westmeadboy said:
It's important to note, I didn't say "here is a fair comparison...". I said this is worth reading. It's worth reading other stuff too before making any decision. The only thing I wouldn't recommend is Apple's keynote because of all the mis-information it spreads (e.g. using debunked misquotes!).
He used one. One debunked misquote. Yes, in its other content it was certainly pro-iPad, but it was an
APPLE PRESS CONFERENCE - I'd find this article significantly less objectionable if it came from Motorola's marketing department.
westmeadboy said:
I bet most people considering the two tablets would be quite surprised by some of the stuff in there. A lot of people really do not realise what they cannot do on an iPad (e.g. accessing (from your PC) your device as if it were a harddrive). Some people don't care, but some people do and need to know these things before purchasing.
The differences are worth highlighting, but not if you're doing it in such a slanted way. The people who care about these things probably aren't going to be surprised by much of what's in this article anyway, and people who don't really understand them might be moved more by the tone than the content - it's dangerous to read too many opinion pieces when you're not qualified to understand their arguments (or even aware that they're opinion pieces).
westmeadboy said:
But Mike, I'd be interested to know what you tell people (or what site you point them to) when they ask you, "What are the reasons against buying an iPad?".
Actually I don't encourage people to buy tablets at all; I'm happy to write software for them as long as people keep buying them, but I almost never use my iPad except for software testing. The things I want to do with a large screen generally involve content-creation and for that I'd rather have a netbook.
ogami_ito said:
I was in a business meeting with a comic and movies production / publishing company in Hong Kong about a month ago. A lot of the meeting was about the challenges of electronic publishing of comics for a China market (actually, the challenge of making money off of it). The manager I talked with mentioned that in Hong Kong, there is a government push to distribute textbooks and regular books in electronic (presumably epub) formats.
Q #1: Do you know anything about this?
Hadn't heard, no - interesting.
ogami_ito said:
My understanding is that with iPad, you can only buy things through iTunes, but a "channel fee" of 30% is charged. You can sideload free epubs. I imagine you can buy-to-download epubs and pdfs and then load them. But in this manner, the vendor has little IP protection. I have heard that there are provisions for free - educational content distribution outside of itunes.
Q#2 Have you heard anything about that?
You can buy things in other ways; Apple's recently instituted a policy of requiring vendors that offer on-device purchasing to offer Apple's system as an option, but there seems to be some wiggle room in it since Amazon's selling Kindle books without using Apple's system. Possibly because it's not actually possible to purchase a Kindle book on your device except through Safari.
Loading free books is very easy, though - can be done through iTunes or a web browser.
ogami_ito said:
With Android devices, there is also the "channel" fee of 30% for epubs. One can put multiple content markets on the device, but non-Google Markets cannot be distributed through the Market.
Q#3 Well... how are Nook and that other reader (forgot what its called... from Amazon I think) market working? They distribute their market on Google Market, and give to Google 30% of their market earnings?
I assume Google's granting them the same exception that Apple does - it's OK as long as you don't actually sell the books in-app but rather on a web page.
ogami_ito said:
So my speculation... if some governments or educational institutions are pressing for e-publishing, is it likely that they would standardize around a single third-party market (ie. iTunes). Would there not be incentive for the institutions to use markets which they themselves control, and thus promote devices which allow the installation of those markets ... such as unlocked Android devices?
I don't think DRM for ebooks is going to last, for the same reason it didn't last for music files - it's clear that DRM irritates users and is not essential to make money off of (mass-market-priced) content, and at some point publishers are going to decide that they'd rather keep 95% of the price selling DRM-free books off of their own websites than keep 70% selling them through Amazon's and Apple's.
From my own experience, most of the publishers we deal with have pretty much resigned themselves to piracy as a matter of course now, and with several it's actually been a pretty big shift in the last ~5 years as ebooks have become more popular; they hardly even ask about encryption systems and whatnot anymore.
So basically I think the question is going to become irrelevant long before publishers start thinking about standardizing around one platform or another. Not that I imagine they're particularly keen to anyway - unlocked or not, they don't want to be in the position of giving Google that kind of power; it may run their store, but it's still Google's platform and Google can do all kinds of other bad things to them if they so choose.
BUT BUT BUT... Foxconn really sucks and the model which Apple is using, and the partners it has do have a worse record than Samsung. And what is extremely clear to me is that operations at Foxconn are very corrupt and they uses mafia tactics to control its workforce. They would have to in order to control factories of the size they use and prevent unionization. I'm not guessing this BTW. I've talked to many lawyers, bloggers, Chinese Labor Union (ie. Party) reps, reporters, about this topic. 
