'Visionary' is already an understatement for the achievements of Steve Jobs. And bringing the publishing industry into the digital age may be his ultimate achievement and finest legacy. Certainly, these are the terms in which Steve Jobs thinks.
But what about the Kindle, I hear you say, Oprah Winfrey's "favorite new thing in the world"? There were many mp3 players on the market when Apple released the first iPod. Not necessarily the first, but it worked so much better than all the others. Design that goes more than skin deep. And today, it's a household word.
Did Amazon have a bet 'each way', when it somewhat surprisingly released an iPhone application for picking up your Kindle book on iPhone, where you left off reading it earlier?
BusinessWeek tells us that Apple is rumoured to be launching a 'media pad', the size of a Kindle, but with a bigger screen. Tech journalist Andy Ihnatko, already given a preview of a new Apple product in January has been dropping hints about truck loads of books being digitised on Apple's Cupertino campus for some kind of iTunes Book Store. All Things Digital reached the same conclusion, minus Amazon's bet each way, the implications for the book industry and the world in general, and Apple's 'killer app' - seamless integration of a Book Store.
Looks to me like Steve Jobs is going to do it again… and good luck to him.
Knowing Apple, the device will be useful for much more than just reading books and that will be the selling point. "Oh and by the way - it does books too."
What I like most about the Jobs approach, is that he's more interested in selling enabling devices and not trying to monopolise the content. I admire his Buddhist approach to business. A less enlightened 'visionary' might be tempted to grab the whole vertical market, including the content. Maybe that's another reason why Apple has 'fans' and other companies have customers.
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