Brian Lam reports that the rumored Apple tablet will be launched with a variety of multimedia-enhanced text sources. If correct, iTunes LP and iTunes Extras are merely the first steps in an envisioned world of enhanced digital formats.
Would such formats be open to anyone other than Apple? iTunes LP is, but Lam writes:
The logic here is that textbooks are sold new at a few hundred dollars, and resold by local stores without any kickbacks to publishers. A DRM’d one-time-use book would not only be attractive because publishers would earn more money, but electronic text books would be able to be sold for a fraction of the cost, cutting out book stores and creating a landslide marketshare shift by means of that huge price differential.
While Apple does seem rather taken with HTML these days — again, the iTunes LP format and the Safari 4 welcome page — the invocation of DRM means there has to be some kind of lockdown preventing the world at large from using the format.
As much as I love the idea of spiffy multimedia content, I don’t want Apple (or anyone else) controlling that future.
