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Adobe Takes On Microsoft Role In E-book Market
ericatcw writes "Barnes & Noble, Sony and other e-book vendors may have the manufacturing muscle, but the brains directing the challenge against Amazon.com's Kindle eBook Reader is Adobe Systems. Like Microsoft, Adobe has built a formidable ecosystem of partners to whom it supplies software such as its encryption/DRM-creating Adobe Content Server. Adobe paints Amazon as being like Apple: secretive and playing badly with others. Amazon argues it just ain't so, and takes a jab, along with other critics, at Adobe's alleged open-ness."
Adobe just provides a platform; it's up to the producers to decide what protection (if any) to place on the documents.
Or till there's a cross platform standard format. If I have the option of using an e-book on my cell phone, laptop, desktop, pda etc without having to purchase a half dozen different versions I'm all for it. But buying a file that only works on one device seems like a bad idea.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
$300 for a device that's easier on the eyes than an LCD screen, and can store 1500 books? I think that's a perfectly reasonable price for what you get.
So Amazon thinks through a problem and designs an elegant solution, takes care of the software, hardware, and marketing.
Adobe just wants to inject their proprietary technology into a process and sit back and enjoy the royalties.
Screw Adobe. They don't even do any coding here in the US anymore.