Will Apple save publishing?
Friday, December 14th, 2007
I’m not really in the business of predicting the details of Apple product releases, but I do have a good feeling for what they are capable of, having been a Mac user since 1986. Today, I’d like to say what I hope they will announce at Macworld on January 15, 2008. I say this not from having spoken to any Apple employees, ex-employees, or subcontractors to Apple on any continent. This is just what I hope they will announce because it is the product I want to buy and use.
There’s a much rumored “ultra-thin-laptop” with a 13.5 inch screen (same size as the current MacBook) that will sport only flash memory and sell for about $1,500. Then there’s the less popular rumor of an Apple Tablet computer, equally small, featuring some kind of touch screen, but declared unlikely since Microsoft-based vendors have pretty much killed the tablet category.
The problem with both such products is that they are small markets without some killer app or new usability. Personally, I’d buy an under two pound MacBook, because I like to travel light, but those of us who would like such a thing may not be a big enough market.
I hope Apple will change the world again because authors and readers of books need a technological solution to the problem of manufacturing books and getting them into reader’s hands. Here’s how Apple can do this. Apple has iPod-class-success with the iPhone and has also been selling a solid state iPod with the iPhone’s touch screen called the iPod Touch; basically, an iPhone without the phone. What’s promising about these devices is that the iPhone’s touch screen interface allows the user to flick though PDF, MS Word and text files in a way that feels like turning the page in a book. Reading a lot of text on an iPhone or iPod Touch is not very attractive because of the 3 1/2 inch screen, but it is possible and the interface feels right. Click off to the Apple web site for the demo movies on the iPhone and iPod Touch if you aren’t familiar with the way they work. So I’m hoping Apple’s new product will be… pause for dramatic effect …
The MacBook Touch
Think of an iPod Touch scaled up to a 13 1/2 inch screen but not much thicker. It’s a slate, a simple glass book, in which you can see pages of text or pages of media or videos, but has no physical keyboard like today’s laptops. You don’t need a physical keyboard to read a book. It surfs the web whenever it’s in a WiFi zone, does everything a MacBook can do when linked to the existing Apple Wireless Keyboard and has both the touchscreen interface and its virtual keyboard. The current Apple touch interface: pinch to change the size of the text and images, flick to turn pages, rotate the device to switch from portrait to landscape, is already ten thousand times better than the Sony or Kindle’s clunky buttons.
Here’s where we book people have to change our thinking. Everyone’s been assuming an ebook reader has to be a special purpose gadget that poorly mimics a book while trapping the consumer in a business model that ties the reading experience to the vendor’s device, file encoding format and sales channel. The Amanzon Kindle is a fine example of this kind of thinking. As an agent, I can grasp the idea of some sort of limit on free re-distribution of duplicates of the electronic book, but I can’t get used to limits on how and where the book is read. Publishing has survived hundreds of years with no control of what happens to a purchased book. You can read it sitting in your chair, at your desk, on a plane or give it to your nephew or a total stranger. What I can’t get on with is the limit of reading something only on one single platform or when tethered to the shop that sold it. How many books would be sold if when you bought a Random House or Putnam novel, you had to read it by the light of the publisher’s light bulb and store it in a bookcase made or licensed by the publisher.Book people, including many readers, say, “we will never give up the paper book.” Yet, our reading habits have already changed. We already read more on our PCs than we read in magazines and lots of types of books. We read personal mail, business documents, play games for enjoyment, and read the stuff we just wrote on screens. What I want is one thin device that is portable like a book, but on which I can read anything pretty much anywhere. The iPod does this well for music and has sold over 120 million units. A thin MacBook touch could do this for documents. And being a MacBook, even if I have to flip it over or haul out the Wireless Keyboard for serious typing, it’s a computer too.
So without making the user accept another special purpose device or subscribe to a new proprietary service, Apple will have the world’s best electronic reader. Sure, you can expect books bought from iTunes Bookstore to have some kind of DRM, but since it reads PDF and text files too, it should be easy to download your own documents from your PC, Mac or the net. A MacBook touch would be a non-proprietory device that can read proprietary formats, as well as your company’s secure documents, since it is really a Mac laptop. What is not to like about this?
Now for the key objection.
It’s too expensive. Cost was the big objection everyone made about the first iPods and look how that prediction turned out. My hoped-for device would be too expensive if it was a traditionally visualized book reading machine like all those that were cheaper, had faint, gray screens, and failed. But would it be too expensive for a flat, touch-screen news, magazine and book reader that reads every web site in the world in full color? Would it be too expensive as a portable wide-screen movie player (sans DVD drive), music player and audio book player? Probably not.
So this is what I hope Apple will announce. If I’ve accidentally blown some of Apple’s secrets, I apologize. If Apple is reading this and didn’t quite think of this product yet, well, get to work on making it. Readers need this. The publishing industry needs this. I’ll buy the first one.
