“We’ve gotten not one, but two bits from separate, trustworthy insiders that Apple’s not satisfied merely vending Audible’s books-on-digital-audio solution. With the iRex iLiad and Sony PRS-500 Portable Reader both right around the corner, is it possible the next iPod might catch the eBook bug? We’d say the possibility is very real, since according to a source at a major publishing house, they were just ordered to archive all their manuscripts — every single one — and send them over to Apple’s Cupertino HQ. A separate trusted source let us know that the next iPod will have a substantial amount of screen real estate (as we’d all suspected), as well as a book reading mode that pumps up the contrast and drops into monochrome for easy reading,” Ryan Block reports for Engadget.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “LinuxGuy” for the heads up.]
OK tubes……List 10 things that would be better ideas. In your bumble opinion.
BTW–I bought over 30 books in the past three months… Oh..but I came here (USA) from Jolly Old.
“I bought over 30 books in the past three months… “
Haven´t read any of them yet, right?
Well, an iPod with eBook capability will need a much bigger screen with a much higher resolution just like a real video-iPod.
Unless there’s a ‘WOW !’ factor, it’s going to be very hard to get Steve Jobs to go along with any proposal. He isn’t one for doing something just because it’s possible, there has to be something new and exciting about it.
An instant newspaper could be one starting point. If commuters were able to wirelessly download current news as they enter the station, maybe paid for by advertising, then it could define an entire new category of gadget.
It would be something to occupy the minds of commuters and that could open up a massive new market and create a new type of publishing. Users could set preferences to favour sports news over business news and reject the horoscope, while making sure that the Soduku puzzle is appropriate to their mental abilities.
An eBook doesn’t have much of a WOW factor, but a world-wide franchise for publishing eMagazines combined selling new iPods to a vast, relatively untapped market does have a certain charm to it.
Nolan: It’s called the “Baby Boom”. It’ll shape stats like that; e.g. empty nesters have more time to read.
Gerber, Mattel, McDonald’s, Ford Mustang, Chrysler Town & Country and many others succeded via that popoulation bubble. There’s another boom coming through the teen years. Watch the stats shift again.
Boomers had less kids than their parents and that’s the main reason for today’s financial squeezes. More consumers than producers.
>Haven´t read any of them yet, right?>
On my sixth one dinkus.
Mac Realist,
“Do your retirement account a favor and short the living daylights out of Apple stock!”
I don’t know of any retirement accounts with actual tax benefits that allow you to short a specific stock. There are a few “short style” funds that you can add to your retirement accounts, but you can’t specifically short AAPL.
I could be wrong and would like to know.
“More consumers than producers.”
Genius Artisticulated, that is the way it has been since ever.
Guess you have never read a book…did you even graduate from HS?
There are more McDonalds than ever, Ford Mustangs were never driven by infants, Mattel, gERber and the rest are still doing nicely.
Oh yeah and We are talking books here Artisticulated.
“Haven´t read any of them yet, right?”
In the context of money making opportunities, it doesn’t matter at all whether he is reading them or not, as long as he is buying them.
Anything that promotes reading is a good thing but I wonder if an iPod screen would be suitable for eBooks. At the very least I would expect a screen the size of a paperback novel and that of course will not be possible on a portable MP3 player. It would be better to have a stand-alone device just for eBooks.
Halla Loo Ya: Just for grins, consider when those products bossomed, Gerber was nothing before the Forties. Fast Food Restaruants didn’t realy exist before the late Fifties. Matel got bought out by Hasbro. The Mustang hit with the boomers and now hits again with boomer nostalgia.
Book buying stats are skewing older, guess why.
And yes that info came from books, here’s one of them: The Pig and the Python:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0773758275/sr=1-1/qid=1153699491/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-2821803-2104651?ie=UTF8&s=books
I try not to pad my posts with lots of analysis and psuedo-intellectual filler. I like to state the simple facts that folks like to overlook when they puff up their arguments. That, and I’m a lousy typist, so brevity is my fave.
sincerly,
Filler-boy
blossomed not bossomed, LOL
nolan,It’s fairly easy to tell that your statistics are incorrect. I’m not suggesting you lack sources or that mine are better than yours, but … in addition to being literate, I also happen to be numerate.
Your numbers are internally inconsistent. That means they are wrong. Or, at least, some of them are.
That much said, they would hardly apply to anyone I would spend any time with … anyone of any interest reads – even if only the first eighteen pages. Most of them, though, have a hint of the interest of a book based on the author’s previous works. Not likely to make a serious error – buying a book that pales within the first two-dozen pages.
Tubes,
Think of an iPod which is an ebook reader as being the text book of the future.
No more great hulking texts to lug about. One compact devise stores it all, plus provides interactive content, like being able to rotate a molecule instead of viewing static images.
With a little more fine-tuning I would think that the OS X Text-to-Speech feature would be almost as useful on the iPod.
I’d like some more PDA features on the next iPod. It would be one more item to take off of my ‘bat belt’…
You know, it doesn’t really matter what we all think will be the next big thing. Steve has a plan for what the iPod is. He already envisioned it as the one place for all the media we love. (ALL the media we love)
So whatever media you love, it will be on the iPod eventually.
Except Smell-o-vision.
DLMeyer – hey, go to links & argue with the experts that wrote them up. They are not my numbers.
http://parapublishing.com/sites/para/resources/statistics.cfm
If you had any common sense you would realize after reading the sources cited above that the statistics were taken in different years (as cited) – you may be literate and numerate, but you can´t comprehend what you read.
And you got better numbers…what are they, what did you do make them up?
DLMeyer – “That much said, they would hardly apply to anyone I would spend any time with …”
LOL (arrogance lifts its ugly head)…who is that- `you, yourself and I´?
The statistics are not about YOU (why do some people think everything is centered around them?) they are about the demographics of the book buying and reading market in the U.S.
nolan said: hey, go to links & argue with the experts that wrote them up. They are not my numbers.
And you got better numbers…what are they, what did you do make them up?</i>
Completely ignoring my: I’m not suggesting you lack sources or that mine are better than yours
But he has the gall to charge: you may be literate and numerate, but you can´t comprehend what you read
Then came the personal attack: LOL (arrogance lifts its ugly head)…who is that- `you, yourself and I´?
No, nolan, I do not spend my time alone. And I’m sure people who don’t read are every bit as likely to gather together as those who do. And the gals discuss the latest shades of pink and the guys the fastest cars they’ll never own and all will believe these things matter.
“And the gals discuss the latest shades of pink and the guys the fastest cars they’ll never own and all will believe these things matter.”
What type of nerd life to you live?
games r us asked: What type of nerd life to you live?
I don’t. I DO tend to get a bit riled when attacked … are you saying you don’t?
It sounds like you are an expert on what the ignorant folk do – that’s a paraphrase from the musical “Camelot”, you can look it up on the web. So, tell us: what do people who are proud of the fact they don’t read books talk about? Does your nom de plume say it all? Sorry, that’s French for “the name you go by when you don’t really want people to know who you really are”. You might think of it as “alias” or “screen name”.
DLMeyer equals Gregg Thurmann.
Apple at $81 by July 21, 2006.
Jack “doesn’t know JACK”.
Who is “Greg Thurmann”?
While I might have agreed with someone – sometime – that Apple stock may well hit $81 – sometime – I would not urge you to buy it. It’s a heartbreaker intent on driving people crazy. It broke $86 early this year – on less promise than shown by the latest numbers – and will get there again. Just not without more insane flip-flops than anyone deserves to endure.