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The dangers of platform lock-in
November 1, 2012 | 11:59 pm
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One reason some consumers haven’t jumped on the ebook bandwagon is because they’re concerned the format they select might become obsolete in a few years. Others dismiss that as unfounded pessimism but I have an example of how it can happen, and not with some fly-by-night platform. This problem happened on Apple’s extremely popular iOS platform.
Here’s a link to a problem one of our customers recently reported about our iOS ebook apps …
Source: O’Reilly TOC
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Comments:
I really don’t see how platform lock-in helps anybody. Reasonably low prices and a good ebook store will help keep customers loyal (After all if you have a Kindle or a Nook, are you really going to go through the hassel of buying the book from another store when you can get the same book on your device for a good price?), but lock in will just annoy them.
Amazon has admitted that it is selling Kindles at cost which means they are making their money on the books sold. That’s why platform lock-in exists.
Is this really an instance of vendor lock-in? As I followed this twisty trail, it became apparent that this particular case had more to do with Amazon than Apple. According to O’Reily employees, the problematic eBooks were actually book apps (ePub wrapped in an app container) created by a Lexcycle product they identified as Stanza Reader. Amazon has since purchased Lexcycle and ceased maintaining all of its products. This is what broke these book apps. Fortunately, these book apps are not DRM’d and its possible to extract the ePub from within and O’Reily staff have helpfully supplied computer code that will do this automatically. O’Reily is one of the most open purveyors of eBooks on the scene today. They even offered a way to simply have the disabled eBooks added to one’s account as unemcumbered ePub, PDF, Mobi and a fourth format I’ve forgotten. I certainly can’t fault O’Reily or Apple and Amazon is under no obligation to maintain Stanza compatibility in perpetuity. So, no, I don’t see this as an instance of vendor lock-in.