In any case, it seems to me that the underlying problem here is the choice of digital rights protection made by both Apple and Amazon, among others. There are two approaches: use technology to *block* unauthorized access (while creating enormous inconveniences such as the subject of this thread), or use technology to *prosecute* those who blatantly violate access rights. While there are various ways to use the first approach, there are basically two ways to use the second one: the honor system (e.g., O'Reilly, who update their books fairly often with new content), or the watermark (lots of providers). I personally believe that watermarking (inserting a unique code into each ebook indicating who its original purchaser was) is the best way to protect rights. If you give a copy containg your watermark to your wife, no one really cares, and nothing need be done. But if you upload it to a sharing site so that thousands of copies are distributed for free, that will have a substantial impact on the owner of the rights; in that case, the owner can simply get a copy from the sharing site, look at the watermark, and come after you. This (or the honor system, which is also quite reasonable where appropriate) is the best way to protect ebook rights.
I note en passant that I frequently read watermarked epubs purchased from various providers in iBooks on my iPhone. I can read the same ones on various readers on my Mac, including Murasaki & iReader. Hopefully, I will soon be able to read them in iBooks on my Mac.
If Apple had chosen to use watermarked epubs in iBooks, then you could already have been reading them everywhere (except Kindle, which won't read epubs). In my opinion, that decision is what we should be complaining about, not (just) the long delay in allowing iBooks to be read on Macintosh.
