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Guessing Shape of Elephant? Easy. iSlate? Hard
Do twenty rumors add up to one truth? Maybe. Like the blind men in the fable who try to infer the shape of an elephant by touching its body parts, countless Apple-watchers ranging from savvy geeks to...
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Is Apple Tablet Real or Mythical?
When Kassia Krozser referred to the forthcoming Apple tablet as the “Apple Unicorn” I emailed her to ask if she knew something that no civilian outside of Apple knows. Or was it a joke? If it was a...
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Ladies and Gentlemen, Start Your Apps
The other day we reported that Apple-watchers have taken to calling the imminent tablet The Unicorn because of all the magical properties being attributed to it – and because, of course, no one has...
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Apple Delivers a Cool Tool
After a gestation longer than an elephant, speculation characterized by preposterous fantasies, and a delivery witnessed by millions, Apple finally brought forth a bouncing baby iPad. Not since the...
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Macmillan Hurls Itself (and Its Authors) Against Amazon’s $9.99 Wall
Macmillan authors concerned about the fate of their Kindle editions in the hot war that broke out over the weekend between their publisher and Amazon may have no choice but to take the long view as the...
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Cupertino Super Bowl Shaping Up: Amazon Hopes to Sack Apple with Touchscreen...
The New York Times‘s Nick Bilton and Brad Stone report the acquisition by Amazon of Touchco, a tiny New York startup that makes touchscreens boasting features superior to and cheaper than rivals...
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Random Goes Rogue
TrueSlant.com blogger Roger Theriault has picked up a story from the MobileRead forums that Random House will go against the recent rush by its Big Six buddies to the “agency” e-book retail model...
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Microsoft Snoozed Its Way Through Tablet Revolution, Says Former Veep
I’ve often said that the e-book revolution will not reach its tipping point until there’s a tablet under the arm of every student on campus. Though the Apple iPad is the first significant advance in...
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Inkling Cuts Textbooks into Inexpensive Bite-Sized Morsels
“There are lots of schoolkids in the world,” writes Tyler Cowen on the Marginal Revolution website. We were thinking the same thing. In fact, we were thinking it a decade ago when we leaped into the...
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E-books on Your iPad? Sure, as Long as You Install App
iPad Default Application Checklist Calendar – check Contacts – check Notes – check Maps – check Videos – check YouTube – check iTunes – check App Store – check Settings – check Safari – check Mail –...
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App.Edu – Classroom Apps for Everything But Shooting Rubber Bands
Two representatives of Aptara, the digital solutions company, have offered a terrific scenario of a typical school room of the future in which everybody’s using a tablet. It’s just what we imagined...
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Cory Doctorow Steers Clear of Roach Motels
Since Cory Doctorow began writing a monthly column for Publishers Weekly (see What Can Publishers Learn from Cory Doctorow?) we’ve been monitoring it, because Doctorow never wants for fresh insights...
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David Pogue Digs the iPad (with an Asterisk)
David Pogue, the wonderful blogger who tells technology like it is for the New York Times, has weighed iPad in the balance and found it not wanting. He’s also weighed it on a scale and found it heavy...
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Get Your Bets Down: Apple vs. Amazon
Content and features spun off from January’s Digital Book World conference are being generated by the DBW website, and from time to time we’ll pick up the feed in case you aren’t following its postings...
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“Agency” Retail Model Raises Spectre of E-Book Sales Tax
Do you think there’s enough confusion and acrimony surrounding the “agency” e-book retail model (see Apple Promoting a New (and Radical) Business Model for Selling E-Books?). If you don’t, there’s a...
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Cory Doctorow Boycotts the iPad
“Does the company that makes your toaster get to tell you whose bread you can buy?” That’s just one of a series of inspired metaphors employed by Cory Doctorow to express his irritation with e-book...
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Are We Capitulated Yet? Amazon Turns Its Guns on Penguin
Who can forget the hot war that broke out last January between Macmillan and Amazon, ending with Amazon capitulating? (See Publishing’s Weekend War: 48 Hours that Changed an Industry) But if you...
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Apple, It’s All Yours. MS, HP Throw in Towel on Tablets
From TechNewsWorld First Blood Spilled in the New Tablet Wars by Renay San Miguel “Two in-development tablet devices that seemed intriguing as details were slowly revealed over the last few months have...
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Penguin and Amazon Friend Each Other
According to top Penguin executives, writes Wall Street Journal‘s Jeffrey Trachtenberg, the company has reached a detente with Amazon to conclude a price war that lasted about a month. The behemoth...
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$99 E-Reader in Sight as Kindle and Nook Duke it Out
The back page of today’s (June 22 2010) New York Times news section carries a full page ad for Barnes & Noble’s Nook e-book reader. The price is $149.00 for a Wi-Fi only version. But the price of...
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Why Kindle-Killers Haven’t Killed Kindle
R. I. P. “Kindle-killer.” After posting countless blogs using the phrase we are hereby retiring it – subject to our right to change our minds on the day that a device comes along that truly...
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Can You Be Sued for Turning a Page?
Patent attorneys are the ticks of the Digital Age. After quietly applying for a patent they set up their nest on a tree branch and patiently wait – sometimes for years – until a fat cat walks...
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Amazon, Apple and Microsoft Merge – in One Word
Let’s see if we have this straight. According to Inquirer, Amazon has created a free shopping app for iPad, the tablet manufactured by its bitter rival Apple. And for the name of its app Amazon has...
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Microsoft Re-re-re-relaunches Tablet
If Microsoft keeps introducing the tablet, will they finally get it right? We’re about to find out. At next month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, MS will present what, by our count, is its...
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A Magazine Leaps Successfully into Cyberspace
Until recently, Guardian columnist John Naughton was so dedicated to his subscription to The Economist magazine that every weekend he made an “appointment” to immerse himself in his cherished...
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Take One Tablet in the Morning. But Which One?
Soon the Chinese will celebrate The Year of The Rabbit. The rest of us will celebrate The Year of the Tablet. Apple’s runaway success with the iPad has spawned an army of emulators and imitators that...
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iPad News Daily, Murdoch’s Bold Gamble, Launches Today
Trailing sparks of intense controversy since the day it was announced, The Daily goes live today. The Daily is the news app created exclusively for the iPad by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. The only...
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Random, Last Big Six Holdout, Embraces Agency Model
After taking a year to consider its options and observe how e-book retailers were faring with the agency model, Random House today announced it was committing itself to that model, the last of the Big...
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A Project Gutenberg for Music Scores
Nothing stands in the way of the digital steamroller. In industry after industry, sooner or later some bright person looks at a conventional enterprise and wonders why it’s being performed the old way...
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Who Owns “iBook”?
Not long ago, in connection with a patent lawsuit over the touchscreen page-turning function of certain e-books, we wrote: “Patent attorneys are the ticks of the Digital Age. After quietly applying for...
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Après Steve Jobs, Le Board?
Ultimately, the boss Which is more effective, an autocracy or a democracy? A monarchy or a republic? A fiat by one person or decision by committee? That’s the question raised by Randall Stross in the...
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Steve Jobs Looks Mortality in the Eye
He is Steve Jobs. Look upon his works, ye Mighty, and despair. Early in 2009, when Jobs’ was forced to temporarily give up leadership of Apple in order to combat pancreatic cancer, we reminded our...
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Task #1 for Apple’s New CEO: Amazon Tablet
Apple’s new CEO Tim Cook was just welcomed with a goody bag filled with 1 million shares of his company’s stock. That was the easy part. Now he’s going to have to earn it. But as much as he would like...
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When Steve Jobs Looked Mortality in the Eye
The following piece was written last August, less than two months before the death of Steve Jobs. ****************************** Steve Jobs Looks Mortality in the Eye He is Steve Jobs. Look upon his...
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Stop Presses: Publisher Has Something Good to Say about Amazon
Stephen Roxburgh, founder of a small press called namelos llc., has written a guest editorial in Publishers Weekly defending Amazon.com against accusations of predatory behavior and thanking it for its...
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New Apple Educational Tool Needs to Educate Users about Copyright
In a much-anticipated press event, Apple today introduced a textbook app it calls iBooks2. The company described it as an educational tool and, given how quickly and completely kids take to the iPad,...
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Time for More Transparency for Those Glossy Screens
They say you shouldn’t look to closely at how laws and sausages are made. To that short list we have to add many modern conveniences and appliances. Among these are tablets and e-book readers. Evidence...
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Grim Reality for Americans: Some Outsourced Jobs Aren’t Coming Back
“We don’t have an obligation to solve America’s problems.” an Apple executive recently told a reporter. “Our only obligation is making the best product possible.” That says in a nutshell what many...
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Compliance with DOJ Settlement: Slightly Better Than House Arrest
After complying with the draconian reporting requirements imposed by the Department of Justice, the three publishers that have settled to avoid prosecution may wish they’d fought the charges. The...
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The Restaurant Wasn’t Kosher, and Neither Was the Conversation
Something Fishy Served Up at Picholine? Is this a joke? A Melville House posting by Kelly Burdick has allegedly unearthed email exchanges among executives of some Big Six Publishers plus Steve Jobs of...
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USA v. Apple, Hachette, HarperCollins, Holtzbrinck, Penguin and Simon & Schuster
Case 1:12-cv-02826-UA Document 5 Filed 04/11/12 Page 1 of 22 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK _________________________________________ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,...
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Was Apple on the Conspiracy-Dinner Menu?
“Is this a joke? Are we being punked?” That’s what we asked when we cautiously reprinted an alleged email thread setting up a dinner among executives of major publishing companies to discuss “The $9.99...
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Cheaper E-Books Coming?
If you seek cogency on digital publishing subjects you’ll always find it in Laura Hazard Owen’s postings. A good example is a recent one on the implications for consumers of the settlement agreements...
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Microsoft Tablet – AGAIN?
They say that the third time is the charm. But the 430,344th? At least it feels like that’s how many times Microsoft has launched a tablet, not counting the one that was launched to promote the...
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Authors Guild Takes DOJ to Task for its Price-Fixing Suit Against Publishers
Paul Aiken, Executive Director of the Authors Guild, has issued an open letter to the chief of litigation in the Department of Justice’s antitrust division, expressing its opposition to the DOJ’s...
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Price-Fix Trial to Start on Opening Day of BEA
Don’t be surprised if the Macmillan booth at next year’s Book Expo America is set up in the courtroom of Judge Denise Cote. It happens that the date when the Department of Justice’s e-book...
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Apple Drowning in Money. Any to Spare for Small Fry?
It’s fun to fantasize about what you would do with a million dollars. Fantasizing about what you’d do with $117 billion is likely to induce paralysis. Luckily it’s not your problem. That honor belongs...
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Settlers to Refund $69 Mil to Overcharged Customers
Publishers Lunch‘s Michael Cader reports that the three Big Six publishers settling the Department of Justice price-fixing lawsuit will be refunding to customers some $69 million in overcharges...
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Apple Corners Page-Turn Technology
The ticks are at it again I’m really confused. On November 16, New York Times blogger Nick Bilton reported that the US Patent Office had approved Apple’s patent on the feature that enables you to...
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