I’ve talked a lot about Amazon on this blog. I haven’t said much about Apple. Mostly, that’s because the subjects of “Apple” and “Writing” rarely cross paths in the news.
But they’ve crossed paths, recently, with the reveal of the new EULA for Apple’s iBooks Author platform. And the early reviews are, shall we say, not stellar. Says techie guru Ed Bott from ZDNet (a prominent tech industry web-zine), this EULA is “mind-bogglingly greedy” – effectively forcing the users of Apple’s iBooks Author platform to sell publications created in that platform exclusively through Apple’s iBooks/iTunes store.
To follow that up, they appear to be taking aim at ebook publishing standards with the probable goal of removing the open standard EPUB version from competition with their new iBooks format.
And of course… you’ll need a $500 iPad to buy those fancy new iBooks. Because, hey, cool, interactive books! Who doesn’t have half-a-grand to drop just for the right to maybe purchase interactive books sold exclusively by Apple? (Answer: I, for one, do not yet own an iPad, nor any other variety of tablet/slate computer. So do a lot of other people. And I’m not exactly on the “poor” end of the rich-poor spectrum. I’m not on the “rich” end, either, but I’m still on the “can’t afford to spend frivolously on an iPad” end.)
So lest it be said that I’m simply an Amazon-hater because of the many posts that I’ve written about Amazon that are potentially read as negative, let it therefore be shown that it’s not Amazon, per se, that get’s me: it’s anything that hurts writers and/or readers and favors corporations who have nothing to do with either and/or which is anticompetitive. Those sorts of things? I’m not a fan of them. I’m a really huge un-fan of them.