Steve Jobs on MacBook Air, Android and Kindle

[DudeDah]

Interesting

So THAT means that 60% of America read MORE than one book last year. Apple's market share is what, 7% or 8% (know my figure is off) and yet he invests boat loads into that small percentage of those computing. (I know that the percentage of computing AMERICANS is not specifically stated, so this is just for illustrative purposes) Seems like to book readers are an UNTAPPED MARKET!!

For the record, I read half of TWO books last year and LISTENED to ZERO. A case in which 1/2+1/2 does not equal...much.

Audio MAGAZINES I would be interested in!!

Seems like no idea is a good one unless it's Apple's. I'm not an Apple basher, I have three machines and three iPods, but sometimes they get a little egotistical.

 

[eastcoastsurfer]

People don't read anymore? I've been thinking for awhile Steve has lost it, but that seals it up for me. People may not read books as much as they used to, but I read more now than I ever have when you count school textbooks, various news papers (both print and online), and then general websites. I guess the next big computer tech to come from Apple will be to remove the screen since people don't look at the computer anymore (since you're mostly reading when you do).

 

[Unspeaked]

So 40% of people read one book or less per year. That leaves:

60% of people who read more than one book a year.
A minority of whom spend absurd amounts of money on books annually.
People that read magazines.
People that read newspapers.
People that read comics.
People that read blogs.
People that use reference materials.

I agree that e-book readers (in their current incarnation) are junk, but to claim this is because nobody reads is pure RDF cranked up to 11. By the same logic there's no reason to make the iPod because 75% of people go to one or fewer symphonic performances a year.

Exactly.

Why even make the Mac OS when only 5% of computer users run it?

You can be very successful catering to less than 10% of the population. In fact, up until very recently, this has been Apple's bread and butter.

Please, Steve, I love ya but don't tell me there's not enough folks to sell an eBook reader to but the market for the MacBook Air is enormous...

 

[chrisgeleven]

If it weren't live sports (NESN and ESPN), I would instantly buy an AppleTV and cancel Cable TV.

Unfortunately, I do not have any way to get my Red Sox and Celtics fixes without Cable (or Satellite) TV. And the minimum packages for these channels are at least $50 a month.

 

[Philsy]

Has anyone mentioned this to Amazon? Maybe they aren't aware that their model of selling books over the internet is fundamentally flawed.

 

[timswim78]

Dear Steve,

Your RDF was turned off today. People ready plenty of books, magazines, etc.

Goodbye,
The Planet Earth

 

[mrgreen4242]

I've said this before, but I'd buy eBooks from iTMS if they were available and priced decently. All the other ebook sales I've seen are pretty much the same price, if not sometimes more expensive, than the actual book.

I'd also subscribe to 'emagazines' via iTMS given the option. There's already success in that market with Zinio and others doing it, so this seems like a pretty big no brainer.

Newspapers are, for me, pretty much dead. The fact is that I can get NEWS in a better format and package online via RSS so the concept of an editor deciding what should be on my front page seems a bit outmoded. Magazines are, I feel, a different animal as they typically aren't reporting the news but usually doing a more in-depth analysis and investigative work, if that makes sense.

I'd LOVE to see Apple revolutionize comic books with a big digital distribution platform. Coming up with a way to sell comics at a lower price and/or a higher volume would be fantastic. A special formatted iPod touch/iPhone comic file that has meta data describing each page so you can quickly tap/double tap on it to zoom to the right levels and back again and jump to the next predefined area... it would be a great way for smaller artists to get their work seen by lots of people with a very low distribution cost, which is a huge hurdle for the smaller players.

I'll agree that it's a pretty small market, and that it shouldn't be a priority for Apple like getting movies, TV shows, rentals, DRM-less music, etc should be, but they could probably put a low level exec in charge of a small team and get somewhere with it. It wasn't really a worthwhile/possible endeavor until the iPhone/touch but now it really seems like an avenue worth exploring.

 

[chrisgeleven]

Also I see no reason why the iPhone couldn't have ebook software on it. It would seem like a pretty natural way to read ebooks (flick of the finger turns the page).

 

[DesignerOnMac]

To some extent...

Steve is right. I do book jacket cover designs for largest book publisher in the United States. Last year they cut the number of books they produce by 300 books a month due to lack of readership!

People do read books, but the numbers are down quite a bit.

 

[Lewiji]

Extremely short sighted of him to say that about reading.

Perhaps 40% of America don't read any more because 40% of America is comprised of idiots? Of course, this forum contains only the other 60%

It is a sad, sad world if corporations truly believe that no one is interested in literature any more. Then again, I'm biased as I'm an English Lit student

 

[Kar98]

Well, that was one of the dumber things St. Jobs said. Makes ya really wonder what he's smoking. So his new target clientèle are illiterate morons or what?

 

[Mord]

I read.

 

[jaw04005]

Steve must have read this article, as he was dead on. Although I'm sure Apple does polling on this type of stuff also:

"When the Gallup Poll asked in 2005 how many books people had at least started _ a similar but not directly comparable question _ the typical answer was five. That was down from 10 in 1999, but close to the 1990 response of six.

In 2004, a National Endowment for the Arts report titled "Reading at Risk" found only 57 percent of American adults had read a book in 2002, a four percentage point drop in a decade. The study faulted television, movies and the Internet."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/21/AR2007082101045.html

I personally think books are just different. I mean you can start a book in the morning while you're in the bathroom, throw it in your briefcase to read on your way to the airport and read it on the plane all in one day. If you lose it, it's not a big deal.

Now, you leave your $400 e-book reader some place—it becomes a big deal. They're just not as flexible.

If e-books take off, it will because they are on devices we already own and carry around (iPhone, cell phone, etc). There's just not much of a market for a standalone device, IMO.

 

[gwangung]

Well, that was one of the dumber things St. Jobs said.

Not really.

Folks may not like it, but there's a great deal of truth to what he said (please remember that Amazon is a retailer of books--they're sucking up market from large chains and smaller books). People in the publishing industry has voiced concerns like his for quite some time.

 

[zedsdead]

That's a shame...I am 22, and I read a decent amount...I would have loved for Apple to get into the business.

 

[arkitect]

Dear Steve,

Your RDF was turned off today. People ready plenty of books, magazines, etc.

Goodbye,
The Planet Earth

Agree…

I am very disappointed that Steve Jobs could come up with such an idiotic statement. People do not read books anymore?


Really thought Jobs was more savvy than that.

Mind you his choice of music should have been a give away a looong time ago.

 

[angelwatt]

"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."

Well I read every day basically, both digitally and physically (paper-based). I also read a number of journal and conference papers that are in PDF form every month for work and personal purposes.

Steve has an attitude problem here it seems, which likely means he already has a working design in his head and doesn't want anyone to catch on. I'd love a "good" device for reading material electronically, but the Kindle wasn't quite there for me; in both form and cost. I wish my iPod would sync up with Google Reader and give me a nice screen to read my feeds on, though it would take a bit bigger screen for me to enjoy book length reading.

Also, I bet if they did a survey they'd find a good portion of Mac faithfuls to be the ones who are still reading because generally Macs are owned by people with a little more money to spend because they have good jobs because they are well educated and well educated people read more ... statistically speaking of course.

 

[guzhogi]

For Kindle, sounds like an interesting idea. Does anybody know if it can also read aloud the books? Good for people who have a hard time reading (blind, young kids or adults just learning how to read). This would be cool on iPods & the iPhone. I know iPods have a note feature, but it would be cool if you can add books to it, too. A program I've found for cataloging books is at books.aetherial.net. The author of the program wants to add a feature where it can also download the actual texts of books and also to sync it to iPods. Looks interesting.

For Android, sounds cool, too. This would really help apps being interoperable on different kinds of phones.

For the MacBook Air, looks interesting. The whole SSD & no moving parts thing is great (especially in elementary schools where kids may drop them or whatever). However, it costs WAY too much for what it features IMO. Maybe make it an 11-12" screen priced at $799-$999. Even better is if it were like a Nintendo DS where it has 2 screens. One vertical for just looking and the horizontal one for typing (w/ some sort of tactile feedback). Also do full multitouch w/ scrolling, pinching, rotating on both. It would also help if it can swivel into a tablet computer for times when having it open like a regular laptop is too hard to handle.

 

[ViveLeLivre]

If people don't read: why is Jobs doing interviews with the NY TIMES?

Kindle is flawed because it's ugly as sin and has a poor button layout, yet they're constantly sold out on Amazon (think Nintendo Wii-like availability). And Amazon is the perfect vehicle to drive eBook sales. Perhaps Jobs comments are motivated by Amazon's increasing MP3 sales. Are we a little bitter, Steve? Hmm?

Or perhaps it's just Jobs who doesn't read. He does seem to be a bit out of touch lately (see MacWorld, MBA, $4.99 movie downloads).... and he's always been overly obsessed with the movie business. Who can trust his judgement on this one?

 

[Fast Shadow]

I never thought much of using a computer to read books until someone gave me a book in PDF. I absolutely loved it. I was able to adjust the size of the text, the brightness of the display, etc. It made reading on the couch, in bed, on a plane, etc so easy on my eyes, compared to reading a book in even the best lighting situation. I've tried Microsoft's e-reader and it's not bad, though I think a straight PDF file is the best way of all.

Regarding Jobs' comment that people don't read anymore. I'm surprised he's missed something this obvious - while your typical American may not read anymore, I would wager if you surveyed your typical Mac owner and Apple loyalist you would discover many of them are avid readers.

 

[redfirebird08]

What are all the lines of squiggly things on my computer screen?

(Not a very well thought-out Kindle comment. It has serious flaws, but the fact that many don't want one isn't a flaw. A product can meet the needs of a SMALL group can still be a great product. Thus the existence of, say, the 160 GB iPod!)

And does that 40% include babies?

Good analogy. And we could take this further with Apple products. The Mac in and of itself is a "niche" product compared to the rest of the computer market. And to take it even further, the pimped out Mac Pro is a REALLY niche product where you can get like 20 gigs of RAM. If that is offered, then what the hell is wrong with offering E-Book readers and E-Books?

 

[tsd]

He's right and wrong about the book reading stuff. He's right to not make a product for electronic reading, and he's right that the Amazon reader will be a dud. He's also right that there's no big market for reading, in general.

However, he's wrong to assume that people will stop reading. Books in paper will always hold a steady market. Everyone knows the unique quality of holding a book and reading it. Literacy will never fade, and reading of books will never go away. It will never again be as big of a market as electronic documents, but it won't go away.

 

[FoxyKaye]

I love reading, and preferably actual books. I also spend way too much time in front of an LCD every day to feel OK about cozying up to another LCD to read. Though the Kindle has definitely intrigued me, but I haven't yet found a steady supply of eBooks in my genres (steampunk, new weird, future dystopia, and more standard sci-fi and fantasy) to justify the expenditure. Maybe Kindle II for me, although the library would always be my first choice, followed by the local bookstores.

Steve's just trying to do what any CEO would do - promote his stuff at the expense of other companies' stuff. Though that his comments mirror his competitors' from a year ago, well, that's the patina washing off. Someday he'll realize that the emperor has no clothes.

 

[arkitect]

Or perhaps it's just Jobs who doesn't read.

I think he stoppped reading books after that unauthorised biography came out. Remembered how he had it banned from Apple Stores?
iCon, I think it was called.

Ah, yes here it is:

Steve Jobs, who was not included in the creation of the book, banned all books from the publisher of iCon John Wiley & Sons in Apple Retail Stores for publishing the unauthorized biography

 

[BigHat]

I love Steve but that was a stupid thing to say

I enjoy reading. Wish I had time to do more of it. Grad school was the "book a day club" for me and I didn't mnd it.

Bought a Kindle on Dec 20th. Looks like it will arrive near the end of this month. Amazon sold out their first production batch in 6 hours. So much for being a "dud." They are being scretive about quanities ordered and sold though. Just like the iPhone initially.

Bought it for four reasons listed in no particular order of priority:

1. I can travel with the equivalent of 200 books in the size on one small paperback. As a practical matter, it's worth it just so I don't have to tote one or two hardcovers.

2. It will program it to get the daily paper. Will likely keep the paper copy of the Washington Post, but will cancel NYT and WSJ subs as the Kindel version is cheaper and less of a hassle. Get to have 3 newspapers in your hand without any hassle. Much easier to read on the plane.

3. While I have about 5,000 hardcover books, I'm realizing that the space they occupy is often a pain in the butt. For those best sellers, that you read once and never pick-up again, I'll opt for the cheaper electronic copy and save the space.

4. Built in Wikopedia and dictionary. How nice is that !!