Posts tagged print media
iPad will revolutionize publishing – someday
Jan 29th
v1.0 shows platform still a work in progress
By now, even my disconnected mother sitting on a beach in Florida has heard about the iPad. And while geeks debate the name, whine about its lack of a memory card slot and USB port and slice Apple a new one for once again handing AT&T a golden egg, I find myself thinking about my mom, and whether her world changed a bit yesterday.
See, she reads books. Lots of them. She’s also a technophobe who views her laptop with a curious mixture of fear and indifference. 
Publishers tend to appreciate folks like my mom because she drives demand for their wares. Unfortunately, printing books is a complex, expensive and often messy business. As the record industry discovered in the 1990s, the Internet is changing the way we consume this content, and the industry would like – indeed needs – to transition my mom and everyone like her into an electronically distributed reality.
But in the absence of a realistically usable device or form factor – no, she’ll never read a book on her Byzantine-for-her laptop – that simply wasn’t going to happen. Amazon’s Kindle showed us the possibilities, but despite its pioneering success in defining the e-book reader market, it’s failed to break out beyond a niche product for cash-flush book lovers. It isn’t, and probably will never be, the reader for the rest of us. Read the rest of this entry »
iPad traces new direction for print media
Jan 28th
With all the hype and hoopla of yesterday’s unveiling of the much awaited Apple iPad, it was surprising to note that Steve Jobs had not uttered the word magazine. 
Yet this is the one industry where Apple’s take on the e-reader will have its largest impact. Long before its debut, tech pundits have already predicted that the iPad would take the publishing industry by storm just as the iPod had with the music industry. Read the rest of this entry »
