Today he had a wide range of observations on the industry, including the Amazon Kindle book reader, which he said would go nowhere largely because Americans have stopped reading. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year. The whole conception is flawed at the top because people don’t read anymore.”
Lynch writes, “If you’re at all familiar with Jobs, that comment is a dead giveaway that Apple has an eBook reader in the pipeline. In the past, Jobs has made disparaging comments about competitor’s products as a smoke-screen to try and hide what Apple was busily working on behind the scenes.”
“Mark my words, if Jobs denigrates a market segment or a competitor’s product then there’s a good chance that Apple is cooking up something sweet and delicious in its kitchen, and you can bet that Jobs is the head chef in charge of it all,” Lynch writes.
“As we all know, Macbooks have replaced the old ‘iBook’ laptops that Apple used to sell. Hmmm…so it’s quite interesting that the word ‘iBook’ is now free for Apple to use as the name of their eBook reader,” Lynch writes. “A coincidence? I doubt it very much.”
Much more in the full article, including Lynch’s discussion of an Apple eBook reader software release for iPod and iPhone, here.
Yeah, it’s called the iPod Touch or iPhone. All you will need do is purchase your eBook through iTunes.
First post hi hi hi…
Welcome iTablet!!!
well, no, tthat actually would be a coincidence, Jim.
Damn Prophet, you’ve beaten me…
should have used one less hi in your post and you would have beaten him. lol
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Jim Lynch.
Yet another tech writer asshat. These idiots are in to reading tea leaves and making up complete bullshit out of thin air.
No, asshat, I am NOT going to mark your word for anything. Leave what you are doing and collect garbage … literally.
Yeah Renel_A, why don’t you show me the way next time
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It’s great that Apple owns the name “iBook.” But I don’t think Apple will release a device that is dedicated to reading books. Carry around yet another separate device? Apple wants the iPhone to be the ONE device everyone carries with them.
Now, I’ve read books on my old b/w Handspring Visor. If Apple wanted to enter this market, it would just include ebook-reader software for the inevitable “tablet” (bigger screen) version of the iPod touch / iPhone. Even the current size screen would be fine for reading ebooks, since shorter lines of text makes for faster reading.
iPhone and iPod Touch (and possibly the fabled tablet) will have ebook software when the SDK is released. Also, he said they changed iBook to MacBook because they wanted Mac in the name of all their computers. Makes perfect sense. No smoke screen whatsoever.
As someone who reads, though, I would like to see ebooks available for iPhone through iTunes. May not be a large enough market though, as SJ pointed out.
@prophet
I don’t know about you, but I really wouldn’t like to try reading a book on a 3.5″ screen.
Something similar to an iPod Touch with a 7″-9″ screen would be good, but I don’t know what battery life would be with a larger screen. I would be really pissed if I was on one of my regular 14 hour flights from NY to Hong Kong and the battery died halfway there. I’d be stuck flipping through a SkyMall catalog for 7 hours.
However, as something like this would do double duty as a video player, maybe there’s a market.
It’s true that veteran Apple-watchers have noticed this, and it makes Steve’s statement all the more curious. Exactly what message is he trying to send? We have to assume that he’s aware that his competitors have noticed his tendency.
One wonders if the whole statement was merely designed to make Amazon nervous. Given that the music labels are trying to prop up Amazon as an alternative to the iTunes Music Store, he could be playing this as a complex angle.
Anyway, it’s true that the iPhone/iPod Touch don’t make great e-book readers, as the backlit LCD doesn’t work nearly as well as e-paper for long-form reading. If Apple steps into this market, expect the hardware to be a Bluetooth-based accessory for the iPhone. The question is really what they will do to set up the content side.
Is the Kindle really just a repackaged Windows tablet, as show in the picture in the linked article?
Or is that just artistic license run amuck?
Be nice for my iPhone to project a page-size hologram that I could view/read/whatever, along the lines of R2D2’s performance, minus the static.
Quite a leap in logic I’d say. Take a few rumors and what if’s, add the opposite of what Steve Jobs says, and presto, you have Apple’s next product. This story has the same odor as the one about Apple and VW collaborating on a car.
Move on everyone, there is nothing to see here.
@Prophet
I agree that Apples response will be an application on the iPhone or iPod Touch. But I believe that Apple will add a twist. Perhaps the ebooks from ITMS will include both text and audio so you can listen to the audio book (like audible content) along with being able to read the text. Quicktime has long had the ability to syncronize both audio with text (and of course video). If the book was not available in a audio version, Apple could use it’s text to speech funcationality to suppliment the book. However, I would like to believe that Apple will offer something more than that with their eBook reader.
I have used the Sony eBook reader and the display is amazing for a static monochrome image. However the refresh rate and the dithering are annoying. I suspect that Apple will avoid the e-paper concept and will continue to use the touch screen technology in the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Truly dumb analysis. This like using reverse psychology to get someone to do what you tell them not to do?
iPods were great because practically everyone had a “library” of CDs to load up on their iPods as soon as they bought them.
I think the whole e-Book concept is flawed because with an eBook reader you spend $300 -400 and you got Jack squat to read on your e-Book. You still have to go out and buy e-Books since you can’t exactly load your printed library on your e-book.
Now if they could hook an e-book reader into a database of public domain works that were freely availible online—now that might gain some traction. But again, why not just download the doc to your laptop, iPhone or iPod touch. Who needs yet another device?
No ‘iBook Kindle killer’ in the cards…. instead it will be ‘Newton 2.0’ or some other name for the yet-to-be-released iPhone-iPod-touch-like table that has been rumored for some time. eBooks will just be one feature among iPhone features and mobile iWork. Same form function only larger… with possible detachable mini-keyboard.
Mark MY words…. the true prophet.
‘table’…NOT ‘table’
Damn Prophet™ Spell Check!
“Besides the fact that Kindle is a product in search of a market, it also doesn’t help that it looks like something John Dykstra superglued together back in 1975.” – MacDailyNews Take, Jan. 16, 2008
I seem to remember Steve bad mouthing subscription music and never releasing a subscription service. sometimes a chair is just a chair.
How can something coming out NOW be called a “Kindle eBook killer” ?
Isn’t the Kindle already dead?
Does anyone own one?
Anyone seen one?
Wouldn’t ZUNE sales numbers look fantastic next to the Kindle’s?
I’m just askin’ is all.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple came out with a tablet sized device that could wirelessly surf the net, and read ebooks.. though I doubt that apple would bill it as an ebook reader first and formost.
On another note.. I know that SJ talked down about video on the iPod and then later came out with a video ipod.. but when else did he do something like this? The analyst seems to imply it’s an ongoing pattern but 1 time is certainly not a pattern. Does anyone remember other instance of this?
Shame on you, MDN. Aren’t you tired of all the iPod killer / iTunes killer rhetoric? Yet you turn around and label an as-yet vaporific Apple product a “Kindle killer”…
Tsk, tsk.
Makes me (MW) “ill.”
“If you’re at all familiar with Jobs…”
It’s pretty clear that Lynch is not familiar with him. He really didn’t disparage the Kindle, he said that no one reads books anymore (I guess I’m a no one, because I’m usually reading 2+ books at any given time).
I’d be really surprised to see Apple come out with a dedicated book reading device.
The only book reader Apple will release is a secondary application on whatever table-type product Apple eventually releases, or a new app for the iPhone/iPod Touch.
Trying to sell one touch screen device the size of a mouse pad that only is a book reader is stupid. Now make that an internet-connected multi-purpose device with Inkwell, and you may have something.