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Steve Jobs on MacBook Air, Android and Kindle
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xy14
macrumors 6502
I think what he meant by that comment was that Apple would not be able to do it because they wont make enough money on it. Even if 60% of people read more than one book a year, what percent of those people would shell out $150+ for the device and even $2 for an ebook, especially when you can go to the library and rent 5 books for free with no extra costs?
Well heck, let us just tell Books a Millions, B&N, Borders, and everyone else opening mega-bookstores that they should just close down because nobody is reading books any more.
Steve also said nobody uses Java any more. Funny- someone is paying several million Java developers worldwide.
I think he is off his rocker. Sometimes I get the impression he thinks he is God and we should just bow down to his superior intellect. I guess it doesn't help things when so many people are down at his feet just waiting on him to throw us the next piece of Apple hardware or software. This is probably helping to reinforce his "God" complex.
Steve also said nobody uses Java any more. Funny- someone is paying several million Java developers worldwide.
I think he is off his rocker. Sometimes I get the impression he thinks he is God and we should just bow down to his superior intellect. I guess it doesn't help things when so many people are down at his feet just waiting on him to throw us the next piece of Apple hardware or software. This is probably helping to reinforce his "God" complex.
No need to worry. He said once: "people don't want to watch video on small screens. People don't want to watch movies on their iPods..."
And a couple months after that... you know what happened.
If you don't believe me, take a look around this forums. I was the first one to criticize him by saying something soo stupid. And the fanboys were with him...
saltyzoo
macrumors 65816
It is meaningless without context. 60% of the country isn't a good enough market? He was insinuating that was a low number. It's not. He was insinuating that number is declining. Without historical data, that's just a guess.
Yes, he could have said all of that, but instead he made an idiotic statement that insulted a lot of hard core Apple users. Apple used to be a brand that appreciated thinking creative people ... what Jobs said today is that Apple is a company that appeals to the least common denominator ... the idiots who do nothing but consume electronic media. Thanks for clarifying Steve, maybe my loyalty is displaced. I don't really care if Apple builds an eBook reader, but I don't want to be branded an anachronistic fool because I like to read.
Remember... please... you are talking about a guy that thinks that a one button mouse is RIGHT. Wrong!!!
And as far as his track record... oh yes, good things have come out from Apple... but don't forget about his flip-flop (see comment above), the cube, the mac mini, the newton, etc.
Hey guys, first post ever =)
The Kindle is a good idea for that small market - it's possibly the best e-book device ever released. However, Steve's way off here. 60% is a pretty decent majority. I'd say less than 60% buy music anymore, yet he advertises iTunes like crazy, less than 60% buy movies digitally and he preaches AppleTV... and like someone else said, Apple users are well under 60%.
The Kindle is a good idea for that small market - it's possibly the best e-book device ever released. However, Steve's way off here. 60% is a pretty decent majority. I'd say less than 60% buy music anymore, yet he advertises iTunes like crazy, less than 60% buy movies digitally and he preaches AppleTV... and like someone else said, Apple users are well under 60%.
While I realize that I am very much in the minority, an ebook reader (just about any out there) is infinitely more readable to me than a paperback (or hardback) book. I have problems with contrast, and a computer or ebook screen for me is much easier to read because of the brightness and contrast. I love to read, and I love the "feel" of a real book in my hands, but it is just too tiring on my eyes to read a real book for very long. For me e-ink is actually a step backwards because it usually lowers the contrast too much. However, I used to read all the time on my pda, and I wish I still had it for that reason alone.
sishaw
macrumors 65816
Are we sure...
Are we sure this isn't a classic Jobsian misdirection, in the style of "no one wants to watch video on a handheld device" and other similar comments he has made over the years, before releasing a device in the very market he so recently maligned? The man loves secrecy like cats loves milk.
Are we sure this isn't a classic Jobsian misdirection, in the style of "no one wants to watch video on a handheld device" and other similar comments he has made over the years, before releasing a device in the very market he so recently maligned? The man loves secrecy like cats loves milk.
pagansoul
macrumors 65816
I have not purchased a book in months. I'm not tallking about my photo books or illustrated books or magazines but text books, novels. I either borrow from friends and family or buy ebooks on line from a the few places that sell Adobe verisions and I read them on my computer. I get all my news on line and on radio. I have a collection of Public Domain ebooks for the classics, about 2,000 of them. I'm one of those people who do read by computer. I get my Macworld delivered via Zinio. This year I'm going to get a notebook for the first time. I am also looking at E-Readers and tablets. The problem with Kindle is no color and I need to see a magazine in all its glory.
I also think Steve is pulling your leg, that he is indeed interested in a reader but likes to keep his plans secret. And, yes, readership has dropped because there are so many other ways to be entertained these days. Used to be that reading a book was the only way you could travel, then came radio, moving pictures, internet. There will always be books because they are self contained but they are in no way as popular as they used to be. I'm not talking about the student but the average American done with school. You go to work during the week, get home to eat and watch some of the news and maybe a program. On the weekend you watch the game, go shopping, glance at the Gossip rags while waiting to pay for your food. Sunday you look at the funnies and the headlines, sports, food, about town section and thats it. My mother, retired, spends about 2 hours going over the Sunday paper every week but I don't think she even looks at the weekday news. She belongs to a book club who read about 2 books monthly. She also sneaks in a romantic novel every now and them. I think older woman are the big book readers of today and they don't care for electronic readers. I gave her a mini two years ago and all she uses it for is email. The grand-kids use it more.
If Apple is going into the e-reader business it can not be stand alone..it has to be more and they are just not ready at this time to come up with the product. A product is only as good as it's content. Publishers are as bad as Hollywood. There's a lot of contacts to be made and deals to seal and like the Kindle, some sort of copy protection. How many things at a time do you think they can juggle?
I also think Steve is pulling your leg, that he is indeed interested in a reader but likes to keep his plans secret. And, yes, readership has dropped because there are so many other ways to be entertained these days. Used to be that reading a book was the only way you could travel, then came radio, moving pictures, internet. There will always be books because they are self contained but they are in no way as popular as they used to be. I'm not talking about the student but the average American done with school. You go to work during the week, get home to eat and watch some of the news and maybe a program. On the weekend you watch the game, go shopping, glance at the Gossip rags while waiting to pay for your food. Sunday you look at the funnies and the headlines, sports, food, about town section and thats it. My mother, retired, spends about 2 hours going over the Sunday paper every week but I don't think she even looks at the weekday news. She belongs to a book club who read about 2 books monthly. She also sneaks in a romantic novel every now and them. I think older woman are the big book readers of today and they don't care for electronic readers. I gave her a mini two years ago and all she uses it for is email. The grand-kids use it more.
If Apple is going into the e-reader business it can not be stand alone..it has to be more and they are just not ready at this time to come up with the product. A product is only as good as it's content. Publishers are as bad as Hollywood. There's a lot of contacts to be made and deals to seal and like the Kindle, some sort of copy protection. How many things at a time do you think they can juggle?
I am not surprised by that statistic. I am assuming he was using Americans and when you come out of your corporate forum reading bubble, a lot of people dont read books.
http://www.humorwriters.org/startlingstats.html
The stats don't surprise me and I would never have recommended an ebook reader. People like the pages, they like turning the pages. They like the feeling of a book. It is inert, it is the last frontier that will never be technologized (i know its not a word)
My mom will read a book in a day. She loves books and spends a lot of time at the library. She would never buy something like that, why bother.
http://www.humorwriters.org/startlingstats.html
The stats don't surprise me and I would never have recommended an ebook reader. People like the pages, they like turning the pages. They like the feeling of a book. It is inert, it is the last frontier that will never be technologized (i know its not a word)
My mom will read a book in a day. She loves books and spends a lot of time at the library. She would never buy something like that, why bother.
Ugh. If Apple does this they better not give in on copy protection this time. It's better to not have the product than it is to have copy protection. The copy protection is 75% of the reason I have no interest in e-books. Price is the other 25%.
No, it's not. These are students in the top 5% of their high school classes. I don't think it's too much to expect them to have read at least one book in three months over summer break. All of my friends in college read for pleasure. But today's students find other outlets.
People simply don't read as much anymore.
A quarter-century ago when I was an undergraduate, the reading load I had in a given semester was easily twice what students at that same institution read presently.
Those who do read tend to read a lot of books. But you don't find as many people reading for entertainment these days.
The year is young, but I think Jobs' statement on Kindle qualifies as the stupidest tech pronouncement of 2008.
The Kindle is selling so well that it has already proven a market for an easy-to-use print reader. People don't have the space to store large paper libraries today. Students want to be able to carry their moungtain of textbooks in compact, searchable form. Those who subscribe to magazines would like instant delivery to a reader.
Apple might argue against the need for another separate device. Could the iPhone or the new MBA be given the ability to buy Kindle-format e-books through ITMS and act as a reader? As SSD prices come down, the MBA might become the preferred e-book device.
CBJammin103
macrumors regular
I think this is about right. Jobs says that people aren't reading anymore, but I think he's thinking of this more in terms of the sale of some hypothetical Apple product.
Whether or not people are actually reading paperback or hardcover books is somewhat irrelevant to Apple in the innovation department. However, the fact that people don't want to read electronic books is what I think Steve had in mind.
Regardless of what he meant, our society will always keep reading consistently on some level, even if that isn't a level that contains cutting-edge technology.
re: too pricy?
You can't do better than 4200RPM with a hard drive thin enough to fit in this notebook though. Sad though it might be, that's as far as hard drive technology has come along. Truthfully, I'd argue that the Macbook Air shouldn't even be purchased without the SSD flash drive. They just offer the 80GB hard drive to keep the price down for people who can't swallow the extra $999.
About 1 1/2 years ago, I had a client who requested I find him a "really light-weight, small notebook" to use in his travels. All we could come up with that really pleased him was a Sony Vaio costing upwards of $3100. He gladly paid it though. So I know a market exists for this sort of thing, even in this high price range.
I'm with you though; as cool as this is, it doesn't make financial sense for me. I get more out of a Macbook Pro with better video capabilities and a larger screen to work with.
You can't do better than 4200RPM with a hard drive thin enough to fit in this notebook though. Sad though it might be, that's as far as hard drive technology has come along. Truthfully, I'd argue that the Macbook Air shouldn't even be purchased without the SSD flash drive. They just offer the 80GB hard drive to keep the price down for people who can't swallow the extra $999.
About 1 1/2 years ago, I had a client who requested I find him a "really light-weight, small notebook" to use in his travels. All we could come up with that really pleased him was a Sony Vaio costing upwards of $3100. He gladly paid it though. So I know a market exists for this sort of thing, even in this high price range.
I'm with you though; as cool as this is, it doesn't make financial sense for me. I get more out of a Macbook Pro with better video capabilities and a larger screen to work with.
ktbubster
macrumors 6502a
Tablet Mac - ebooks alive
I think that like someone here already mentioned, a separate ebook reader is expensive and worrisome and someone buying just a 400 dollar device for that is a bit much. Not much of a market. E-books will become more mainstream on devices people already own. A lot of my friends use their pdas, I could see using an iphone or ipodtouch for things like that and I would definitely purchase ebooks off of itunes or something if they had good prices compared to the actual hard copy of a book. Like someone stated they are mostly the same price now.
I think that if apple releases a small tablet somewhere in the future (like everyone was hoping for yesterday) ... i phone but in a 7 by 10 inch sorta format, or even a small portable laptop converted into a tablet that's about that size, that's the size of a bigger hard cover mostly. Heck. If something just weight 2 or 3 lbs and was the size of a sheet of paper or a text book, I'd be perfectly fine with it and would LOVE to read ebooks on it. Easier then a laptop for sure, and while still bigger then a lot of books, I think with the iphone guestures for flipping pages it would be really great!
I would LOVE a tablet mac with the ability to buy ebook and ebook versions of my textbooks to go alone with itunes University. Imagine how nice it would be to be able to select or highlight text with your figure or even an image or something an paste it right into your notes or make notes from your text?
THAT could score big with students.
I think Jobs is making a mistake, and if apple ever releases a small tablet computer (which I am still sure they are on the way to doing) and started selling ebooks and e-textbooks online at decent prices, they could make a killing. ESPECIALLY at universities.
Just my 2 cents.
Edit: not to mention with this format... just a simple small tablet computer (much like the power of the MBA ... the things we saw in the sketches that would dock into an imac like thing for instance) add in the daily paper and magazine subscriptions... people could still write on it and do their daily crosswords and random brain teasers. Those logic puzzle books for the road being read in a program that allows you to write and erase? THAT would be awesome. I could see using that a lot on trips and... anywhere when i'm waiting.
I think that like someone here already mentioned, a separate ebook reader is expensive and worrisome and someone buying just a 400 dollar device for that is a bit much. Not much of a market. E-books will become more mainstream on devices people already own. A lot of my friends use their pdas, I could see using an iphone or ipodtouch for things like that and I would definitely purchase ebooks off of itunes or something if they had good prices compared to the actual hard copy of a book. Like someone stated they are mostly the same price now.
I think that if apple releases a small tablet somewhere in the future (like everyone was hoping for yesterday) ... i phone but in a 7 by 10 inch sorta format, or even a small portable laptop converted into a tablet that's about that size, that's the size of a bigger hard cover mostly. Heck. If something just weight 2 or 3 lbs and was the size of a sheet of paper or a text book, I'd be perfectly fine with it and would LOVE to read ebooks on it. Easier then a laptop for sure, and while still bigger then a lot of books, I think with the iphone guestures for flipping pages it would be really great!
I would LOVE a tablet mac with the ability to buy ebook and ebook versions of my textbooks to go alone with itunes University. Imagine how nice it would be to be able to select or highlight text with your figure or even an image or something an paste it right into your notes or make notes from your text?
THAT could score big with students.
I think Jobs is making a mistake, and if apple ever releases a small tablet computer (which I am still sure they are on the way to doing) and started selling ebooks and e-textbooks online at decent prices, they could make a killing. ESPECIALLY at universities.
Just my 2 cents.
Edit: not to mention with this format... just a simple small tablet computer (much like the power of the MBA ... the things we saw in the sketches that would dock into an imac like thing for instance) add in the daily paper and magazine subscriptions... people could still write on it and do their daily crosswords and random brain teasers. Those logic puzzle books for the road being read in a program that allows you to write and erase? THAT would be awesome. I could see using that a lot on trips and... anywhere when i'm waiting.
sishaw
macrumors 65816
One reason is--the pure joy of being able to browse the Kindle Store from anywhere, for free, without a tether, and, upon finding a book that one likes, being able to immediately download a generous sample (not the usual page or two that Amazon allows, but 3 chapters or so) and then buy the book and have it in your hands in less than a minute!
Oh, and being able to hold hundreds of books on one device; and the fact than you can Kindle-ize your own documents and make them instantaneously accessible in a searchable format.
There are issues with the Kindle--the ergonomics leave much to be desired and the filing system is rudimentary for a device that can hold so much content, to name two. But its basic functionality as a reader is rather good.
Oh, and I would take Jobs' comments with a few grains of salt. He has been known to use misdirection, or simply to change his mind. He's a very innovative thinker and I wouldn't put anything past him on the basis of one interview.
http://gadgetwriter.blogspot.com/2007/12/experiencing-amazon-kindle.html
Limited attention span, lack of reading skills. Current generation of Americans have very short attention spans.
And even if this were true, Asian sales for an Apple-quality e-book reader
would alone justify a massively profitable design effort.
Kindle
I think the truth is in the middle here, really. Jobs is right, in that the "Apple" of today caters to making higher-end product for people who value spending a little more in order to get more.
I suspect a good portion of avid book readers out there would say one big advantage of books is their relatively low-cost. If you're not borrowing a book from a library for FREE, you're often buying a used paperback for FAR less than the price of a piece of computer software, or often, even getting one free from somebody who already read it and is done with it.
This isn't a demographic that would easily be swayed by some promise of an elegant but pricy Apple-branded e-book reader. (You can throw a book almost anywhere too, with little concern of breaking it or of it getting stolen.)
On the flip-side, yeah, the Kindle has a really big "niche" it could fill in the way of student textbooks. Almost nobody cares about hanging onto school textbooks to read after the course is finished, and they hate lugging them all around between classes. The ability to download the current ones to an e-reader before the semester starts (even if they're DRM protected so they auto-expire the next year or whatever) would make sense in that environment. Some would say Apple really missed the boat here. I'd say the "old Apple" sure would have looked more closely at this -- but today, they're much more a media company than they are concerned about being at the forefront of education.
I think the truth is in the middle here, really. Jobs is right, in that the "Apple" of today caters to making higher-end product for people who value spending a little more in order to get more.
I suspect a good portion of avid book readers out there would say one big advantage of books is their relatively low-cost. If you're not borrowing a book from a library for FREE, you're often buying a used paperback for FAR less than the price of a piece of computer software, or often, even getting one free from somebody who already read it and is done with it.
This isn't a demographic that would easily be swayed by some promise of an elegant but pricy Apple-branded e-book reader. (You can throw a book almost anywhere too, with little concern of breaking it or of it getting stolen.)
On the flip-side, yeah, the Kindle has a really big "niche" it could fill in the way of student textbooks. Almost nobody cares about hanging onto school textbooks to read after the course is finished, and they hate lugging them all around between classes. The ability to download the current ones to an e-reader before the semester starts (even if they're DRM protected so they auto-expire the next year or whatever) would make sense in that environment. Some would say Apple really missed the boat here. I'd say the "old Apple" sure would have looked more closely at this -- but today, they're much more a media company than they are concerned about being at the forefront of education.
"New York, NY, March 6, 2006: Net sales for the United States publishing industry are estimated to have increased by 9.9 percent from 2004 to 2005 to a grand total of $25.1 billion, according to figures released by the Association of American Publishers (AAP). The sales figures in this report are based on year-to-date data in the AAP 2005 December Monthly Sales Report, the recently released U.S. Department of Commerces 2002 Census Bureau Report and other statistical data."