Apple has yet to sell its first e-book, but it is already engaged in a bruising battle with Amazon for control of the market. The most recent salvo: Amazon has stopped selling all books from MacMillan, apparently in response to the publisher’s plans to sell its books at a higher price point through Apple.
If you’re reading this story shortly before the launch of Apple’s tablet, there’s a very good chance you’re on Twitter as well. Can the service, which continues to be balky under normal conditions, hold up under a deluge of chatter?
Look who has learned one of the most important lessons of the music industry’s love-hate relationship with iTunes: Apple. It shows in Steve Jobs’s approach to book publishers, which is designed to assuage their fear that e-books will cannibalize their old business.
I got a great glimpse of the future of magazines last week. It’s the March issue of Wired, transformed into a digital edition that takes full advantage of the Apple tablet we’re going to see on Wednesday. But you’re not going to be able to buy a tabletized Wired for some time: Condé Nast, like most would-be Apple media partners, simply doesn’t know that much about the device yet.
Here’s someone else you won’t see onstage with Steve Jobs next week: Anyone from Time Inc. With good reason: The magazine company doesn’t have any tablet-ready stuff to show off yet. Tease that out a bit and you can tell the story of most media companies. They’re excited to start taking advantage of the tablet–as soon as they find out what it is, exactly.
Apple is set to show off a shiny new device, which means the company needs shiny new media products to show off, too. Like what? Some educated guesses: Expect stuff from Disney and the New York Times, but not from the music labels.
Apple has purchased online music service Lala, I’ve confirmed with a source familiar with the transaction. Both Bloomberg and CNET reported the chats earlier today. If you’d like other confirmation, New York Times also reports that the deal has closed.
Adobe is preparing to put magazines on Apple’s purported wondertablet. But what if that device, like Apple’s iPhone, doesn’t want to work with Adobe?
Here’s yet another content creator that’s convinced Apple has a tablet device in the works: Condé Nast says it will have a digital version of Wired magazine ready for the purported gadget by the middle of next year and will eventually create similar versions for all of its 18 titles.
But Condé, like other publishers, says Apple won’t actually talk to the company about its plans for the device–or even acknowledge that it has plans.
All the news we can’t tell you about? Most publishers can’t even get Apple to acknowledge that it’s working on a tablet, but maybe the newspaper of record has more pull. In any event, its top editor is staying mostly mum.
After Michael Jackson died, fans flooded iTunes to snap up his music. And contrary to an earlier report, “This Is It,” the singer’s final work, will also be sold by Apple this month.
It took Apple a year to move its first 1.5 billion apps from its iTunes store. It took a mere 76 days to move the next 500 million.
iPods with cameras? Maybe. iTunes with new features? For sure. iTunes with Beatles? Nope.
I’m sure that Apple will indeed sell the Fab Four’s music via its digital music store one day. But it’s not happening at Apple’s keynote presentation tomorrow.
Ready to toss dirt on the old, unloved CD? You’re going to have to wait a while. Compact discs are increasingly hard to find (at least in physical stores), but someone out there keeps buying them: The ancient format still makes up the majority of music sales in the U.S. And since album-length CDs are a whole lot more lucrative for the industry than iTunes singles, expect to see the industry cling to them as long it can get away with it.
Time to get the rumor mill kicked into high gear: Multiple music industry sources say Apple executives have told them the company is planning one of its famed keynote events for the week of Sept. 7. But in true Apple fashion, the company has been noncommittal about the exact date of the event and what it will be showing off.
Peter Kafka has been covering media and technology since 1997, when he joined the staff of Forbes magazine. Most recently, he has been the managing editor of the tech and media Web site, Silicon Alley Insider. Read more »
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