Live from the Fortress of Ultimate Dorkness

11:40-ish: So I made it back under the wire, and I'm ready to write about the launch. Whatever my theories about the publishing industry, I'm an Apple fan, so this is a pretty exciting day. I'll be updating this post throughout the day. Fair warning, my mouth is still numb and my dentist released mad dogs, crazed wolverines and badgers that flew about with the wings of bats into my mouth less than an hour ago - so I feel that should be taken into account when you read this post. Seriously, he did a great job and I'm thrilled to back in time to write this.

1:00: Getting ready for the start of the event.

1:03: Here we go - Steve Jobs is discussing sales to date on iPods, the Apple retail store, the App store and other miscellany. Make with the sexy tablet already!

1:12: It's called the iPad, is rather pretty (imagine a greatly oversized iPod Touch with a little different UI. It has a dock!

1:42-ish: Yep, The New York Times will have custom app ready for the tablet. Surprise? I guess? Looks the the Times reader will do flash based movies as well. No word on whether iPad Safari will support Flash, but I suspect it won't just like the rest of the iPhone OS family.

1:54-ish: Yep, now we're looking at iBook. Time to perk up your ears and have a shot of coffee. The bookshelf interface looks a great deal like aNobii.

1:58-ish: Introduces the iBook store which has a lot of big publishers behind it: Harper Collins, Hachette, Pengin, Simon Schuster and MacMillan. Works like iTunes and look like it may be ePub based (Apple supports the ePub format) - this is possibly good news. If true it means you can buy product from other stores on the web (so long as they support ePub), or import your own content.

2:00-ish: They've moved on to iWork, Apple's Office suite. Which is pretty nifty - I want to talk more about the book stuff in my wrap up though. I do like the fact that there will be an honest to the Big Whatever word processor available for this thing. That's great, and it's something I miss on my iPod Touch. Now if somebody would just create a port for iPod Touch and maybe a decent text editor - maybe one as good as Text Wrangler . . .


Mostly they've been focusing on presentation type work though, I can see this as being a good device for that.

Steve Jobs is going over the 3g (cellular internet) service available for the iPad. $14.99/mo prepaid for 250mb/month plan or $29.99 for unlimited data through AT&T. Free use of AT&T wi-fi hotspots, no contract required. That's pretty reasonable. The units with 3g capabilities cost $130.00 more though. Pricing without 3g $499.99 for 16gb, $599.99 for 32gb, $699.99 for 64gb. Not bad at all.

Wi-fi only models will be available in sixty days, 3g models will be available in 90 days.

Annnnnnd that's the show, folks. I'll do my wrap up in a separate post later on. See you then.

The Apple Tablet - Publishing's Savior?

So here we are, on the eve of the launch of Apple's tablet. I suspect I'll be missing the launch, and I'm a little bit cross about that. I'll probably be spending some quality time (and a lot of money) at the dentist.

So instead of rejoicing in what will likely be a fine product, let's do a little speculation. The publishing industry seems to betting all in on this product being their saving grace. The paper of record is putting its paywall back up. Yep, as of tomorrow, no more free content for you! Magazines are just as anxious. But I'm wondering if they've really thought this through.

As the industry seems to be committed to making all the mistakes that the music industry made in their struggle with the internet, I believe the best case scenario is that this is what will happen. That Apple's product is successful beyond their wildest dreams, people forget all those silly ideas they had about creating their own content and go back to reading, listening to and consuming someone else's. Worked out alright for the music industry with iTunes, right?

Not so fast. iTunes did do a lot to put the music industry's marker online, but not in the way that they wanted. They went from a very tightly structured oligopoly, an industry where a few large companies dominated the landscape, to having the industry dominated by one man - in the computer industry. Steve Jobs. Last I checked, iTunes was second only to Wal-Mart as a music retailer, so Mr. Jobs could and did get pretty much anything he wanted. Including $.99 per track for a very long time indeed. He also got rid of the publisher's DRM, which was a net good thing. In addition to putting Apple as a huge player in music retail, a lot of artists - major artists got the idea that maybe they didn't need a label. That they could make a lot more money by using the tools available on the internet to bring their work to their fans. Not a short list by any means, it included Nine Inch Nails, David Byrne, and Radiohead.

But let's look at the alternative to a successful Apple tablet. What if it's another Newton - which oddly enough helped pave the way for iPhone OS, Apple TV or G4 Cube? I think it's unlikely, but anything is possible. I think iPhone OS is pretty solid, great for people who aren't very computer savvy and has a nice wide range of potential applications even if it's a flop as an eReader. But what if it does turn out to be a dud, what does that mean for Apple and the publishing industry? Apple will shake it off, as it has in the past. We'll see it in the store for a few years and then it will quietly disappear. The consequences for the publishing industry are another matter. Many, like The New York Times have already assumed its success. If it fails, even if they tear the paywall back down, how many customers will have decided that they can find their news and commentary elsewhere?

In either case, how long will it be before authors realize what musicians figured out a long time ago? That publishers need them a great deal more than they need publishers?