Links: Apple v. the World

Recently, Apple’s been feeling its oats, and Steve Jobs has been picking fights with absolutely everybody, even bloggers who just want a portable porn pad. Here’s a breakdown of the two biggest Apple fights out there.

Apple v. Amazon

First there was terror. When the iPad was announced, Jeff Bezos messed his cargo shorts when he heard Apple was supporting both ePub and the Agency model. He promptly caved and let publishers walk all over him—although he did it, of course, with a minimum of maturity, because that’s how he rolls. But Bezos (not to mention publishers) got proper snookered by the sneaky Jobs.

Despite all the furor over Apple’s embrace of the agency model (which might not even be legal in countries where they regulate their corporations), the iPad isn’t selling many iBooks. Penguin claims to be leading the pack (you know, if you don’t count free Gutenberg books, which are “selling” twice as much as Penguin). But let’s not forget that iBooks aren’t very popular, in the scheme of iPad apps—in fact, Feedbooks distributes more books.

If the iPad does start selling tons of iBooks, well, publishers are screwed then, too. Apple can evidently force prices down to $9.99 if it feels like, and in April 2011, they can simply rescind the agency model agreement. Ha!

All this has led to, shall we say, some tension in the publishing industry. Publishers are choosing up sides, and even unleashing their wrath on unsuspecting authors who want to publish ebooks. Then there are the obligatory rumors that Kindle’s grip on the market is slipping, but since there’s a Kindle app for the iPad (not to mention iPhone and soon Android) I don’t understand how Apple will ever win a book fight.

And by the way, Google’s launching its own ebookstore, which I’m guessing and hoping will use Adobe ePub formatting. Meaning neither Apple nor Amazon customers will be able to read Google ebooks. Because Apple hates Adobe, too! Why? Well, more on that after the jump…

Apple v. Adobe (or apple v. flash?)

Nobody ever really expected the iPhone to get Flash, but when the iPad debuted without it—meaning no Hulu, among many other things—it was at the top of everybody’s “What the iPad’s Missing” lists.

Because Apple and Adobe are two of the biggest, most prominent technology companies in America, both saw fit to resolve this disagreement with all the poise and civility of two collicky toddlers slapfighting in a sandbox.

Adobe responded hastily to the iPad’s lack of Flash, saying in part:

It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers.

That one little sentence is so many things. It’s true, OK, but it’s also whiny, passive-aggressive and petty—especially considering that they must have known this was happening before the iPad actually launched.

Steve Jobs responded with a public list of complaints about Flash, including such things as its impact on battery life, its reliability, and its ability to work with touch input. All decent points, but all things that should have been worked out (in private) years ago, especially since Apple and Adobe have worked together productively for years.

Instead Jobs went for the childish public retaliation, and Adobe got itself in a (bigger) huff and struck back with these smarmy We Heart Apple ads. (For a more tasteful statement of frustration with Apple, read this piece by Adobe Photoshop honcho John Nack.)

Personally, I think these companies are both being bullheaded and thin-skinned. Jobs makes some good points about why Flash might not be great to run, but refusing to allow it on his devices hamstrings the user experience. There are lots of cool things out there that use Flash (like Bendito Machine), and, personally, I want the ability to decide for myself what I do with a computer or a phone or anything else I pay for and own.

Apple often treats its customers like Luddites incapable of understanding statements like “Flash uses battery faster than html5.” That’s OK for my mom, who maybe actually doesn’t understand that, but I’m willing to make trade-offs (and they are definitely trade-offs). I don’t want to have a device’s usefulness—or especially the content available for it—artificially limited by the questionable moral (read: censorship) policies of a single corporate ethos.

After all, limiting content is semi-defensible (not really) when it’s porn, but Apple also rejected a political cartoonist’s app on the grounds that they don’t allow satire on the iPhone. Only after that cartoonist won the Pulitzer Prize was his app accepted. That kind of thing is downright scary.

Apple carries a heavy stick these days, but we’re staring at censorship by capitalism here, and that unnerves me deeply. (Oh, and by the way, Android’s getting Flash.) Adobe DRM and Flash are disconcerting because they’re proprietary and ubiquitous, and that’s certainly bad. Still, Jobs’s willingness to sacrifice his customers to win a pissing match is no less disconcerting.

Anyway, after all that the implications for ereaders are simple: a schism between Adobe and Apple means no library ebooks on the iPad. Which makes the iPad a no-go for ereading, in my book. I hate all DRM but until it goes away, Adobe is my DRM of choice.