When Apple announced that they've embraced the ePub format, Steve Jobs wasn't being disingenuous when he called it an industry standard - it's certainly as close to a universal format for eBooks as there is. Arguably, PDF is a slightly more "standard" format, in that most ePub readers support PDF and the Kindle series supports PDF, but not ePub - but no matter how you slice it, ePub is a major, major file format.
That said, ePub is a format that leaves room for DRM, but is inherently an open, free file format. To date, the majority of popular implementations of ePub either are software with no DRM support, or support via the popular Adobe Digital Editions. While Apple embraces PDF in their mobile devices (it's a ubiquitous format with no real mainstream alternative), they generally are a heavy competitor of Adobe. They push HTML5 and h.264 video over Flash, Aperture over Lightroom, iPhoto over Photoshop Elements, Final Cut Pro over Adobe Premier, iMovie over Premier Elements, and so on. They're embroiled in a major public brouhaha over supporting Flash on the iPhone, and now the iPad.
There's plenty on the web about the Flash vs Apple dispute and those little blue boxes on iPhones where Flash content would normally go - this is a specialized blog and not a technology one, so I'll leave it at this: Apple is looking to embrace their own technologies, or open standards, and that leaves them at odds with things like Flash or Adobe Digital Editions. They have a longstanding DRM solution called Fairplay, which works flawlessly with their own products and not at all with competitors. This is why they've opted away from Adobe Digital Editions. They don't want you reading Apple purchased content on your Sony Reader... they want you to buy an iPad.
No comments:
Post a Comment