Etresoft! It's been awhile.... đ
No, my point is this. Apple are not heavily invested in the book business. It's a passing fad for them. Evidence for this is the simple fact that they haven't even made iBooks compatible across their own devices, despite debuting it at least a year and a half ago (or longer? I can't be bothered to check). In contrast, Kindle software has been available for every major platform (with syncing across devices) for at least two years to my knowledge.
iBooks should have come out as being compatible across iOS and OS X when it debuted, but even overlooking that, the fact that it still isn't available on OS X is seriously hurting adoption. It tells people - "this is an afterthought, we're not heavily invested in it". As a result, they've already lost the 'window of opportunity' to capture significant market share, and they certainly will drop it in the future. That's guaranteed by simple market economics. It's just a question of 'how long'.
As for this
etresoft wrote:
You are aware that Amazon has yet to even make a profit at all?
Amazon first turned a profit in 2001 and has turned a profit most years since. 2011 profits were just shy of $80m. The third quarter of 2012 saw their first loss-making quarter in four years. Moreover, given that Amazon had a $12bn turnover in 2011, if they can't make a decent profit out of bookselling, you can be **** sure that Apple can't either.
The truth is there's never been much money in bookselling (trust me, I used to be in the trade), and it's certainly no place for half-hearted bit-players like Apple. They'll drop it simply because it won't have any practical commercial value for them but will tarnish their image for doing it badly. As I said, it's just a matter of time.
And while I'm on (since I know you love a good scrap)
etresoft wrote:
The original poster is talkling about writing an app to interface with iBooks. Amazon isn't going to let any 3rd party developer compete with their DRM-based product any more than Apple will.
This was way off target, too. The OP is frustrated that he can't read his eBooks on different platforms. That's WHY he's talking about writing such an interface. I pointed out he doesn't need to; he could read his e-content across platforms with existing technology if he abandoned iBooks and used kindle.app, which is ALREADY available for iOS/OS X/Android/PC/Linux distros (and has been for years).
No need to waste time and effort developing an interface for an app that Apple will drop in the near future anyway. Switch now and save yourself the pain.