iBooks and the eBott Format

Ed Bott recently elaborated on the evils of iBooks 2[1] due to the proprietary nature of the iBooks format. Guess what? iBooks 2 supports EPUB. He can sell his EPUB and still have it viewed on iBooks. I have many EPUB and PDF books that I have added myself. They look like crap. What Ed is apparently mad about is that Apple has created a tool that he wants to use because it’s better but it doesn’t output the format he wants so he can sell it somewhere else. I would love my Epson printer to output grilled cheese sandwiches. It does not. I don’t think Epson is evil.

Here’s the deal Ed. Apple will give you a great tool that outputs something more advanced than EPUB2 or even the EPUB3 draft. They will allow you to sell that book on their store. They will also advertise your book for free if they choose to.[2] Finally, they will allow you to give that book away if you so choose and not charge a nickel for anything. But they are not obligated to engineer a product that suits your specific needs and outputs two different formats from one application. They’ve provided pages for EPUB. They’ve provided iBooks Author for the iBooks format.

Ed’s logic is bewildering to someone like me. I don’t have delusions of grander from writing pulp technology[3] books. I tend to think linearly and understand the basic concept of cause and effect. But then again, I don’t write for ZDNet so I should cut him some slack.[4]

Apology: Sometimes I just can’t take the willful ignorance rampant on the web. Here’s a baby monkey to make up for it.

  1. He was also on an episode of TWIT. It’s worth a listen to appreciate how shallow his argument really is. He certainly sounded like a teenage girl arguing about staying out late. Complete nonsense. ↩

  2. That’s highly unlikely given how awful those wastes of wood pulp have been in the past. ↩

  3. This is the part where I’m being generous. In reality, it’s garbage all the way back to Windows 95. ↩

  4. They’re still around right? I’m afraid to do a web search in case they have become a malware portal now. ↩