Adobe Takes On Microsoft Role In E-book Market 161
ericatcw writes "Barnes & Noble, Sony and other e-book vendors may have the manufacturing muscle, but the brains directing the challenge against Amazon.com's Kindle eBook Reader is Adobe Systems. Like Microsoft, Adobe has built a formidable ecosystem of partners to whom it supplies software such as its encryption/DRM-creating Adobe Content Server. Adobe paints Amazon as being like Apple: secretive and playing badly with others. Amazon argues it just ain't so, and takes a jab, along with other critics, at Adobe's alleged open-ness."
To be fair... (Score:3, Insightful)
Adobe just provides a platform; it's up to the producers to decide what protection (if any) to place on the documents.
Re: Wait (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Wait (Score:4, Insightful)
Got to Side with Amazon on this one (Score:4, Insightful)
So Amazon thinks through a problem and designs an elegant solution, takes care of the software, hardware, and marketing.
Adobe just wants to inject their proprietary technology into a process and sit back and enjoy the royalties.
Screw Adobe. They don't even do any coding here in the US anymore.
Re:Wait... (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't count on it. Like the poster above you said, Adobe has the design tools. Flash is just the presentation layer. Even with HTML5 video tags, the developer still needs to create that video some how. The odds are pretty good that Adobe will be involved some where in the creative process.
Re:a cross platform standard format (Score:3, Insightful)
The main problem with PDFs is simple: People seem to think 'pages' are a good idea for book. They aren't. The are an artifact of using a printing press, and are the best way available for paper books to be assembled.
Books are stretches of text, possibly divided into chapters. Pages are interruptions in the reading experience. Pages that aren't the same size as your reading area just interrupt your reading experience multiple times.
Re:Got to Side with Amazon on this one (Score:3, Insightful)
There seems to be an alternative definition of 'openness' in the corporate environment, in view of Amazon trying to defend from Adobe's accusation of 'not playing with others':
Openness: acting in concert with other vendors to screw consumers
According to this definition, Adobe is comparing itself with Microsoft who, indeed, plays quite well with others...
Fascinating...
Re: Wait (Score:3, Insightful)
There certainly won't be a market until the prices of the readers come down. $300? You gotta be crazy. Even at $50 they would in any case likely never entice me completely away from the real thing.
You clearly don't travel a lot, especially internationally.
EBook readers are frigging great. I have one... while I'm totally unhappy with the quality over all of *EVERY* e-book reader out there, the benefit outweighs the problems, if only marginally. The fact is, I have a very limited amount of space to carry my things. On 8 - 14 hour flights, I can easily go through a 700 page book if not two. There is no way I can carry around 4 700 page books, at a minimum, on each flight along with all my other gear. MY EBook reader has 120 books on it and it fits in my photo gear bag, which is a mandatory carry on for me. My photobag might... MIGHT fight 1 700 page book when it's fully loaded. If I'm halfway through that book and board a 14 hour flight, I'd be screwed. With the ebook reader, I know I have a bucket load of additional reading material to keep me from getting arrested by the air marshals for beating up idiotic passengers.