After months of speculation, we finally know something about the Apple tablet: Not a single woman was involved in the marketing of this product.
How do I know? Because as soon as the tablet’s name was announced, Twitter became an alphabet soup of OMGs and WTFs and LOLs. The ridicule of the name by women tweeters was swift and unanimous. The iPad? Really?! Oh, brother.
All kidding aside, this thing looks pretty cool. Of particular interest to publishers and authors is the iBooks store. From Apple, via GalleyCat:
“The iBooks app is a great, new way to read and buy books. Just download the app for free from the App Store, and you’ll be able to buy everything from classics to bestsellers from the built-in iBookstore. Once you’ve bought a book, it’s displayed on your Bookshelf. To read it, all you have to do is tap on it and it opens up. The high-resolution, LED-backlit screen displays everything in sharp, rich, color, so it’s very easy to read, even in low light.”
In the demo during today’s presentation, books were selling in the iBooks store for $14.99, $12.99, and $10.99. I’m sure there will be more to come on pricing and how it compares with Amazon. Mister pointed out, though, that since Kindle has an app for the iPhone, it will have an app for the iPad. Which means that you could still pay the lower price on Amazon and read it on the new iPad. But it would be a Kindle file, probably without bells and whistles the new device and/or iBooks app offers. (The coverage of iBooks starts about 53 minutes into the video, if you feel like watching.)
Interestingly, Random House was not included in the list of major publishers on board, so we’ll have to stay tuned to see what happens there.
From an ebook standpoint, here’s what people seem to be saying:
Pros:
- Everybody seems surprised about the price being so low — the cheapest model is $499. Many publishing people were expecting $1,000 or just under. It also sound like it will be available soon-ish.
- When reading, you can reorient the device horizontally and look at a two-page spread, just like with a real book. Page-turning is also nice and looks similar to the Eucalyptus app for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which Mister loves.
- People seem to like the Classics on the iPhone app and that seems to be how iBooks will work.
- Beautiful four-color display makes Kindle look very unappealing indeed.
Cons
- Design-heavy books will take up a lot of space on the 16G hard drive.
- Publishers will have to create separate Kindle and iPad editions. If you own a Kindle and Kindle book files, you won’t be able to transfer those over to the iPod.
- All the usual worries about ebooks: how can we share them with each other, what do you actually own, etc.
Also, some people are complaining about the fact that it doesn’t have a camera (But why would you want to take pictures with it? It’s too big.) and that you can’t use more than one app at a time (for example, reading Moby Dick and checking your email every five seconds in the background). But this is the price you pay for TEN HOURS of battery life.
Thoughts?
UPDATE: Discussion on Twitter is now trending as #itampon. I rest my case.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Thoughts? I’m glad you asked.
I read a *lot* of books on my iPod. I use both “Eucalyptus” and “Stanza”. Eucalyptus is for anything available through Project Gutenberg, and Stanza is for books that I buy. The iBooks app has an interface that reminds me of Eucalyptus — which makes me very happy — and it relies on the same epub format that Stanza and a number of non-Kindle readers use. It’s nice to have an open format so that I can comfortably use documents across a variety of devices. It also keeps the DRM from being too draconian.
But is that enough? I mean, why would I buy one of these iPad doohickeys when I already have a perfectly good iPod to read on? Because most of my reading isn’t the sort of things I was referring to above — it’s physics and math papers that don’t translate to the limited screen real-estate of the iPod. Equations can’t be re-flowed to fit on the smaller screen. It just doesn’t work. The iPod is great for reading an abstract, but — and pardon my French here, gentle reader — trying to make it through a whole paper blows. The iPad, on the other hand, seems just right. The ability to add handwritten annotations would just be gravy … extremely sexy gravy.
So, dear bride, may we please buy an iPad?
At first I saw it and totally wanted it. Now after seeing this video I’m not so sure. Check it out:
http://www.funnyordie.co.uk/videos/167d70800c/the-ipad
(Useless trivia: The guy in this vid is the voice (not body) of Darth Maul)
I second Mister’s complaint about reading technical stuff on the iPod (in my case the iPhone). The Kindle isn’t any better in that regard. So the iPad would be nice just because it has a larger screen. Of course, this is the minimum that I expect out of a device that purports to be a computer.
But I’m not sure that I understand exactly what this device is. For only $500 there’s no way that it has the calculating power of a regular computer, so it doesn’t appear useful as stand-in for a laptop. If I was made of money (instead of regret and gin) then I’d surely buy one. But it doesn’t look like it’s in the stars, given my budget and the fact that it appears to be a luxury device. On the other hand, UBC has offered to buy me a laptop so maybe this could count.
I’m just excited to indulge in my espionage tendencies as I read over the shoulders of train riders who get a seat in the morning rush. That and to have something handy to put in my pants when my time of the month comes too early.
iPAD? iACCEPT.
WHOA.