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Mac owners vs. the Sony Reader’s eBabel: The horrors and some partial fixes
December 26, 2006 | 6:33 am
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By David Rothman
Mac owners are among the biggest victims of the Tower of eBabel. In the usual Mac mode, they can’t read Microsoft Reader files, for example, and the Sony Reader has just added to their woes. Here’s the latest horror story, along with partial fixes.
A friend of mine showed a Sony Reader to someone he knew. The viewer was impressed to the point of using the adjective “delicious” to describe the Reader. A girlfriend, wife or other family member then actually gave him one for Christmas, at which point the misery began: “What she did not know when she bought it is that the damn thing has no software to download books from a Mac. Have you, or do you know of, a workaround or if they are planning to come up with a Mac plug in? It’s ridiculous that they would have no option for the Mac, don’t you think?—and then also not making it very clear in the packaging either.”
Workarounds
In a nutshell, yes, you can download books from places such as Manybooks.net to a Mac, then use a Reader-adapted memory card to transfer to your Sony Reader. Manybooks.net is even experimenting with Sony’s BBeB format.
Alas, however, unless you have access to a PC or can use Windows software via Boot Camp, Parallels Desktop or a similar program on your Mac, you’re probably out of luck when it comes to enjoying books from Sony’s Connect store, including DRMed best-sellers. See a Tidbits article for further details on the how-to.
Not full fixes
I’ll use the word “partial” to describe the fixes. When Mac owners must resort to PC emulation to read DRM-blighted books, those are not full, genuine solutions.
As long as proprietary e-book formats exist, either directly or through proprietary DRM, such problems will occur. Many vendors will introduce new hardware or software with only Windows users in mind. There is no guarantee that Mac and Linux versions will follow promptly or even at all.
With such contempt for the needs of users, it’s no wonder that the e-book industry is faring worse than it could be. I expect that e-books will do better in ’07 than they did this year, but you can bet that they would enjoy much bigger gains without the Tower in place. Again, remember that proprietary DRM can turn “open” formats into proprietary ones in effect. We need a full solution. I dislike DRM, but if publishers keep insisting on it, then we need standards in that area, too, not just in core formats.
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Comments:
“As long as proprietary e-book formats exist, either directly or through proprietary DRM, such problems will occur.”
Examples are know of formats that are proprietary, yet widespread. The problem is in the DRM and in the lack of documentation of proprietary formats, not in the fact that formats are proprietary. PDF and RTF are proprietary formats, yet they are widely supported by third party reader makers.
Perhaps one day Adobe will hide the PDF specifications, and it will then profit from a certain inertia among users who won’t easily switch readers and formats. But in such a case, PDF would eventually cease to exist.
Anyway, I understand the IDPF is working on an open e-book format, so that should make even you happy.
> I understand the IDPF is working on an open e-book format, so that should make even you happy.
The catch is the inevitable proprietary DRM—at least in the case of best-sellers, etc.
David
I am a Mac user myself, but the spec sheets for the Sony Reader I saw do state that Windows is required for the support software. The first assumption any Mac owner must make is that software that does not explicitly state it supports OS X will not.
That said, Parallels is a good solution for many such issues and is a near-mandatory purchase for many people. Now that USB 2.0 support is built into the next release beta, the future should improve.
I can’t accuse Sony of “contempt” for their customers on the OS X issue; the Mac install base is not their customer, the untold millions of Windows users are their customers. They are going after the same people they sell their Vaios to. The fact that their format remains closed and that end-user tools to create files in their format are not available from Sony is a bigger issue to me.
Sony is quite possibly the most proprietary, monolithic company in history. I never bothered to look at their eBook reader because my immediate assumption was that it would not be compatible with anything. Vaio computers are carefully designed to force you to use Sony peripherals usually costing several times as much as fair-market alternatives.
A company that comes up with a proprietary memory card format and refuses to use even a standard earphone connection on many of its devices should be boycotted and never allowed to play with decent people.
[...] Play news catch-up with TeleRead Our friends over at TeleRead have been very active with a lot of coverage of e-book news these days. In case you were absent from your computer due to heavy-duty holiday relaxing, make sure to catch up with these TeleRead highlights that David prepared for us. Some of my favorite recent TeleRead articles:TeleRead
You can transfer books to/from the reader in OSX using libprs500, a reverse engineered library I wrote.
http://libprs500.kovidgoyal.net.
Hi, I was wondering whether anyone could shed some light on the phrase “Reader-adapted memory card” in the article above. I got a Sony Reader (and the extra memory card) a few weeks ago, and used my old PC to transfer books to it. But then, about a week ago I bought a new MacBook and left the country for the next few months, and therefore don’t have access to my old PC.
Can I just use the Reader’s memory card in something like a flash drive? (And could you recommend what sort to buy?) I don’t want to begin experimenting until I’m sure I won’t lose what’s already on the card. I need to buy a flash drive anyways and am hoping I can knock off two birds with one stone.
Thanks!
Andrew in South America
PS- The Reader so far is great. There are, obviously, some issues I have with it: 1) You can’t rename files easily in the Connect Software, nor can you create folders/indices on the memory card–this is especially irritating if you’re reading essays/documents rather than full books, and have to scroll through dozens of pages to find what you’re looking for; 2) Some pdf’s are nearly impossible to read; 3) all my bookmarks were at one point erased without warning, which caused me to lose not only my place in the several books I was reading, but also passages I’d marked for later reference. But other than those glitches, I really have to say that this has made reading while traveling a thousand times easier.
Hmmm… I need to get this up as an FAQ.
Here’s the current workaround for Mac users of the 505 (and unfortunately it involves a PC, or at least a copy of Parallels/Fusion). You don’t have access to the Sony Connect store, but you do have access to any other store or library that uses Adobe DRM (on PDF or ePub).
The Firmware update is Windows only, but you really want to update your firmware however. After you update the firmware, on that same Windows system you want to “Authorize” your 505 with your Adobe ID. You do this by installing Digital Editions on that and (very important) Authorize it when asked with your Adobe ID. Plug in your 505 (you may need to unplug and replug to get ADE to recognize it the first time) while DE is running and it will recognize your reader and bring up a dialog asking if you want to Authorize it – accept this dialog.
After this is done, on your Mac (if you haven’t already), install ADE, and authorize with the same Adobe ID. The Sony Reader 505 appears as a USB Mass Storage Device (geek speak for looks like a USB Drive), and using the Finder you can copy files from your Digital Editions directory to your Sony Reader. Any content you can read in ADE, you will be able to view on your 505.
It’s not pretty, and it’s not real Mac like. I would love to make it so that the 505 shows up in ADE, just like it does on Windows, but we are relying on the Sony Drivers in Windows to recognize and authorize the 505, and Sony hasn’t released similar drivers for the Mac.
@ Jim Lester: Well bugger that! I’ll soon be through with Windows and won’t have it polluting my Mac via emulation or anything else.
Now I’m beginning to wonder why Sony doesn’t offer such free authorization for Mac owners in their SonyStyle stores. That’d help.
@Mike
There is of course the much easier answer which is not to deal with DRM at all. Transfering content I purchased on Baen or got on Feedbooks to my 505 is a relatively straightforward and easy process no matter what platform I’m on
However if you want to ask Sony for something – ask them for a driver for the 505 on Mac. The thought of putting my account/password into a public kiosk gives me the shudders.
I just tried this with my PRS-505 but still got the Protected Page logo on the reader. I will double check to make sure everything is authorized correctly, but I haven’t been able to get this to work.
[...] versjon ikke lar deg koble til og overføre filer til Sony Reader (man kan få det til, men løsningen er ganske kluntete per idag). Når ADE er installert blir PCen din automatisk godkjent for lesing [...]
[...] Make your Reader and Mac work together: This tutorial will help Mac workers find out how to partially fix the incompatibly problem with Sony Readers. [...]