Mute Witness > Rants

Fair warning… I’m ticked and I’m gonna vent. LOL.

This morning as I was planning a short escape from work to go have some sushi for lunch, I realized that I was out of books to read on my iPad. Not a big deal as I have months worth of magazines in Zinio to read, but I decided that I’d better get another book lined up. As I headed to Amazon.com (you can’t browse Books from iTunes) to search for a book, I remembered someone mentioning something about The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, I’ve never actually read the book and decided that it would be my next.

I thought that the book might actually even be part of the Project Gutenberg and might even be free as was the case with The Picture of Dorian Gray. I got to Amazon and found out that it was not only not free, it was $10.99. Now let me say that I was not in any way shape or form looking for the book to be free, but $10.99 for a digital copy, I wasn’t sure why but that seemed awfully steep.

As I thought about it, it began to occur to me why this price garnered such a strong reaction from me, I believe it was because of the “Peter’s Book Buying Paradigm”. A process that I’ve had in place for as long as I can remember. It goes like this:

1. Is the book from an favorite author or from a beloved series?
Yes? – Buy Hardcover or Paperback at full price
2. Is the book one that was recommended by someone you trust?
Yes? – Buy paperback at full price
3. Is the book a classic? A book I might have read in high school? Shakespeare?
Yes? – Get book as cheap as possible. Perhaps even borrow from someone or go the the library.

It’s pretty simple in my mind. I guess if the author is dead and gone for ages or the book is older than dirt, I don’t see the need to fund the author’s estate as full as I would someone who is still writing. The Great Gatsby definitely falls into the free or as cheap as possible book category. So I began searching. Turns out I could:
1. Buy the book in paperback for $7.23.
2. Buy the book in hardcover for $16.50.
3. Get the audio book version for $13.57.
4. Buy it on Kindle or iBooks for $10.99.
5. Buy it through Barnes and Noble’s Nook App for $0.99

I’m floored. It all came down to perceived value. Audiobooks for example have a higher perceived value to me than a printed book. Not more worth, but I can understand why they cost more money. And I can fully understand why a hardcover costs more than a paperback. What I can’t get my head around is how an ebook that took no paper or ink to print, nor gas or time to ship costs more than a paperback book.

I really don’t think that publishers get this. To me it all comes back to the paradigm above. An eBook shouldn’t cost more than a paperback. I can hold the paperback, smell the paperback, display the paperback. The eBook is just bits. Now I like those bits. To me just like with music and video, convenience is king. I WANT to carry a dozen books around with me on my iPad, I WANT to carry 8 months worth of 4 magazines with me on my iPad, but I want to be able to understand the value of what I paid for.

My solutions is this… make eBooks cost the same as paperbacks. Not more and never as much as the hardcover. If you want to charge more when it first comes out, something between the hardcover and the eventual paperback price that’s fine, but when a book has been out for 86 years… it needs to be as cheap as a paperback.

I realize we’re talking a pittance of $3.72, but it’s the principle of the thing.

What did I end up doing? Well I bought it in audio book format from iTunes for $11.95. That audio book seems a bargain at that price where the eBook didn’t at $10.99. Oh yeah and I bought it from BN thru the nook App for $0.99 just incase I’m having lunch and want a book to read.

I’m reading all over the Apple Blogosphere today that both the iPad2 and the iPhone5 are going to be shipping late. The only problem with this is… Apple hasn’t announced either of those products.

I mean we ASSUME that an iPad2 is on it’s way and we assume it will be released soon, because it was last year. And we ASSUME there is an iPhone5 coming in June/July because well it has for the past four years. I don’t really think that either product will be released late according to our ASSUMED dates, but even if the iPad2 was not to come out until June of this year, it wouldn’t be late. As it hasn’t yet been announced, It’d simply be released in June.

Today, Droid Life is reporting on the latest Android Tablet competitor, the Motorola XOOM. A 10.1 inch tablet that will have a front and rear camera, 1GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, WiFI and a 3G chip upgradable to 4G. Sounds good right? Well according to this leaked Best Buy circular, not so much actually.

First of all the price… $799. In comparison with the iPad, for 70 dollars less, you can get an iPad 3G with the same 32GB of ram, for 30 dollars more, you can get an iPad 3G with double the ram at 64GB. Second, and perhaps the more egregious is that you can’t use the WiFi unless you buy a month of 3G service which is at least $20. I mean really? You have to PAY for 3G to enable the WiFi chip? Couldn’t they have added the price of the month of 3G to the price and just enabled the WiFi? Hell with the price your paying couldn’t they have included a month? You know what even THAT is ridiculous. Who ever heard of having to “enable” a WiFi chip.

See what I mean? They just don’t get it.

[Read the original story at Droid Life]

Today, a huge milestone occurred in the world of Apple Rumors… finally the long rumored Verizon iPhone went on sale. It’s here… the Apple rumor mill should be rejoicing that they got one right. Well I mean did they? We’ve been hearing rumors of a CDMA iPhone since the very first iPhone came out, most of them based on little actual knowledge. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Add to the fact that so many of these rumors come from “secret sources” that many of these rumors sites don’t even really start a rumor… they merely pick it up and run with it. I know what you’re thinking… so am I but… let me say this… see any ads on my site? See any way I’m making money? Nope. I’m not trolling for page clicks like those sites. I’ve expressed this frustration before but today took the cake.

It all started with what seemed like an innocent post by John Gruber over at Daring Fireball at 7am this morning. A really good post where he spoke about his GUESS that perhaps there could be another iPad announcement this year at the time we normally get the iPod announcements. He based his GUESS off some really good points about how the iPod announcements don’t carry the weight and excitement that they used to. That announcing an iPad before the iPhone/iOS announcement puts the iPad out for almost a year before it’s most important selling time frame… the holidays. All points that I thought were excellent and I thought he made it really clear that he was just GUESSING… speculating… until… almost EVERY rumor site reported on this as if it was him reporting something he knew. Not something he guessed.

I know I’m beating a dead horse but these rumors aren’t just fun like they used to be when the main stream didn’t pay attention to Apple. These things get picked up on by everyone, tomorrow my local news will be talking about an iPad 3. I really wish these rumors sites would exert a little restraint and journalistic integrity. If they had just reported on the story from the angle of a well known Apple blogger posited that there would be an iPad 3 that would be enough.

This video came recommended to me by Chuti. It’s a truly amazing video.

I can’t get over how how unbelievable this is. I mean really… fully grown skin in just four days? Stem cells are amazing. I swear this is the future of medicine. I wonder how many diseases can be cured and how many lives can be saved if we continue stem cell research? Damn right wing Christians!

Well today I was going to simply write a post about “The Daily”, a new newsmagazine by Newscorp for the iPad. It’s an amazing app that is really interactive. I really enjoy how much like a magazine it feels when you use it. Read a story, click a link and suddenly a video story is playing. Rotate the iPad and you get photos to go along with the story and not just stuff pulled in from the web but content actually created for “The Daily”. It’s updated in earnest first thing in the morning and then throughout the day more content comes in. My one major complaint is that of course the video content is not available when you’re off line but all in all it’s not so bad. It’s interactive, inventive and best of all it’s reasonably priced. Free for the first two weeks and then $0.99 a week or $39.99 for a year. Finally a decent price for a newspaper/daily news magazine.

And of course it was the news of the day, every blog and news source was talking about it. I’m sure downloads were through the roof and I was content enough to write about how much I liked it – until I read a story on the AppleInsider where a Reuters report states an “eyewitness” saw an “iPad 2 prototype” with a front facing camera at the event. And of course this is spreading like wild fire throughout the Apple News blogosphere.

This is bull shit. Serious and utter bullshit. I saw one yesterday at the grocery store. Where is my news story? I mean are we really so desperate for Apple News that an uncorroborated report of a product that we know is coming and that we are reasonably sure will have a certain feature is a news story? I mean at least AppleInsider made the point that the chances that an “iPad 2″ prototype is out in the wild at a major event like that are pretty slim. I’m quite sure after the Gizmodo fiasco with the iPhone 4, that Apple is taking few chances with products being out in the wild.

I think what’s pissed me off is that now major news sources are picking this rumor bullshit up. I really love Apple and I love to speculate on what is coming, but we need to keep it in check. We need to apply at least some journalistic integrity to what we post.