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Apple to do e-reader app? iPhone 3.0 OS doc opens up possibility
April 30, 2009 | 4:32 am
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By David Rothman
Is a spiffy new icon for an e-book program—from Apple itself—about to join the ones you see here?
"A book reader application could allow the user to purchase and download new books," the iPhone 3.0 OS documentation reportedly says.
So, within the app, could you buy e-books via micropayments billed to your iTunes account? A member of the Reading 2.0 list is sensibly speculating that. Needless to say, what applies to the iPhone could apply to the Touch as well. And maybe even the rumored Apple tablet, the “Mediapad” or whatever.
Now for some other fun. What format or formats will the possible new Apple app use? ePub among them? I hope that the Apple community speaks up for ePub capability, as well as for Apple’s encouraging book publishers to avoid DRM, in line with Steve Jobs’s expressed sentiments about music. Don’t count on Apple listening. But we can dream, no?
If Apple does things right, maybe the possible e-reading app will offer an interface as slick as Stanza’s. Of course, compared to today’s Stanza, I doubt that Apple will make it so easy for books from sites like Gutenberg, Feedbooks or Smashwords.
Stanza, for now, allows easy access to public domain works and those from innovative new startups. But for any Apple app, iTunes will be the show here.
Needless to say, the possible Apple e-reading app would cut into the revenues that Amazon was expecting from the current Kindle app for the iPhone—and from a Kindle-ized Stanza.
Update, 5:50 a.m.: Adam Hodgin notes that an Apple launch presentation played up third-party developers’ products. But, hey, since when has Apple been stopped that much by the needs of smallfry? The e-reading app may not happen immediately, but as noted, the OS documentation points to that possibility in time. Is this really just a friendly nudge to developers to come up with e-reading apps?
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Comments:
Hi
It’s a lovely idea – but I don’t think it’s a secret. It’s a core feature of OS3.0.
The example of a book app was made at the official OS3.0 announcement on March 17th. Watch this clip:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/preview-iphone-os/
at 10m 40s for more info.
Cheers
Peter
I think it’s just a case of Apple looking for the most easily-understandable example for the layperson.
As Peter says, it was mentioned at the presentation in March. It was what caused me to worry, at the time, about what OS 3.0 might mean for e-book app developers such as Fictionwise/eReader who already have their own external e-book stores.
I’m all in favor of competition among eBook distributors/aggregators. I wonder if Apple will be friendly to small publishers or simply go after the big boys? Fictionwise and, yes, Amazon have been open to small publishers which has been a key part of their success.
Like David, I truly hope that Apple doesn’t introduce another format or, worse, a for-fee conversion process. Maintaining a high number of incompatible formats does become a bit of a process nightmare.
Rob Preece
Publisher
Well, I hope the developers get “nudged” in the right direction. Of course, I’d also like to see such apps for devices other than iPhones… like an ePub app for my PDA (but we’ve covered that ground before…).