if Apple wants a particular device, and Flash is important, they’re at the mercy of Adobe to “bless” Apple’s device by making a Flash client for it. Apple don’t like that.
ARM today hinted that the delay in a Flash client for ARM processor computers was a reason for a delay in ARM based netbooks: http://bit.ly/aCNTAL. A video showing Flash on the Android crashes right after the person running the demo stats “I’m glad I didn’t get an iPad”. Flash for the Android is almost 9 months late. I’m sure Apple looks at all of this as a reason why Flash must die.
What’s really going on is that Apple is the big fish in the mobile pond, and Apple will use its muscles to make an Flash irrelevant technology for the web.
From a blog post at:
http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/204615.asp?from=blog_last3
“Hachamovitch also reiterated that Internet Explorer 9 – the next Microsoft browser, expected to launch in 2011 – will continue to support Adobe Flash. But at some point, Microsoft had to decide what codecs to support for HTML5 video – and H.264 was it.”
IE9, due out next year, will have support for both Flash and H.264 so how does this next “Killer App” affect Microsoft at all?
Love ya Bob, but this post missed the mark.
I think this is the first time you ever posted something I completely disagree with. I mean, it’s not even that I’m on the opposite side of the same argument — this time I think the very premises are so flawed as to render the whole argument useless.
I see one, and only one, reason why Apple is not only forbidding Flash, but forbidding pretty much any form of development that isn’t hand-coded Cocoa calls: Apple doesn’t want iPhone and iPad apps to be portable. They want to lock users in through the apps.
Books? First, let’s discard all non-multimedia books (ie, pretty much all of them so far), as the existing standards are not controlled by Adobe — PDF being inadequate as an e-book format. Now, educational books are certainly a worthy market to consider here: they can make good use of multimedia, they won’t work well with monochrome e-Ink displays, they are guaranteed to sell, and having an iPad in the hand of each student would do wonders for Apple’s brand.
So, agreeing that educational books are worth fighting for, let’s consider how formats might influence it. Say they use a format controlled by Adobe… so what? The books get published everywhere, and Apple can’t corner the market on format alone.
So, say they use some other format… so what? The content is still the same, anything html5-based will still get published everywhere, and Apple can’t corner the market on format alone.
So what, exactly, would Apple gain by leaving Adobe out of it (assuming Adobe had any significant foothold to begin with)?
Having layers between their OS and the apps inhibits Apple’s ability to control the OS…. they become beholden to that third party to support a new feature or fix a broken one.
Blocking portability and lock-in are by-products (added bonuses?) of their demand to control their own destiny.
Developers who don’t like that have 3 options: (1) develop for another platform exclusively, (2) develop HTML apps like Google Voice, or (3) this one’s not appropriate for a public discussion.
Oye, this is a stupid argument. The very idea of Flash, H264, whatever, embedded in your ebook is an idea that will go the way of 3D movies. That is to say, as soon as the general public is over the novelty of it, no one will care. Most people who specifically seek reading material specifically DON’T want distractions. A picture is worth a thousand words and it’s good to have an image with the text for clarification, but movies are the antithesis of reading.
Roger Ebert has an excellent article in this weeks’ Newsweek, “Why I hate 3-D and you should too”. His basic argument can be applied to ebooks.
My interpretation is that dolts who flock to youtube for their entertainment will not be the primary candidates for a sustainable ebook market. As a certifiable dolt, I should know.
[…] Book ‘em, Steve-O Forget all the BS spewing right now from the Apple camp. What’s really at the basis of this fight is the future of electronic books. […]
[…] Book ‘em, Steve-O Forget all the BS spewing right now from the Apple camp. What’s really at the basis of this fight is the future of electronic books. […]
[…] Book ‘em, Steve-O Forget all the BS spewing right now from the Apple camp. What’s really at the basis of this fight is the future of electronic books. […]
[…] Book ‘em, Steve-O Forget all the BS spewing right now from the Apple camp. What’s really at the basis of this fight is the future of electronic books. […]
[…] Book ‘em, Steve-O Forget all the BS spewing right now from the Apple camp. What’s really at the basis of this fight is the future of electronic books. […]
[…] Book ‘em, Steve-O Forget all the BS spewing right now from the Apple camp. What’s really at the basis of this fight is the future of electronic books. […]
Somehow, most comments to this point are (really) hung up on technical details, when the piece I read was about a business case reason to make a fight out in the open about Flash when the real prize is the preservation of an open eBook format. Whether the name of the engine, or even the platform is misstated, the point is still the same: Adobe delivered solid production platforms that helped power the digital content world but now present a risk in being able to own the gateway to the content and Apple (and others) are strategically positioning for the battle to maintain open standards for the future of all media.
That can only be a good thing for the consumer and allows the content kings of today and tomorrow a level field to market to. From there may the best content, and consumption device, win – without the weighty intervention of a single third party that has begun to falter under their own weight. As a media producer, I value Adobe highly, but even their pro stuff can be glitchy. Why look the other way while PDF/Flash gain a stranglehold on consumable media when the open standards are more powerful and lightweight, not to mention the democratizing of the publishing process to allow more voices to be seen and heard. I saw Bob highlighting a strategic play and could care less where the engines and formats cross, as long as we get a non-locked-away means of authoring and consuming media in the future. Haven’t the last 20 years or so taught us anything?
M.G. Stevens makes an excellent point I didn’t think to include in the previous post. There was a story on NPR a couple of weeks ago regarding Digital Rights Management in epublishing. The reporter made a case using an iPhone app he had purchased to find wifi deadzones in his home. Apple inexplicably pulled his app from his iPhone remotely and without his knowledge. The point of his argument is that the issuer of a DRM’d ebook has the ability to kill any and all copies issued. Never before in the history of democracy has literature been subject to total and absolute censorship at the whim of any entity. Add to that the complexity of negating literature in the interest of technological bias. Sure looks like a Supreme Court case
Does anyone have a URL for this? I would think Apple actually pulling an app from the actual phone and not just from the App Store would have garnered major headlines.
Then Mr. Jobs and Apple decided to allow Mark Fiore’s Flash originated animation app that ridicules public figures on the iPad after he won the Pulitzer.
I think Apple’s beef with Flash has rolled downhill and has changed focus many times. I think it started with Flash being a universal video wrapper at a time when Apple was hot to get web developers to embed MOV files and encourage adoption of the QuickTime plugin. Bundling QuickTime with iTunes has made that less of an issue, though. Then the issue was about crashes; Apple’s tech support database was telling them that Flash was the number one reason Macs crash. Then it became the speed issue; Adobe wants low-level access to the hardware to optimize Flash, and there was no way in hell Apple was just going to open up their OS source code to Adobe. Then it became the development issue; as Jobs pointed out, they don’t want a third-party dictating iPhone development. At every point, Apple is protecting their best interests.
I do disagree with Apple on the development issue, though. There are a lot of web developers who know Flash but aren’t Cocoa developers, and having access to Flash would make it easy for them to get their apps to the platform. Serious developers know that they need to use Cocoa to take full advantage of the platform, so I don’t think a Flash compiler for iPhone would ever put Apple in any serious danger.
goodbye, cringley! you’ve lost it completely. this is some pretentious shit of unseen proportions. i’ve just unsubscribed from your feed in google reader. too bad – reading you used to be good fun. not anymore.
I my gosh Chuck…you must be going through a divorce or maybe you have a terrible rash. Cringely is still a hero…please don’t discourage him. Oh yeah, you won’t be reading this because you unsubscribed. I bet people would really laugh at you if you went through one of those new airport x-ray machines! Thank you for the article Bob!
YEAH WELL BYE CHUCK
ANYWAY, ALSO PDF FLASH HTML5 HTML WEBKIT GECKO, THERE IS ONE LITTLE PROBLEM…. AND THAT IS, I READ E-BOOKS USING GOOD OLD ASCII .TXT FILE FORMAT.
FOR FREE, FROM PROJECT GUTENBERG.
NOT THAT GREAT? OH WELL, BUT THE PRICE SURE IS RIGHT, AND A LOT LESS TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS THAN SONY’S “CLASSIC” (SCANNED & OCR’D) SELECTION.
And you obviously type your comments in a 1989 version of DOS.
“Somehow, most comments to this point are (really) hung up on technical details, when the piece I read was about a business case reason to make a fight out in the open about Flash when the real prize is the preservation of an open eBook format.”
Then you’ve totally misunderstood. The technical misunderstandings make a nonsense of the supposed “business case reason”.
BOTH reading engines read the SAME format. Adobe Digital Editions is a reader for epub format just the same as WebKit-based readers such as iBooks are. (Adobe Digital Editions will also read PDFs and, I think, completely Flash-based content, but it’s basically an epub reader.)
The only relevant difference between Adobe Digital Editions and iBooks is that the epub standard allows for DRM and, where that’s used, Adobe uses Adobe Content Server whereas Apple uses FairPlay.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB
But that ain’t the reason for “the beef between Apple and Adobe over Flash versus HTML5” which is what Cringely is supposedly writing about, since the DRM has nothing to do with either Flash or HTML5.
Besides, Apple won’t be using FairPlay to try to achieve lock-in. How could that achieve it when you can just mosey on down to the app store and get a different reader — Kindle, say — and buy your content from them instead of Apple?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000490441
Apple will be using DRM, because the publishers won’t stand for it not being on content. Apple doesn’t make that much off content-sales anyway. Where it makes it’s money is devices. If anything, the possibility of buying e-books from Apple is likely mostly there to help iPad sales.
“Adobe delivered solid production platforms that helped power the digital content world but now present a risk in being able to own the gateway to the content”.
No. Adobe Digital Editions does not present any such risk. And “Inernet Explorer and even Mozilla” are not threatened by Adobe Digital Editions or iBooks.
In conclusion, Cringely is mistaken. The reasons Apple are pissed at Adobe have nothing to do with ebooks. They’re the reasons Jobs gave in his letter.
Bob did not get enough time to do the research for this article.
He was too busy surfing porn sites.
We might read something about internet porn next week.
You mean like the floppy disk?
I’m no programmer but a simple end user. I have no idea if Flash is or is not a resource hog or wonky but I can you this. It is SO ANNOYING it requires an opt out like spam email. Adobe decided to follow Real player’s model of updating it every 3 weeks FOR NO APPARENT REASON so I have stopped. AND I cannot see any evidence that Flash makes the web experience any better. Animated ads – me’h. Videos? I have YET to run across a video that’s not playing in another format. Sure, thre are some sites that do not run very well but if a corporation wants to turn their front door over to Adobe, great – that’s their choice. I’ll just move on. Flash is literally the animated GIF of the 21st century – just as the first 5 animated GIF’s were amusing, now, who cares – same with flash. Adobe is of course desperate thinking they stumbled upon an internet shortcut only to have Steve Jobs build the railroad over yonder so they are crying like the big baby who lost 50% of their margins but hey, grow up. It’s personal and its business – either way they lose.
Someone somewhere somehow is making money off these blights. The annoying ads won’t go away as Flash fades. They’ll just use straight h.264 and/or other HTML5 techs instead of Flash.
apple stinks!
I have a hard time sympathizing with either of them.
Adobe is at the stage of corporate evolution where they think they can be complacent fat cats like Microsoft was, rolling out expensive minor incremental upgrades of their creative tools as their money train. The fly in the ointment is that Adobe doesn’t have enough power to have their FUD techniques be taken seriously, and Flash is something only its mother could truly love.
Apple, now that it has a measure of control in areas beyond its traditional niche market, is flexing its muscles, and not always in a nice fashion. Jobs already lost one war, and is not going to let happen again, by any means necessary.
The real battle is for the developers and leading-edge users who are influencers, not the typical user who doesn’t move beyond the default browser or install plugins unless prompted. By that standard, Flash is strong, but the base is the equivalent of the 50+ ratings group, not the coveted 18-49.
What any of this has to do with e-books, I dunno, but Bob’s twists on things do result in the occasional air ball.
As usual the infantile “business mind” gets in the way of both the technology and its promise. Such a pity that so much hard technical work gets messed up like this. Bob’s idea that Apple feels its should have a monopoly over the distribution of eBooks is appalling – both that Bob can write this so casually and that Apple might think this way. I just want everyone involved to grow up, get with the programme of making non-tree intensive books available to the world and stop playing silly, selfish games. Won’t happen of course.
eBooks? Seriously???
There’s no money in selling content. The average iPod owner has purchased about 20 songs, with Apple making about $0.10 per song. How much has the average iPhone owner spent on apps? $20 maybe, with apple taking a 30% slice. How much could Apple possibly make from selling eBooks? Another $10 per person?
The money is in selling the $600 player with the 50% profit margin, not the $50 worth of media with the 30% profit margin. Apple doesn’t care what format the publishers sell their eBook files in, so long as there’s a format the iPad can play.
Where is Google in all of this? They are scanning books like crazy.
BTW, my Motorola Droid STILL does not have Flash.
Google to be bookseller by summer
Squeezing into bed with Apple and Amazon
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/05/google_editions/
Isn’t HTML 5 more than ten years away from being the standard? By that time there will probably another e-book format, or people will decide to consume books in another fashion, i.e. audio.
I have a theory that multimedia assisted reading will occur. Just as there are hyper links in html pages, so too in the future wave of reading. Why read about a description of a “dark and stormy night” when you can see an image of such. Have multimedia presentations of the main characters in a book ( a picture or video reading their lines). Have the option of the book read to you (audio) even as you are reading the words.
Good job on making it sound like a webkit browser is a webkit browser. Now go out and find a good webdeveloper and have him recreate some common Flash app like Picnik in HTML5 and that actually works (I’m gonna make it easy on you and not even ask it to look the same) on… say just TWO major webkit implementations. Lets talk again when he’s done. Shall we say in 6 years?
Speaking of Picnik, funny how Google just bought that Flash based image editor developer. You know, since their Chrome uses webkit and webkit is just seconds from taking over the world…
I wish Adobe had someone a little insane at the wheel. Their “scorched earth” campaign would be to open source Flash.
I’ll stick to the standard paper book, there much easiler to read and carry then the e versions
While reading the 40 or so negative comments about this weeks column, I found myself rereading the column several times to see what it was that Bob was saying that gets everyone so upset. I came up with nothing. I can only guess that there may be many stake holders and tree readers. Bob’s comments make sense as a response to Jobs’ anti-Adobe stance. Personally, I came kicking and screaming into the screen reading world as the periodicals I wanted to read just stopped printing. My UMPC changed my life, but for the average person trying to simplify their life, I imagine the eBook readers and the iPad will do.
“…Adobe is giving all of its employees free Google Android phones that run Flash”
Correction: WILL probably run Flash, as soon as Adobe makes good on its multi-year effort to port Flash from IE (the only place where it has a first-class implementation) to smartphones.
Cuz there isn’t a single smartphone today that runs Flash, even though only a small fraction bear the Apple logo.
Three years after Apple burst open the smartphone business, and Adobe could see that phones would be the Next Big Thing, no Flash on Phones. That Jobs has some mean voodoo.
And here’s even more fun about the Flash-savior Nexus: in the 7+ months that it’s been for sale, Adobe hasn’t managed to get Flash running on it. (Again, it must be Jobs’s fault.) But Google has already deprecated it, recommending users wait for the HTC Incredible. In other words, the phone is obsolete before Adobe got Flash running. Can you imagine Mark Hurd, bragging about his new WebOS tablet to replace the Win7 FrankenSlate, saying great things about what all it can do, the final leave-em-wowed words ringing in their ears, “…and we hope that by version 2, Adobe will deign to put Flash on our browser. Or maybe version 3.”
PDF works great across platforms because there’s a published standard that anybody can use. Flash documentation has lots of Copyright Adobe everywhere, and no reference implementation that engineers could rely on, even if they were assured that after committing to the technology, they wouldn’t be sued.
Meanwhile, publishing formats are small potatoes. The owner of original material can convert between all the popular formats — there are many — in the blink of an eye, using today’s freeware. So there may well be big business issues here, but those wouldn’t seem to be what format publishers use, unless Amazon or Adobe lock ’em up in exclusives.
Is Flash a pain and does it need to go away … yea pretty much ….. but
thats just a ‘convenient truth’ as this is about the iPad becoming the de-facto standard for NEW MEDIA publishing going forward. Nothing more. Never be distracted by what eBooks might cost at 1st. Becoming the standard for anything is in the end where the real money is. If the stakes were not that high Steve would never waste his time on it. You can always tell when something’s important to Steve and when its not.
Mmm,,il just stick to paper thanks and enjoy the genuine experience of a good book.
Flash will eventually die off and yes its old but rather than let it naturally fade out it would appear that god,,sorry, Steve Jobs, has chucked his toys out the pram and laced up the boxing gloves.
My money is on Flash and Prince Vultan for now….
When is a book not a book ?
. . . when it’s hypertext . . .
Bob,
Would it be too much trouble for you to put something in the MP3 metatdata? Things like Album=”I, Cringely”, and Artist=”Robert X. Cringely”, and a title.
The MP3’s have nothing to describe the content.
Otherwise, interesting listening.
About 2/3rds the way through the comments somebody finally got to the the crux but it never gained traction in the conversation:
Those utterly annoying animated ads that that we all try to filter out of our visual space as we decrypt these little squiggly black ciphers in the white space.
They suck far more bandwidth and power than the content that we seek but they pay the bills.
iAds is the answer. Looking forward to them popping up whenever and wherever Stevo wants them to on every iDevice near you.
Completely different topic: am now old enough to embrace the concept of enjoying ‘books’ without lugging around a stack of wrist bending, finger fatiguing 3″ thick, 3 pound chunks of bound paper.
You’re the first to mention iAds.
Yikes! You missed it again Bob. Jobs fifth point in his comments on Flash is touch. Jobs explained the fact that Flash rollovers don’t work with touch. Dilger beats the topic to death here.
https://www.roughlydrafted.com/2010/02/20/an-adobe-flash-developer-on-why-the-ipad-cant-use-flash/
The touch argument is a corollary of Jobs’ sixth argument about third party layers. Adobe would like to maintain a cross platform layer. Unfortunately Adobe’s idea of cross platform precludes multi-touch among other things.
For those who see no use for animation or video in books I recommend the animation here. Note that it is not Flash.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque
Textbooks are a key market for the iPad. Kindle cannot support textbooks because it does not have color and is too slow for animation. This type of animation will be a required feature of textbooks. Anyone who watched The Mechanical Universe must understand this.
The Mechanical Universe…Great series! I continue to watch it even though I’ve seen all the episodes. It’s on Time Warner Cable in San Diego Wednesdays @ 11:30 pm. (OK so I miss Jay’s and Dave’s comedy segments once a week.)
Or get it direct feed ( don’t know the format ) from :
https://www.learner.org/resources/series42.html
Thanks! Format not important since it just streams. Small res but ok on my umpc. Of course I find I’m more likely to watch it when I know it’s only available on TV on a limited schedule. I could have bought the DVD set a long time ago but then it would wind up on the shelf.
I dont trust Amazon and I trust Apple the least of all companies to give me the guarantees that my favorite book will be readable in 10yrs.
Weve seen how easy it is for YOUR purchase to be wiped clean off YOUR computer/device by these companies.
Unless they play to go Fahrenheit451 on all paper books, I know that my favorite books will be readable 10,30,50 yrs down the road.
None of these bastards are there to protect my rights and my freedoms so eff them all (an extra F for apple though!).
MM
Hi I found this webpage by scouring Yahoo and just wanted to say thanks for the guidance on selling. I sell my unused books at Book Turtle but will have to check this out!
I usually come here for fascinating, forward-looking and insightful analyses and predictions, but Bob, you’ve totally lost me on this one. The article is an incoherent mish-mash of mismatched technical flotsam and jetsam, something written in a hurry on a borrowed napkin from a commuter train ride, or a much longer article that was given to an intern to randomly hack down to size.
Your writings were much more snappy and zingy in the days of PBS yore. Now it seems that half of them are afterthoughts, and the other half I can barely bring myself to read.
Give me INTRIGUE or give me NULL.
Although I would’ve preferred if you went into a little bit more detail, I still got the core of what you meant. I agree with it. It might not be a great idea, but it makes sense. Will definitely come back for more of this.
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Does anyone know which type of video recordsdata are supported? I keep in mind the Instinct solely could dl 3gp using opera mini. I downloaded the twist ap, possibly that is the issue? How can I watch videos from websites aside from youtube? Which file types? Normally I’m given the choice of 3gp or mpeg4. Can’t get either to work. Thank you for your time! Damn I wish I used to be eligible for the upgrade to EVO!
3d movies are so cool, i just wish that we could watch 3d movies on TV’“
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