Motorola’s Buzzwords 

Seems like their caps lock key works.

New York Times Goes Deeper on Chinese Apple Factory Working Conditions 

Charles Duhigg and David Barboza, reporting for the New York Times:

“Apple never cared about anything other than increasing product quality and decreasing production cost,” said Li Mingqi, who until April worked in management at Foxconn Technology, one of Apple’s most important manufacturing partners. Mr. Li, who is suing Foxconn over his dismissal, helped manage the Chengdu factory where the explosion occurred.

“Workers’ welfare has nothing to do with their interests,” he said.

Tim Cook responded in a company-wide email.

Thursday, 26 January 2012

Make That Two 

Analyst Ed Zabitsky sees AAPL shares falling to $270:

The reason for his bearish view of the company is that Zabitsky believes the competing Android mobile operating system from Google “will change the playing field entirely” with its latest 4.0 update, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich. He says the experience on the updated platform is on par with Apple’s iOS.

There’s Always One 

Thomas Kee is doubling down on his advice to sell Apple short:

My purpose here is NOT to suggest that sales of iPhones are going to decline aggressively, even though I firmly believe AAPL products do not carry with them the competitive advantages they once did. Instead, I am suggesting that sales growth like what we have been witness to will not continue at the same rate. This stall is coming, it is closer than most people think, and what we were just witness to is likely the peak in this growth cycle.

The State of Apple 

If you’re at Macworld Expo, come see Jason Snell, Andy Ihnatko, and yours truly on stage at 4pm speaking about the state of Apple. If you’re not at Macworld Expo, shame on you, but you can watch online at Macworld.com.

Wednesday, 25 January 2012

Nvidia and AMD Blame Hard Drive Shortages for Poor GPU Sales 

Sean Hollister, The Verge:

Yes, you read that headline right: despite the fact that neither AMD nor Nvidia manufacture a product that requires a magnetic drive, both claim that the hard drive shortages that resulted from the 2011 Thailand flood disaster impacted their ability to sell graphics processors, and ultimately their bottom line. Both AMD CEO Rory Read and Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang had said last quarter that they didn’t expect any impact at all from the floods — “it’s really a non-factor,” said Huang — but Nvidia just told the world that it may have earned roughly $116 million less revenue than the company originally expected due to the hard drive shortage (as well as Tegra 2 decline), and AMD told investors that it saw “a little bit of pressure in terms of hard disk” during its earnings call today.

Sure, that’s the explanation — not that demand for Windows PCs is drying up. I’m surprised Nvidia couldn’t make up the difference with Tegra 2 chipsets that powering all those best sellers on the “non-iPad tablets” list.

Con Artist Starred in Government Sting on Google 

Thomas Catania, reporting for the WSJ:

The government’s case also contained potentially embarrassing allegations that top Google executives, including co-founder Larry Page, were told about legal problems with the drug ads.

Mr. Page, now Google’s chief executive, knew about the illicit conduct, said Mr. Neronha, the U.S. attorney for Rhode Island who led the multiagency federal task force that conducted the sting. “We simply know from the documents we reviewed and witnesses we interviewed that Larry Page knew what was going on,” he said in an interview after the August settlement.

Everyone who’s surprised, raise your hand.

Crickets.

Zynga Shamelessly Rips Off Indie Game 

Eli Hodapp, writing for TouchArcade:

It doesn’t take more than a few quick glances at the screenshots and iTunes text to realize that Zynga has firmly focused their copy machines on NimbleBit’s Tiny Tower. It’s really incredibly just how blatant of a clone this is, as Zynga has gone far beyond just copying the premise of the game — they even directly lifted the restocking mechanics, elevator upgrades, UI elements, and more.

Looks like someone’s angling for an acquisition by Samsung.

Apple vs. PC Shipments: ‘PC’ Decline Worse Than Reported 

Tom Reestman on numbers from Gartner and IDC that show “PC” sales slipping but Mac sales growing:

It makes sense until you realize Apple’s (i.e., Mac) data is included in the same total to which it’s being compared. In other words, Apple’s stellar year is propping up the “PC” (i.e., non-Mac) numbers, making “PC” shipments look better than they really were. If you truly want to know how Apple did in the US on its own against “PCs”, you must subtract it from the latter’s numbers. […]

The originally reported dismal “PC” growth of -5.9% becomes an even more dismal -8.5% without Apple’s numbers propping it up. That -2.6% delta is not insignificant, it’s over 40% worse than what was reported.

Ding-dong, the Wintel witch is starting to slowly wither away.

Phone Size: Web-Based Phone Size Comparison 

Gives you a good sense of just how big phones like the Galaxy Nexus and HTC Titan are.

Picture of RIM Co-CEOs Resigning 

That’s about right.

‘Take Your Medicine’ 

Speaking of Kottke, I love this Gawker story by Adrian Chen he just linked to, about a freelance hacker who, among other things, sets up prepaid cell phone networks for criminal rings, a la The Wire:

With Martin’s system, each crewmember gets a cell phone that operates using a prepaid SIM card; they also get a two-week plastic pill organizer filled with 14 SIM cards where the pills should be. Each SIM card, loaded with $50 worth of airtime, is attached to a different phone number and stores all contacts, text messages and call histories associated with that number, like a removable hard drive. This makes a new SIM card effectively a new phone. Every morning, each crewmember swaps out his phone’s card for the card in next day’s compartment in the pill organizers. After all 14 cards are used, they start over at the first one.

Each day’s SIM is preprogrammed with the numbers for the other members’ phones for that day:

As long they all swap out their cards every day, the contacts in the phones stay in sync. (They never call anyone but each other on the phones.) Crewmembers will remind each other to “take their medicine,” Martin said.

Filters All the Way Down 

Jason Kottke, in an interview with Thomas Houston on The Verge:

It’s much easier to find interesting things to read and look at online than it used to be… the web is now largely filters on top of filters on top of filters. So I don’t have to sift through as much stuff as I used to. But also around the time I posted that link, I got much better at blogging. I don’t know if the 10,000 hours thing kicked in or what, but when used to take me 6-8 hours to do now takes me 2-3 hours.

Apple Would Be in Trouble, If Not for All Those Stupid iPad Buyers 

Rick Munarriz, writing about Apple’s blockbuster quarter for Motley Fool:

Still, would it have hurt these 15.4 million new iPad 2 owners to wait a couple of months for either a better price on their own gadget or at the very least a chance to spend the same amount on something better? I’m not asking iPad buyers to “think different” as much as “think,” period.

Translation: Munarriz’s jackasstic analysis of Apple’s prospects wasn’t wrong because he is stupid, it was because iPad buyers are so stupid.

Ron Johnson’s ‘Think Different’ Moment 

Ken Seggall:

Ron’s big day starts out with a two-page ad in major papers (above). This is his Think different moment, where he puts forth the philosophy that will guide JCPenney under his leadership.

The details will be revealed during a series of presentations today in New York. But from firsthand experience, I can testify that when Ron talks about what makes a great shopping experience, you start believing.

27,000 Google Chromebooks Headed to U.S. Schools 

Stephen Shankland, reporting for CNet:

“Students love the tablet. I am not going to hide that from you. They will bow down and kiss your feet,” said Diane Gilbert, an English teacher at Kelly Mill Middle School in Blythewood, S.C., who’s taught with tablets in her classroom. She said that Chromebooks, though, are better when it comes to typing and to letting students publish their work the way she wants it done.

She should be in IT.

High Schools Are Step One of Two 

McKay Thomas:

Apple, by going high school first, is applying the heat to university textbook publishers and bookstores. They are saying “Fine. If you won’t work with us, then we’ll empower a generation to change your industry for you.”

The Ron Johnson Era at JC Penney Has Begun 

Reuters:

In a full page ad in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Penney said “we’re not interested in being the biggest store or the flashiest store. We want to be your favorite store.”

Google’s Broken Promise 

Mat Honan calls Google’s new privacy policy “the end of ‘Dont be evil’”:

In a privacy policy shift, Google announced today that it will begin tracking users universally across all its services — Gmail, Search, YouTube and more — and sharing data on user activity across all of them. So much for the Google we signed up for.

“Don’t be evil” has been over for a long time.

Too Soon 

Seth Weintraub:

We received word from a reliable source at Foxconn in China that the iPhone 5, as it is currently being called, is now gearing for production.

No it’s not.

No teardrop-shaped devices, as rumored in the lead up to the iPhone 4S. Samples so far have been symmetrical in thickness (also longer/wider).

Longer and wider? Sounds like bullshit. I can see Apple putting a bigger display on a device of the same size. I can’t see them making a bigger device.

Focus on the User for Safari 

Remember that “don’t be evil” bookmarklet the other day, for improving Google web search results by eliminating the special treatment of Google Plus pages? Here’s a free Safari extension that applies it automatically.

TechCrunch: ‘33Across Acquires Tynt to Become Social Data Powerhouse’ 

My suggested headline: “Company I’ve Never Heard of Acquires Copy and Paste Clipboard-Molesting Jerks to Create an Even Bigger Pile of Shit”.

Watching Apple Win the World 

David Heinemeier Hansson, on the satisfaction of being a long-time Mac user:

Macs were (and are) just better. Not just because they were better built or put together, but because Apple was a better company. A braver company. A company that stood for higher ideals. When compared to the empire of Microsoft and the Dells, Sonys of the time, it simply felt like they were more right.

For years, when Apple was down, they were held up as proof that making the best products didn’t matter. The Mac is better than Windows and look what happened was the refrain. You still hear it today, anytime Apple slips even a notch. Look no further than yesterday’s claim chowder of Henry Blodget. What’s satisfying about Apple’s current success is that it’s proof that you can succeed wildly by focusing first and foremost on making great products. That design does matter.

Living in Denial 

David Wilson, Writing for Bloomberg two months ago:

Anyone who expects Apple Inc.’s growth to rebound after sales and earnings shortfalls last quarter is “living in denial,” according to David Nelson, chief strategist at Belpointe Asset Management LLC. […]

“This is no longer a hyper-growth company,” Nelson said yesterday in a telephone interview. Apple’s products are now reaching customers who are less likely to upgrade as newer models are released, he added.

Tuesday, 24 January 2012

Cook on iCloud 

Transcript of Cook’s remark’s on today’s call. I point you to his remarks on iCloud:

I think Peter shared earlier the number of customers that had signed up for iCloud, and it’s already over 85 million, so it’s incredible that this has happened in just a few months’ period of time. We’re thrilled with it, and the response from customers has been incredible. It’s solved a lot of problems that customers were having and made their lives much much easier…. It was a fundamental shift recognizing that people had numerous devices and they wanted the bulk of their content in the cloud and easily accessible from all of their devices, and you know, I think we’re seeing the response from that. With 85 million customers in just three months, it is a very very important part — it’s not just a product, it’s a strategy for the next decade.

I saw Matt Deatherage from MacJournals flag this remark during Macworld’s live coverage of the call. iCloud is as central to Apple’s next 10 years as the digital hub strategy was to the previous 10 years — and financial analysts are likely to ignore it, just like they did Apple’s digital hub strategy. I think Steve Jobs had his fingers in as many projects as he could manage in his final year, but it’s no coincidence that his last product announcement was iCloud. Put another way, I don’t expect any new Apple products that aren’t related in some way to iCloud.

Ubuntu HUD to Replace Menu Bar 

Sort of like Quicksilver or LaunchBar, but for menu items instead of apps.

Claim Chowder: ‘The Apple Bubble Is Ready to Burst’ 

Leonid Kanopka, writing for Seeking Alpha in November, two months ago:

Apple is a great company with wonderful products, but its run is up. It seems to me that innovation is beginning to run dry, and the stock price is overinflated. The stock has begun to fall already dropping from its $426 high. If the economy does not pick up and the company does not cushion its freefall, we could see new lows into 2012 — maybe $85. Whatever the case, I see a rocky future and a new bubble about to burst. My recommendation: Sell.

Nailed it.

The Second-Most-Profitable Quarter in Any Company’s History 

Another interesting bit of perspective on Apple’s numbers, from CNN:

It was one of the most profitable quarters ever for any U.S. company, trailing only ExxonMobil’s record-setting $14.8 billion quarter from the fall of 2008, when oil prices were at an all-time high.

It wasn’t just a historic quarter for Apple, or for a tech company. It was a historic quarter, period.

‘I Clearly Believe That There Will Come a Day That the Tablet Market in Units Is Larger Than the PC Market.’ 

Tim Cook, as quoted in Macworld’s live transcript of Apple’s quarterly earnings call:

Last year was supposed to be the year of the tablet, and I think most people would agree it was the year of the iPad for the second year in a row. We’re going to continue to innovate like crazy in this area, and continue to compete with anyone that is currently shipping tablets, or that might enter in the future.

The iPhone is by far Apple’s biggest source of revenue and profit today. But if you’re thinking about future growth, keep in mind that the iPad is far ahead of where the iPhone was two years after its debut.

Also worth noting: Tim Cook says Apple sold 2.8 million Apple TVs in fiscal year 2011, and broke a record with 1.4 million in the just-ended quarter. They’re still calling it a hobby, and it’s only a $100 product, but in terms of units, it used to be that 1.4 million was a great number for Mac sales in a quarter.

Apple Added $38 Billion in Cash Last Year 

Another chart with an impressive slope.

Huffington Post Headline Two Days Ago: ‘Apple Q1 2012 Earnings Call Could Reveal Chinks in Armor’ 

Or maybe not.

Claim Chowder: ‘iPhone Dead in Water’ 

Henry Blodget, back in April:

Importantly, it’s not a question of which platform is “better.” (This is irrelevant.) It’s a question of which platform everyone else uses. And increasingly, in the smartphone market, barring a radical change in trend, that’s Android.

So that’s why Android’s gains matter. And, yes, Apple fans should be scared to death about them.

Actual result: Apple sold more iPhones in calendar 2011 than in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 combined; 55 percent of all smartphones sold by Verizon last quarter were iPhones.

Claim Chowder: ‘The iPad: In the Middle (of Nowhere)’ 

Marketing brainiac Mohan Sawhney, after the introduction of the original iPad two years ago:

What’s the outlook for the iPad? There will be long lines on the day it becomes available, because a million or so die-hard Apple fanatics will buy anything Apple puts out, even if it is a brick. Seduction and lust is a powerful emotion and it will drive sales for a while. Once the early adopters have forked over their money, the rest of us will start to ask difficult and inconvenient questions about the value relative to the price. And Apple will be forced to make some drastic adjustments to the pricing and the connectivity fees.

Actual result: 15 million iPads sold last quarter; same prices, same connectivity fees as when it debuted.

Claim Chowder: ‘iPad Demand Said to Be Fading as Competition Heats Up’ 

Zach Epstein, BGR, back on 15 November:

Demand for Apple’s iPad tablet is said to be in decline as competition finally heats up thanks to the $199 Kindle Fire from Amazon, and investors could be in for a disappointing fourth quarter as a result. In a recent research note, Goldman Sachs analyst Bill Shope suggested Apple’s firm grip on the global tablet market may finally loosen unless the Cupertino, California-based company lowers its pricing.

Actual results: 15.4 million iPads sold, a 111 percent increase over the year-ago quarter.

Perspective 

Farhad Manjoo:

Apple’s profits ($13 billion) exceeded Google’s entire revenue ($10.6 billion).

Matt Richman on Apple’s Results 

Matt Richman:

In 2009, Apple sold more iPhones than it did in 2007 and 2008 combined. In 2010, Apple sold more iPhones than it did in 2007, 2008, and 2009 combined. Last year, Apple sold 93.1 million iPhones, slightly more than it did in in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 combined. The pattern continued.

Imagine if that holds true for 2012 as well.

Richman also makes a strong case that Apple sold more iOS devices than all Android devices combined last quarter.

Charting Apple’s Revenue Growth 

Q1 is always a peak for Apple because it’s the holiday quarter, but still, the slope on this chart is simply breathtaking.

Apple’s Q1 Results: Record-Breaking Revenue and Profit 

Make that record-shattering:

The Company posted record quarterly revenue of $46.33 billion and record quarterly net profit of $13.06 billion, or $13.87 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $26.74 billion and net quarterly profit of $6 billion, or $6.43 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter. Gross margin was 44.7 percent compared to 38.5 percent in the year-ago quarter. International sales accounted for 58 percent of the quarter’s revenue.

The Company sold 37.04 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 128 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. Apple sold 15.43 million iPads during the quarter, a 111 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter. The Company sold 5.2 million Macs during the quarter, a 26 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter.

Apple broke its previous quarterly records for: revenue, profit, iPhones sold, iPads sold, and Macs sold. Their previous record for revenue was $28 billion; they almost hit 50.

So they’re doing OK.

Yankees Great Jorge Posada Retires After 17 Seasons 

Andrew Marchand, ESPN

Posada sat at a dais flanked by his wife and his children, Jorge Jr. and Paulina. To his right were the five world championship trophies that Posada helped the Yankees win. Jeter, closer Mariano Rivera, ace CC Sabathia and Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner were among those in attendance.

After Posada finished his opening statement, Diana Munson, the widow of Yankees great Thurman Munson, spoke. She credited Posada for inspiring her to watch baseball again. Posada had considered Thurman Munson, who died in 1979 when the plane he was piloting crashed in Ohio, a hero.

Diana Munson said she now has loved two Yankees catchers in her life.

One of the all-time greats, a class act, and one of the most emotional players I’ve ever seen.

iPhone Accounted for the Majority of Verizon Smartphone Sales Last Quarter 

Tom Krazit, PaidContent:

In the first quarter that Verizon Wireless was on board with Apple for an iPhone launch event, the company sold 4.2 million iPhones, accounting for more than half of the 7.7 million smartphones that its customers purchased in the fourth quarter.

File under “Android is winning”.

I’ma Set It Straight, This Watergate

Tuesday, 24 January 2012

Ed Bott, “How Apple Is Sabotaging an Open Standard for Digital Books”:

Apple’s behavior is a modern, sophisticated version of the “embrace, extend, and extinguish” behavior that got Microsoft in so much trouble in the 1990s: Enter a product category supporting a widely used standard, extend that standard with proprietary capabilities, and then use those differences to disadvantage competitors. (The strategy is even more effective if you have a dominant market position in another, related category that you can use for leverage. Think Windows in the 1990s, iPad in 2012.)

I agree with Bott that Apple is being competitive here, but disagree that it’s an example of embrace/extend/extinguish. Put another way, over the weekend Bott called the iBooks Author EULA “mind-bogglingly greedy and evil”; I agree with the greedy, but not the evil or the mind-bogglingliness.

So Apple, which claims to use the ePub format exclusively, has now created an incompatible, proprietary version of that format. And with iBooks Author they’ve added licensing terms that restrict what an author can do with the generated content.

This is why I disagree with the comparison to Microsoft’s embrace/extend/extinguish strategy: Apple isn’t calling the new iBooks Author format “ePub”. They never mentioned “ePub” during last week’s event. iBooks Author doesn’t use “ePub” anywhere in the user interface or documentation. The filename extension is ‘.ibooks’, not ‘.epub’. Arguing that Apple is following the embrace/extend/extinguish strategy implies that Apple was attempting to redefine “ePub” to mean “ePub plus Apple proprietary extensions”. Apple isn’t doing that. They’re very clearly presenting the output of iBooks Author as something new and proprietary to the iBooks Author.

Bott points to this iBooks FAQ from Apple, which states that the only formats supported by iBooks are industry-standard ePub and PDF. Given that the modification date on this FAQ is 22 December 2011, it seems clear that this is simply an outdated FAQ, not an attempt to describe the new iBooks format as ePub.

I’m not trying to be cute here. I understand that technically, under the hood, the iBooks Author output is standard ePub plus Apple proprietary extensions. But I don’t think it’s fair to say that Apple is attempting to confuse anyone in this regard. The under-the-hood similarities to ePub are an implementation detail. No casual user creating a work in iBooks Author should have any reason to believe they are creating an ePub file, or something that can be used anywhere other than in the iBooks app on an iPad.

I don’t disagree that Apple’s goal is for the proprietary iBooks format to become a de facto standard — for it to become popular and widely used and thus, because it only works on the iPad, further cement the iPad as the leading next-generation personal computing platform. I simply disagree that Apple is being in any way disingenuous or misleading about it. The only people who seem to be confused about iBooks Author’s relationship to ePub are technically-minded people who know exactly what ePub is and who have a vested interest in seeing the open standard become the de facto industry standard.

Bott writes:

They also could have included the option to import ePub files. As a publisher and author myself, I would have welcomed that option. I could create a book using the industry-leading standard ePub format, for sale in any outlet, then import it into iBooks Author, add interactive elements, and sell an enhanced version in the iTunes Store for the same price.

What Bott is asking for here, to me, would have been a more embrace/extend/extinguish sort of move — to allow iBooks Author to open a cross-platform ePub book, make changes, and then save it in a proprietary format that can only be read in iBooks. It might have been a convenience to authors and publishers who already have ePub source files, but by not even allowing iBooks Author to import ePub, it only serves to emphasize that iBooks Author is not a general-purpose ePub or e-book tool. It is an iBooks tool.

Apple, which uses the ePub standard as the core for iBooks, could easily have produced their free authoring tool so that it continues to support what they acknowledge is the “industry-leading standard.” The program could offer users a choice of output formats: a standard ePub file or a fully interactive iBooks file.

They could have, but they didn’t. And if they had, when exporting to standard ePub, the books would lose all of the formatting and interactive features that are exclusive to the iBooks format. Apple wants authors and publishers to use those features, because those features are what differentiates iBooks on the iPad from all other e-readers.

Bott’s on firmer ground with this follow-up piece: “Some Standards Are More Open Than Others”, wherein he makes the case that Apple is a hypocrite for developing and promoting its own proprietary e-book format while serving as a member of the International Digital Publishing Forum, the trade group behind the ePub standard:

OK, everyone, you got that? It’s just capitalism! Why should Apple care about other companies in the digital publishing industry? Let them go build their own tools and design their own formats!

Except for one little thing. Apple is a member in good standing of the International Digital Publishing Forum, which identifies itself as the “Trade and Standards Organization for the Digital Publishing Industry.”

As a member of the IDPF, Apple most certainly is on record as agreeing to do what Gruber thinks they don’t have to do: reduce the cross-platform burdens of the entire digital publishing industry.

There are an awful lot of companies on the IDPF members list, including at least a few that produce tools that generate digital publications in proprietary formats (e.g. Adobe and Quark, to name two that compete directly against iBooks Author).

On the one hand, iBooks, since its inception, has had best-of-breed support for the ePub standard, and all the regular books available for download and purchase through the iBookstore (i.e. every book other than the dozen or so made using iBooks Author which appeared in the store last week) are in standard ePub format. (Apple even requires books submitted to the store to pass ePub standard validation tests.) And Apple has made no mention of moving away from this support for ePub.

The question is, what does it mean to be a “good” member of IDPF: supporting ePub alongside any proprietary formats, or supporting ePub to the exclusion of any proprietary formats? Bott clearly sees it as the latter.

Put another way, if you’re a producer of ePub-formatted books and wish to remain so, your books are just as welcome in the iBookstore and just as well-rendered in iBooks as they were prior to Apple’s announcements last week.

To me, again, it’s like mobile web apps versus native apps on the iPhone. When the iPhone debuted in 2007, Apple declared that the only way for third-party developers to write software for it was to write mobile web apps. Such mobile web apps were far more capable than mobile web apps on any other platform — but they were far less capable than the native Cocoa Touch apps Apple provided with the iPhone. In 2008, when Apple unveiled the App Store and native Cocoa Touch SDK, it didn’t drop support for mobile web apps. Indeed, mobile web app support in iOS has continued to improve, and today still exceeds the mobile web app support in any other OS. But the fact that mobile web apps on iOS remain far less capable than native App Store apps paints Apple as “anti-web” in the eyes of some critics.

I believe the new iBooks Author format is to iBooks as native App Store apps are to the iPhone, and that ePub is to iBooks as mobile web apps are to the iPhone: closed/proprietary/technically-superior/better-looking on one side, open/standard/cross-platform on the other side. I expect Apple to continue to support ePub the same way it has continued to support mobile web apps — as a second-class citizen compared to its own proprietary format, but still just as good as, if not better than, anyone else in the industry.

I don’t know enough about the collective politics of the IDPF to say whether this stance is contrary to the group’s goals or mores. If you see the goal of ePub as serving as an expressive, standard, cross-platform format for e-books, Apple remains fully on board with that. If you see the goal of ePub as serving as the only commercial e-book format — i.e. that all e-books should be cross-platform — I don’t see how you can argue that Apple was ever on board with that. There’s a big difference between arguing “There should be a good standard for cross-platform books” and “All books should be based on a good cross-platform standard”.

Lastly, Bott thinks I’ve slowly changed my mind over the last few days:

The top defender is ace Apple-watcher John Gruber, who has been slowly and publicly changing his mind on the new iBooks format and accompanying license agreement over the past few days. First he said it was “Apple at its worst.” And then he began backtracking.

First:

The output of iBooks Author is, as far as I can tell, HTML5 — pretty much ePub 3 with whatever nonstandard liberties Apple saw fit to take in order to achieve the results they wanted. It’s not a standard format in the sense of following a spec from a standards body like the W3C…

Next:

Apple’s concern is not what’s best for the publishing industry, and it certainly isn’t about what’s best for the makers of (and users of) rival e-book reading devices.

And most recently:

But again, Apple’s not in this game to reduce the cross-platform burdens of the publishing industry. If the publishing industry wants to reduce the number of formats it supports and the hassles of converting from one format to another, Apple’s pitch would be to go exclusive to the iBookstore.

There are two separate issues in play. First is the iBooks Author EULA, and its requirement that if you sell a book generated by the app, you must do so exclusively through the iBookstore. Second is the proprietary file format of the new iBooks Author and its relationship to ePub 3.

My “this is Apple at its worst” remark was regarding the EULA. That criticism still stands. I believe Apple should treat the output of iBooks Author as it does Mac apps: allow authors and publishers to choose to sell them through the iBookstore and/or to sell them on their own. I could even see Apple requiring books made with iBooks Author to be submitted to the iBookstore if they’re going to be made available for sale anywhere — just remove the exclusivity clause. I see no reason why the iBookstore would not succeed in the same way the Mac App Store has. I say this is Apple at its worst because Apple has chosen the path of exerting the most control.1 A little more flexibility on Apple’s part would do well for everyone, even Apple itself, as it would only further encourage the use of iBooks Author.

The other remarks of mine that Bott quotes are regarding the second issue — the proprietary file format versus ePub one — and my stance on that is largely unchanged. The only thing I believe I was wrong about is my initial conjecture that the output of iBooks Author is mostly or entirely expressed in HTML5. It is indeed largely based on ePub (and thus HTML5), but significant aspects are not. Here’s another snippet from my first piece Bott quotes from above:

It’s not a standard format in the sense of following a spec from a standards body like the W3C, but it’s just HTML5 rendered by WebKit — not a binary blob tied to iOS or Cocoa. It may not be easy, but I don’t think it would be that much work for anyone else with an ePub reader that’s based on WebKit to add support for these iBooks textbooks.

I no longer believe that to be true. I think it would take significant effort for a competitor to render the output of iBooks Author with full or even near-full fidelity. All the more reason for Apple to remove or loosen the exclusivity clause of the EULA. 

  1. Actually, I take that back. Exerting the most control, they would disallow the free distribution of books generated with iBooks Author, and make it more like the iOS App Store. But such a restriction would completely contradict the role iBooks Author is intended to play with the new iTunes U, where individual teachers and professors are encouraged to use iBooks Author to produce their own courseware. What Apple has chosen is the path of exerting the most control while still supporting the new iTunes U. ↩

On the Proprietary Nature of the iBooks Author File Format

Friday, 20 January 2012

Daniel Glazman, co-chairman of the W3C CSS Working Group, has a detailed technical analysis of the iBooks Author file format:

The iba format clearly extends CSS (and therefore EPUB3) to offer the following features:

  1. Template-based layout including special areas (gutter)
  2. Extended underlining
  3. Ability to control the size of each column and column gap in a multi-column layout
  4. Something equivalent to Adobe’s Regions and Exclusions.

He thinks these nonstandard extensions are a strategic mistake on Apple’s part:

When a piece of software is so well designed from a UI point of view and could become such an attractor in terms of usage, I feel this is a totally wrong strategy. Opening up everything and using only carefully chosen standards and matching the version of WebKit used by Safari would have given an immense and almost unbeatable competitive advantage to Apple, would have attracted even more people to the Mac platform and would have turned the iBooks Store into the primary online choice of publication for all new books.

It should surprise no one that the co-chair of a W3C working group deems standards compliance to be more important than does Apple. And he may well be right that it will prove to be a strategic mistake. But it’s worth noting that the e-book market leader, Amazon’s Kindle, uses a proprietary format. Eschewing ePub and any sort of standards compliance doesn’t seem to have hurt Amazon. And, up until yesterday, the only e-book format supported by iBooks has been standards compliant ePub, and that hasn’t made Apple the market leader. It’s a small sample size and we’re early in the game, but the evidence to date suggests the opposite of what Glazman is arguing. Kindle, with its proprietary file formats, is more popular than iBooks, which has been based on ePub.

Nor is Apple claiming this new format is ePub. They haven’t asserted proprietary new features or syntax for ePub the way, say, Netscape and Internet Explorer asserted proprietary new tags and features for HTML. The output of iBooks Author is no more intended to be an industry standard than are any other Apple-proprietary document formats — Pages, Numbers, Keynote, etc. This is Apple’s own e-book format, intended only to be displayed (played?) using Apple’s own software running on Apple’s own devices.

As with the end-user licensing kerfuffle, it’s worth noting that the app’s name is iBooks Author, not eBooks Author. Just because there’s demand for an open-standards-based e-book production and layout tool of the scope and caliber of iBooks Author, doesn’t mean Apple has any interest in making such a tool.

Starting with full conformance with EPUB3 and pushing for a fast update of EPUB3 or release of EPUB4 including all new CSS cool kids was a much better, and much more secure way of doing things.

But if Apple had taken this route, the books generated by iBooks Author today wouldn’t have any of the layout features Glazman cited above. The iBooks format isn’t different just for the sake of being different; it’s different for the sake of being better — not better in the future, after a W3C review period and approval, but better today, in the textbooks you can download and read in iBooks right now.

It’s the difference between “What’s the best we can do within the constraints of the current ePub spec?” versus “What’s the best we can do given the constraints of our engineering talent?” — the difference between going as fast as the W3C standards body permits versus going as fast as Apple is capable.

Apple’s concern is not what’s best for the publishing industry, and it certainly isn’t about what’s best for the makers of (and users of) rival e-book reading devices.

In some sense this is like a rehash of the App Store debate — iBooks Author is a developer tool for the iBooks platform. As I’ve said regarding the App Store, Apple’s priorities are as follows: Apple’s best interests first, users’ second, developers’ third. In this case the developers are the producers of commercial e-books, who must now choose between (a) going iBooks-exclusive; (b) figuring out a way to work iBooks Author into a cross-platform production workflow; or (c) eschewing iBooks Author entirely and using whatever other tools are out there, missing out on all the new iBooks-exclusive layout and design features.

If they go iBooks-exclusive, you can see how Apple would love that.

If they choose to work iBooks Author into their cross-platform production workflow, and it proves to be a pain in the ass, that’s not Apple’s problem.

If they eschew the use of iBooks Author altogether and suffer using worse-designed and less-capable tools, that’s not Apple’s problem. And if the book they produce based on these lesser tools and technologies doesn’t sell as well because it doesn’t offer the attractive and fun layout and design features available using iBooks Author, that’s not Apple’s problem either.

(What would be Apple’s problem is if iBooks’s new layout and design features do not prove to be a competitive advantage in the e-book market. But even then, Apple would merely be right back where they were prior to yesterday’s announcements.1)

Glazman looks at these new iBooks books and sees a nonstandard proprietary format. Apple looks at these new iBooks and sees layouts and design features that no other e-book platform offers today. One man’s nonstandard is another man’s competitive differentiation.

iBooks still offers full support for the open standard ePub format. So as a loose analogy, I see ePub being as to the new iBooks format as mobile web apps are to native iOS App Store apps — one is an open industry standard fully supported by Apple, the other a closed proprietary platform with superior creation tools and end-user experience, which if you want to use, you must use on Apple’s terms.  

  1. Another possible problem for Apple resulting from its decision to restrict iBooks Author as a tool only for the iBooks platform: resentment from publishers and authors who see this restriction as spiteful and greedy, not as strategic or competitive. Again though, that’s just a replay of the risks Apple took with its restrictive App Store policies. ↩

Regarding the Scope of Apple’s Education Initiative

Wednesday, 18 January 2012

Philip Elmer-DeWitt, in a piece headlined “Apple’s Education Event Is Getting Seriously Over-Hyped”:

We interviewed MacInnis over the weekend, and as near as we can tell, Foresman — and the 18 other reporters who followed his lead — got it wrong.

“Apple is not trying to kill the incumbents,” MacInnis told us. “They’ve learned their lesson from upending the music industry.”

I don’t get the logic here. What about Apple’s success in the music industry does Apple regret? I can see how the music labels resent Apple’s rise to dominance, but I can’t see how Apple does. So maybe (actually, almost certainly) the established textbook industry does not want to see Apple do to textbooks exactly what Apple did to music. But why would Apple not want to do to textbooks what it did to music?1

The other factor here is Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography. It’s quite possible that Isaacson and Steve Jobs have already spoiled tomorrow’s announcement.2 At the very end of chapter 38 (p. 509 in the print edition):

In fact Jobs had his sights set on textbooks as the next business he wanted to transform. He believed it was an $8 billion a year industry ripe for digital destruction. He was also struck by the fact that many schools, for security reasons, don’t have lockers, so kids have to lug a heavy backpack around. “The iPad would solve that,” he said. His idea was to hire great textbook writers to create digital versions, and make them a feature of the iPad. In addition, he held meetings with the major publishers, such as Pearson Education, about partnering with Apple. “The process by which states certify textbooks is corrupt,” he said. “But if we can make the textbooks free, and they come with the iPad, then they don’t have to be certified. The crappy economy at the state level will last for a decade, and we can give them an opportunity to circumvent that whole process and save money.”

Now, it seems like quite a trick to me how Apple could both hire its own writers to create free-with-the-iPad textbooks and at the same time partner with traditional textbook publishers, who presumably want to sell, not give away, their digital editions. But it’s not like there isn’t a damn good source that suggests Apple’s plans for K-12 textbooks are anything short of ambitious and transforming. I’m guessing Apple’s pitch to the textbook companies is something like this: “Digital transformation of your industry is inevitable. Here’s our plan; we’d like you to come along for the ride. But if you choose not to, we won’t hesitate to leave you behind.” 

  1. Also worth noting that in music, Apple didn’t kill the incumbents. The major music labels are still around making money from sales on iTunes. I think you can argue that Apple saved the major labels — that without iTunes, bootleg filesharing would’ve put them under. It’s true that the labels resent Apple, and dream of a hypothetical world where they make money as they did during the CD era. But people in hell want ice water — that doesn’t mean they can get it. ↩

  2. It would be rather ironic for the first post-Jobs Apple announcement to have been spoiled by, of all people, Steve Jobs. ↩