[NTLK] Updates

[Joseph Reilly]

> Programming software and creating documents to be read by others are
> quite different.
>


But the money from both is just as _____(fill in the primary color of  
money in your area :-)!
The best your probably going to get Ryan is the ability to read pdf's  
with built-in software but more likely you'll need a third party app  
for user stuff.
  User generated (free) books and magazines would cut  into apples  
(and the publishers) profit so I doubt that they'll do it.
They've seen how much itunes does for music and movies (and app store  
for apps)
and now they want a cut of printed/written media. Although it can be  
done, the last time I checked there's not an easy
apple endorsed way to turn dvds/video into an ipod format with  
consumer apple tools/programs and there's a reason for that,
they want to sell you music videos, movies, and tv shows plus they  
want to keep adult orientated stuff to the minimum
(even though the internet defeats that goal!). Who blocks the easy  
video route? apple? big enterainment companies?
I don't know myself, maybe a little of both, but I do know that  
putting my own video/dvds on my ipod touch isn't as easy as putting
my own cds on it and it requires third party programs of questionable  
legality (at least in the case of movies/tv shows on copy protected dvds
that I purchased lawfully & own and which I should be able to watch on  
any device I also own which I'm not using for public exhibitions).
I may be wrong but I think your giving apple too much credit as a  
"consumer company" which you go on to imply means they are in the
habit of giving the consumer creative power/control with their
devices but the fact is apple has throttled the consumers creative  
ability on every device they make that isn't a desktop or laptop
computer since the original ipod came out. Since the ipad is somewhere  
between a full-open laptop computer and a mobile appliance
(like apple is hell bent on keeping the iphone/itouch) it could go  
either way but I'm hoping for the best and expecting the worst,
again, they're track record recently hasn't been that good when it  
comes to mobile device "openness".

If they want to conquer all I'd agree they need to open up document  
creation because I can't see a small/medium company using this for
inner office documents if they have to get approval from apple for  
everything or pay some expensive site license fee to circumvent the
approval process. If they really wanted to conquer they would open the  
iphone/itouch after that for those same documents without approval
hurdles too. But as I've said before apples not a company thats  
focused on creative professionals/consumers any more, they are a
company that builds (mostly) tools for consumers to consume not be  
creative since that's were the money is. I don't think inner office  
reports,
school reports, letters, and other personal documents will be their  
focus, although I hope I'm wrong (the keyboard dock may be a hint I'm  
wrong i hope).
But more then likely they'll have a developer program-like setup for  
publishing, everything will have to be approved, and you'll
have to pay to publish or maybe to even join & get the tools to start  
writing, which may not be much compared to the returns for someone  
looking
to sell books, but it will discourage the average joe from publishing  
stuff that might otherwise be available if tools were free. I'd like to
be able to load documents/ebooks from sources other then the ibook  
store (apple) but I don't see that happening either.

The long and short of it is, if you want an "open ipad" with the "just  
works" value of apple software get an axiotron modbook or
sacrifice some of that "just works" and hackintosh a pc tablet (if  
thats possible, truth to say I'm not sure) otherwise your gonna have
to get comfortable with whatever the ipad does or doesn't do as the  
case may be (as random as those limits may be).
Just my $0.02

btw I admire how you always see the utopian future with this stuff,  
I'm more of a dystopian sorta guy myself since there's always a
dark under belly somewhere LOL.

Joe Reilly