Future of the Web 02/25/2009
Left Behind: Why Kindle Should Be An Open Book - Tim O'Reilly at Forbes.com
O'Reilly argues that in-spite of incredible market success, the Amazon Kindle will fail because the document format is not Open. He even argues that Apple, with the iPod and iPhone, have figured out how to blend Open Web formats and application development with proprietary hardware initiatives.... "The Amazon Kindle has sparked huge media interest in e-books and has seemingly jump-started the market. Its instant wireless access to hundreds of thousands of e-books and seamless one-click purchasing process would seem to give it an enormous edge over other dedicated e-book platforms. Yet I have a bold prediction: Unless Amazon embraces open e-book standards like epub, which allow readers to read books on a variety of devices, the Kindle will be gone within two or three years."
Posted from Diigo. The rest of Future of the Web group favorite links are here.
2 comments:
Kindle's appearance is certainly reminiscent of Apple products
Except that the Apple iPhone document and application layer is based on the WebKit communities open source work. While it's true that WebKit and Mozilla open source communities are pushing the envelope of legacy W3C Web standards, this is clearly Open Web.
It's interesting to note that ePUB, the open digital book publishing format supported by Tim O'Reilly and Adobe, is based on 1998 Web standards; HTML4 and CSS 2.1. Same as Microsoft's IE browser.
The WebKit visual document model and interactive application layer is based on rapidly advancing HTM5, CSS3, SVG/Canvas, and JavaScript+. The way WebKit, and now Mozilla, are handling this push is to submit proposals and enhancements back to the relevant standards groups as soon as they go into the open source code base.
If WebKit/Mozilla were to limit themselves to the glacial pace of vendor dominated (consortia) standards groups, surely the Open Web would fall far behind the visually rich and highly graphical Web platforms put forward by proprietary vendors Adobe (Flash) and Microsoft (XAML-Silverlight-WPF).
One of the disappointments with ePUB is that the 1998 format limitations force some serious compromises when converting digital documents form advanced business desktop editors such as Microsoft Office. With the WebKit visual document model, there is no such compromise!! WebKit developers and designers can fully challenge MOSS developers (Microsoft Office - SharePoint Server), and do so based on the Open Web.
Microsoft is not sitting still when it comes to complex digital documents. The Windows Presentation Foundation includes XAML "fixed/flow", Silverlight and XPS technologies - all of which integrate with the monopoly legacy of near 500 million MSOffice desktops. I doubt that ePUB is going to get much traction with this segment of the market. Especially since any document conversion to ePUB is certain to break important fidelity and in-process aspects of these business documents.
It seems to me that the Amazon Kindle was designed to enable Amazon control over Kindle content, and, the volumes of digital books pushed through the Amazon datacenter. Nothing open about it.
The iPhone on the other hand has a very open application layer that is intimately tied to the WebKit visual document model. That the this visual document model is emerging at the edge of Web, dominating a whole generation of smart devices, is bad news for Microsoft. No doubt the monopolist will strike back soon enough. Losing the document model to edge of the Web will eventually cost Microsoft their dreams of dominating the Web through the prominence of their monopoly on business documents and processes.
As for ePUB? It's not a player. Unless of course they race to embrace and implement the WebKit visual document model. IMHO :)
Thanks for taking the time to comment,
~ge~
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