Tim Anderson's ITWriting » apple

Penguin’s Apple love-in

tim — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 07:53:13 +0000

An article on paidcontent gives me pause for thought. In it, Penguin Books’ CEO John Makinson talks of plans to publish content on Apple’s forthcoming iPad device.

The iPad represents the first real opportunity to create a paid distribution model that will be attractive to consumers

says Makinson.

This is all to do with the App store; somehow we are more willing to buy stuff on the App Store than to pay for other forms of content on the Internet. Penguin’s conclusion: make books into apps:

So for the time being at least we’ll be creating a lot of our content as applications, for sale on app stores and HTML, rather than in ebooks. The definition of the book itself is up for grabs.

Adobe’s .epub format is not good enough, apparently; only the full flexibility of a native application will do.

Two things strike as notable here. One is Makinson’s presumption that the iPad will be a big hit, thanks presumably to Apple’s success with iPod and iPhone. The tablet format has been a niche market in the past, because it lacks both the convenience of a pocketable mobile, and the capability of a keyboard-equipped netbook or laptop.

The second point is that here is a major publisher planning to create single-platform content that can only be sold through Apple and consumed on Apple’s devices.

Makinson does say “for sale on app stores and HTML”. I am not sure quite what he means; but clearly Penguin does not intend to use iPad apps for all its epublishing. Nevertheless, it raises the possibility of some content that is only on Apple, or best on Apple, or earliest on Apple.

If this idea takes hold, the consequence will be to disadvantage users of non-Apple devices. For example, what if you are on a course, and the recommended reading is only available as an Apple application?

I am already experiencing some of this pressure. I was at a conference earlier this week where the organisers provided an iPhone app to help attendees schedule their time:

This year QCon also has an iPhone app allowing you to browse the schedule by track, by time, favourite a track and access the #qcon twitter channel.

This is not a trend that I welcome. In some respects it is worse than having to run Windows for the sake of some particular application, since iPhone apps have to be approved by Apple, and emulators that have helped us cope with Windows-only requirements do not exist.

I do not have an iPhone; but I am beginning to think that it is a business requirement.

Fragmentation and the RIA wars: Flash is the least bad solution

tim — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:01:48 +0000

The latest salvo in the Adobe Flash wars comes from the Free Software Foundation, in an open letter to Google:

Just think what you can achieve by releasing the VP8 codec under an irrevocable royalty-free license and pushing it out to users on YouTube? You can end the web’s dependence on patent-encumbered video formats and proprietary software (Flash) … Apple has had the mettle to ditch Flash on the iPhone and the iPad – albeit for suspect reasons and using abhorrent methods (DRM) – and this has pushed web developers to make Flash-free alternatives of their pages. You could do the same with YouTube, for better reasons, and it would be a death-blow to Flash’s dominance in web video.

Fair point; but one thing the FSF misses is that Apple’s stance has not only “pushed web developers to make Flash-free alternatives of their pages”. It has also pushed developers into making Apple-specific apps as an alternative to web pages – which to my mind is unfortunate.

The problem goes beyond web pages. If you have an application that goes beyond HTML and JavaScript, maybe for offline use or to integrate with other local applications or hardware, there is no cross-platform solution for the iPhone, iTouch or forthcoming iPad.

While I understand that non-proprietary platforms are preferable to proprietary platforms, it seems to me that a free cross-platform runtime is less evil than a vendor-controlled platform where I have to seek approval and share income with the vendor just to get my app installed.

More broadly, it is obvious that the days of Windows on the desktop, Web for everything else are over. We are seeing a proliferation of devices, each with their own SDK: alongside Apple there is Palm WebOS, Nokia/Intel Meego, Google Android, and when Windows Phone 7 comes along, Microsoft Silverlight.

The question: if you have an application and want to reach all these platforms, what do you do? A web app if possible; but otherwise?

It is the new fragmentation; and frankly, Adobe Flash is the closest thing we have to a solution, particularly with the native compilation option for iPhone that is coming in Creative Suite 5.

I don’t like the idea of a single company owning the runtime that unifies all these platforms. That’s not healthy. Still, at least Adobe is currently independent of the obvious industry giants: Google, Apple, Microsoft, IBM and so on.

Dealing a death-blow to Flash is all very well, but the end result could be something worse.

VMWare: the cloud is private

tim — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:04:08 +0000

I attended this morning’s VMWare roundtable, debating the rather silly proposition that IT should be removed from the boardroom agenda. To be fair, even VMWare does not really believe this, but is arguing that its virtualisation technology makes IT service provision so trouble-free that the board can focus on IT as it advances their business, rather than just keeping the show on the road. I don’t believe that either, though no doubt it can help. It was nevertheless interesting to hear Jim Fennell, Information Systems Manager for the Lagan Group, explain how his virtual infrastructure allowed him to run up servers or applications such as SharePoint on demand, with internal charges based on usage.

The very definition of a private cloud, in fact; and this chimed nicely with some other research I’ve been doing on cloud security. Current cloud computing models are flawed, for the following reason among others.

So-called private clouds do not relieve organisations of the IT burden, though they may simplify it, and do not fully yield the benefits of multi-tenancy, elasticity and economies of scale except perhaps in the case of the largest enterprises, or governments.

On the other hand, public clouds are also flawed, because the customer retains legal responsibility for their data but loses operational responsibility. That split surfaces in debates about SLAs, legal liability and consequential loss, compliance with regulations concerning data location and segregation, and conflicts over whether customers should have the right to audit their cloud provider’s technology and security practices. The public cloud is not yet mature; it lacks the standards and regulatory frameworks that it needs, though work is being done.

VMWare may not mind about this, because it has positioned itself as the first choice for technology to drive private clouds. I talked to Chief Operating Office Tod Nielsen (formerly of Microsoft) after the event, and he told me that the majority of enquiries from potential customers relate to setting up private cloud infrastructures.

Another big growth area is desktop virtualisation, where customers with thousands of aging PCs running Windows XP want their next desktop upgrade to be their last, and see virtual desktops as a route to that goal.

I am intrigued by the desktop issue, since maintaining desktop PCs remains a significant maintenance challenge. The rise of non-PC devices is also relevant here. Isn’t the future more in pure web applications – perhaps enhanced with RIA technologies like Flash and Silverlight – rather than in virtual desktops? Nielsen said that the huge numbers of legacy applications out there made this impossible in the near future.

Nevertheless, you can see how VMWare is planning for more of a pure web play longer term, with acquisitions such as the Java application framework Springsource. One idea that was mentioned during the roundtable was a sort of server app market, where you can plug in pre-built applications into VMWare’s ESX platform.

Finally, one side-effect of increasing desktop virtualisation, in Nielsen’s view, is that more users will choose to run Apple Macs as the host. He also says that the number one customer request, in the weeks since Apple’s announcement, is for iPad support for their virtual clients. Make of that what you will.

Windows Phone 7 Series and Microsoft’s partner problem

tim — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:51:02 +0000

I watched Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Joe Belfiore, and Andy Lees introduce Windows Phone 7 Series. It appears to be a complete departure from previous iterations of Windows Mobile, in fact borrowing more from Zune than it does from earlier Windows phones. At one point, Lees noted that it has a “new core OS” optimized in partnership with Qualcomm, though I would not rest too much speculation on that one phrase.

Unfortunately, the piece that I am most interested in, which is the developer platform, was not much discussed. It is to be unveiled at Mix next month in Las Vegas. Ballmer did say:

We raised the platform on which people can build … a new foundation with a rich set of development tools, built in and complete service availability that software developers can assume as a foundation.

Make of that what you will. I’d be surprised though if Silverlight is not a big part of the development story, along with revamped Windows Live services. I guess I’m expecting Microsoft to deliver with Silverlight something similar to what Adobe is doing with Flash and AIR – AIR for mobile devices has just been announced – but without the breadth of support across devices that Adobe has achieved.

We have been told that Flash will not be part of Windows Phone 7 in its first version, so it looks like it may live in its own development world to some extent.

The demo at the press launch has been well received, and it looks likely that Microsoft is creating a more usable phone than earlier generations. That’s good, though it is telling that it took Apple with iPhone and perhaps Google with Android to convince Microsoft that maybe the Start menu and a cut down Windows API wasn’t the best way to do a phone.

In the absence of technical details, what interested me most were the comments about how Microsoft relates to its partners. It is a hot topic for me. I am taking heat for talking about a poor experience on WIndows 7 that is really the fault of 3rd parties. The problem is that the partner system which worked so well for Microsoft in the early days of the PC is now working against it, and an unpleasant experience of a Windows 7 netbook is a symptom of that.

Clearly Microsoft also understands this. Ballmer noted that

We want to lead and take complete accountability for the end user experience … have more consistency in the hardware platform, more consistency in the user experience, but still enable [partner] innovation

Translation: we are being hammered by OEMs who wreck our product with poor quality hardware and add-on software.

But how will Microsoft change this aspect of Windows, whether on the desktop or a device? “There’s a bit of a conundrum here,” said Ballmer, and he is right. If Microsoft tries Apple-style lockdown, it may run into anti-trust trouble and/or drive OEMs to Linux. If Microsoft does no more than talk the talk, then the problem remains.

It is true that Microsoft is strictly specifying minimum hardware. That’s nothing new; it has done this since the earliest days of Pocket PC.

I’m inclined to think it is just talking the talk and that nothing will change. Still, here’s Lees on the same subject. He begins by restating Microsoft’s belief in the partner model:

One of the things we’ve kept constant is our belief in the partner model. There are three reasons why partners are fundamental to our business. Firstly, they add rich experience and expertise across a broad spectrum of areas, hardware, software and services. Second, is … scale. We need partners to develop, market and support Windows phones at this scale. Third, partners meet diverse needs by providing customers with choice. One size does not fit all. People want different kinds of phones.

It’s odd how Apple thrives without all that “rich experience and expertise.” But never mind. Lees adds:

We have changed how we work with them. The goal is to improve the quality and consistency.

So Microsoft says with one breath how it just loves the partner model, and with the next that it is changing it. We all know why it wants to change it. It is because it is broken, though Microsoft cannot bring itself to admit it out loud.

The question: which of these near-contradictory statements do you believe? That it is sticking with the failing partner model, or that it is changing it? My guess is the former, because I am not sure that Microsoft really has the will or even the ability to change, but I would like to be proved wrong.

Oh, and Lees says that the mobile operators:

… have tremendous value to add. They are not just dumb pipes. Our model is about enabling those innovations so that they can add software and services and benefit from our … platform.

I understand why Lees said this; but I find it hard to think of tremendous added value from the operators. Apple’s iPhone success is partly thanks to its skill in working round them.

Flash developers are now mobile developers

tim — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 08:23:36 +0000

Adobe’s announcement of AIR for mobile today at the Mobile World Congress means that any Flash or Flex developer can compile an AIR application that will run on a supported mobile device. I understand that AIR for mobile is a subset of desktop AIR, but does include Flash Player 10.1, local database support with SQLite, and access to local storage, so it is not lacking in capability. Apparently it will be possible to have a single .air file that will run across desktop and devices, perhaps with conditional code to account for differences in device capability. Some features, such as multitouch and accelerometer support, are more likely to be found on a mobile device than on a desktop, though things like screen size and available storage will be more constrained.

Until now it has been Java that comes closest to providing a common runtime across desktop and devices. Flash promises a more consistent runtime as well as stronger multimedia and graphics capability. Thanks to Apple, the app store concept is now well established and AIR applications fit well with this model, though not exclusively so. It will also be possible to deploy AIR applications from your own web site. I think there will be considerable interest and take-up for AIR on mobile.

Initial support will be for Google’s Android OS, with others to follow – with the exception so far being Apple.

This is where it gets interesting. Whereas Flash in the browser is blocked on Apple iPhone and (as far as we know so far) iPad, Adobe has a native compilation option for Flash applications targeting these devices, preserving some kind of deployment story. Clearly from Adobe’s perspective it would be better and easier if Apple allowed the AIR runtime onto the device. It’s less clear that Apple device users are really losing out though, and there is even an argument that they benefit, if you think that native code is a better solution for a mobile device.

In other words, the introduction of AIR for mobile does not really put any pressure on Apple, since Adobe has already come up with a good alternative. There may be some indirect pressure, since growing use of the Flash runtime outside the browser may also increase its significance within the browser.

A lot hinges on the quality of the mobile AIR runtime, particularly in respect of memory usage, which has tended to be greedy in desktop AIR.

Miserable user experience continues with Windows 7

tim — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 19:51:53 +0000

I’ve just spent some time with a non-technical person who has just signed up for a £30 per month Vodafone internet dongle, which came with a “free” Samsung netbook running Windows 7 Starter Edition.

The user is returning it under the terms of the 14-day trial offer.

Why? Well, the requirement was for a small computer that would be connected to the Internet everywhere, within reason. The user also purchased Microsoft Office along with (for some reason I could not discern) Norton Internet Security.

The good news: the internet connection was fine when connected, something like 2.5Mb download speed on a brief test.

The bad news:

1. The little netbook was badly infested with trialware. Browsing the web was difficult because the already-small screen area was further filled by two additional toolbars, one from Google and the other from MacAfee, leaving barely half the screen for actual web pages. Google kept on prompting for permission to grab user data about location and who knows what else.

2. MacAfee was pre-installed and the task of removing it and replacing it with Norton was tricky, bearing in mind that Norton was delivered on a CD and there was no CD drive. MacAfee was constantly warning that the user was at risk.

3. Two Samsung dialogs popped up on each boot asking the user to do a backup to external storage.

4. The Vodafone connect software was bewildering. In part this was thanks to a complex UI. There also seemed to be bugs. The “usage limit” was preset at 50MB separately for 3G and GPRS; the deal allowed 3GB overall. Changing the usage limit seemed to work, but it reverted at next boot. Then it showed usage limit warnings, as 50MB had already been transferred. Once while I was there the Vodafone utility crashed completely.

5. The Vodafone dongle wobbled in the USB slot. Whenever it was attached it would come up with a dialog asking to run setup, because it included a storage area containing the utility software, even though the utility was already installed.

6. The Vodafone connection is managed through an icon in the notification area that you right-click to connect or disconnect. Windows 7 had hidden this thanks to the new default behaviour of the notification area, which is a usability disaster.

7. The Vodafone connection was set to prompt for a connection. It did sometimes display a prompt, but apparently on some kind of timeout, since it quickly closed without actually connecting. The prompt then did not reappear during that session.

The user concluded that it was too complicated to use, hence the return.

Now, for most readers of this blog I am sure none of the above would matter. We would uninstall MacAfee and Google toolbar, not buy Norton but simply install Microsoft Security Essentials, maybe use Google Chrome for a leaner browsing experience, remove any other software that was not essential (and there was other trialware that I did not have time to investigate), unset the silly option to hide notification icons, find a way of taming or replacing Vodafone’s connection utility, and all would be fine.

I am not sure of the value of the Vodafone contract; the deal is not too bad if you need to connect while out and about, though there is a heavy penalty charge of £15.00 per GB if you exceed 3GB in a month, and it is quite unsuitable if, as in this case, it is your only Internet connection and you plan to use it for things like BBC iPlayer.

That’s an aside. What I find depressing is that despite Microsoft’s efforts to improve Windows usability in 7, the real-world result can still be so poor.

In this case, most of the blame is with Vodafone for poor software, and Samsung for taking all those trialware fees. I guess it is not that bad a deal, since there is almost always someone around who is willing or enjoys solving these puzzles and getting everything working.

Still, here is a customer who wanted and was willing to pay for a no-frills, always-connected internet device, and was let down.

Here also is the market that Apple aims to satisfy with iPad, and Google with devices running Chrome OS.

I wish them every success, since it seems that the Microsoft + OEM Windows culture cannot easily meet this need.

Adobe Flash getting faster on the Mac

tim — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 09:12:55 +0000

According to Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch:

Flash Player on Windows has historically been faster than the Mac, and it is for the most part the same code running in Flash for each operating system. We have and continue to invest significant effort to make Mac OS optimizations to close this gap, and Apple has been helpful in working with us on this. Vector graphics rendering in Flash Player 10 now runs almost exactly the same in terms of CPU usage across Mac and Windows, which is due to this work. In Flash Player 10.1 we are moving to CoreAnimation, which will further reduce CPU usage and we believe will get us to the point where Mac will be faster than Windows for graphics rendering.

Video rendering is an area we are focusing more attention on — for example, today a 480p video on a 1.8 Ghz Mac Mini in Safari uses about 34% of CPU on Mac versus 16% on Windows (running in BootCamp on same hardware). With Flash Player 10.1, we are optimizing video rendering further on the Mac and expect to reduce CPU usage by half, bringing Mac and Windows closer to parity for video.

Also, there are variations depending on the browser as well as the OS — for example, on Windows, IE8 is able to run Flash about 20% faster than Firefox.

Many of us are not aware of these kinds of differences, because we live in one browser on one operating system, but the non-uniform performance of Flash helps to explain divergent opinions of its merits.

I would be interested to see a similar comparison for Linux, which I suspect would show significantly worse performance than on Windows or Mac.

Adobe Flash vs Apple iPad: RIA in the balance

tim — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:08:13 +0000

Adobe evangelist Lee Brimelow has posted some images of well-known sites that break if Adobe Flash is not enabled. His point: if Apple’s iPad does not support Flash, none of these sites will work correctly.

While true in the short term, I do not think this is an effective line of argument.

Let’s presume that you run one of these Flash-dependent sites. Now along comes a popular computing device that no longer displays Flash content. It’s already happened with the iPhone; but iPad is more serious because it has a full-size web browser, and many of us tolerate strange behaviour in a mobile web browser because we are used to it. Further, I’m guessing that some of these sites already adapt their content for iPhone.

What happens now? One of two things. Either Apple is persuaded to add support for the plugin; or the site owners fix their sites, detecting iPad/iPhone and substituting Quicktime or HTML5 content in place of Flash. In the case of the major sites such as those Brimelow lists, I doubt that second process would take long.

Result: people complain less, the pressure is off Apple and on Adobe.

I do not take the success of iPad for granted; but it is plausible; and if the device does become popular it is going to make Flash-centric web developers re-think their strategy. Further, if it fails, I doubt it will be for lack of Flash. Users do not care about Flash, they care about content, and the iPad will provide plenty of that.

The problem for Adobe is that much of its strategy is now built on the Flash runtime and its presumed ubiquity. If you compare Creative Suite 4 to Creative Suite 3 you can see how Flash is more pervasive, in several different roles ranging from rendering capabilities to code execution. It will be even more so in Creative Suite 5.

Applications built with Flex are equally affected. And note: if Flash is struggling to get over the wall into Apple’s orchard, Oracle Java will struggle more, and Microsoft Silverlight more still. It is not just Flash, but much of what we think of as RIA (Rich Internet Applications) that is at stake.

It is not over yet. If Apple is primarily concerned about browser stability, rather than controlling the platform, then Adobe may yet satisfy its requirements. Second, the iPad might fail – not completely, but enough to make it an unimportant niche. iPad is expensive and most users don’t get the tablet concept; it is not a sure-fire winner.

If neither get-out comes to pass, what can Adobe do? There are a couple of mitigating factors. One is that Adobe has already been thinking about how to deal with Apple devices. At the Adobe Max conference last year we saw its Flash to native code compiler, which will be in Creative Suite 5. It only targets iPhone; but no doubt iPad can be added. It raises the possibility of more Flash applets becoming native applications in the App Store. Money and control for Apple; but at least your code will run.

We also saw, in the Max sneak peeks, how Flash can be rendered server-side, and served to the browser as video. It’s an interesting thought if you simply must get your Flash content working on the iPad.

Another point is that Adobe is at a design tools company, and it can adapt its tools to be less focused on Flash. Another feature we saw at Max was an Illustrator to SVG converter. It is now in Adobe’s interests to work more intensely to advance HTML standards, to make them better clients for rich content.

Still, Apple has come up with what may be a significant roadblock to Adobe’s ambitions for what it calls the Flash Platform.

Web standards people may cheer this, on the grounds that a Flash-free web is less broken. I am not cheering though. Vendors locking down their devices is not a healthy way to advance web standards. Further, Flash is an amazing runtime. Flash enabled YouTube to succeed. The BBC iPlayer project did not deliver on its promise until it converted to Flash. Flash provides web developers with a consistent runtime that has value in entertainment, in education, and in general applications. One of the first things I install on Windows, Mac or Linux is Adobe AIR, which lets me run a desktop Twitter client.

Here’s my vote for Flash on iPad – and Silverlight and Java too, if the user wants their capabilities.

Amazon gives in to Macmillan thanks to power of Apple

tim — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 09:06:25 +0000

In a posting on its forum, Amazon has declared defeat in its disagreement with Macmillan over ebook terms – one most likely influenced by Apple which is offering better terms to publishers for its forthcoming iPad:

Macmillan, one of the "big six" publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed to switching to an agency model and charging $12.99 to $14.99 for e-book versions of bestsellers and most hardcover releases.

We have expressed our strong disagreement and the seriousness of our disagreement by temporarily ceasing the sale of all Macmillan titles. We want you to know that ultimately, however, we will have to capitulate and accept Macmillan’s terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books. Amazon customers will at that point decide for themselves whether they believe it’s reasonable to pay $14.99 for a bestselling e-book. We don’t believe that all of the major publishers will take the same route as Macmillan. And we know for sure that many independent presses and self-published authors will see this as an opportunity to provide attractively priced e-books as an alternative.

While Amazon is focusing on the higher price, what really counts here is who sets the price and how much money goes back to the publisher. It’s not clear to me why any publisher would not do the same as Macmillan, since it is to their advantage.

I am surprised Amazon gave in so easily. Its PR has has been clumsy – first, to withdraw titles from sale thus ensuring strong opposition from frustrated authors, and coming over as a bully; and second, to state so clearly, early in the battle, that “we will have to capitulate” – not language you normally hear from a major corporation.

It is evidence of Apple’s extraordinary power to disrupt markets.

If you missed the background, see yesterday’s post.

Apple’s proxy war with Amazon over ebook pricing and market

tim — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 18:08:51 +0000

Amazon has apparently withdrawn all Macmillan titles from sale (print and electronic) because of an argument with the publisher over the terms of sale. Macmillan CEO John Sargent says:

This past Thursday I met with Amazon in Seattle. I gave them our proposal for new terms of sale for ebooks under the agency model which will become effective in early March. In addition, I told them they could stay with their old terms of sale, but that this would involve extensive and deep windowing of titles. By the time I arrived back in New York late yesterday afternoon they informed me that they were taking all our books off the Kindle site, and off Amazon. The books will continue to be available on Amazon.com through third parties.

“Windowing” means delaying availability, to allow a window of time during which a premium price is charged.

This is a fascinating spat with many implications. The immediate issue: Macmillan wants to raise ebook prices and/or get a bigger cut of Amazon’s selling price.

Macmillan is trying to dictate prices and terms:

Under the agency model, we will sell the digital editions of our books to consumers through our retailers. Our retailers will act as our agents and will take a 30% commission (the standard split today for many digital media businesses). The price will be set the price for each book individually. Our plan is to price the digital edition of most adult trade books in a price range from $14.99 to $5.99. At first release, concurrent with a hardcover, most titles will be priced between $14.99 and $12.99. E books will almost always appear day on date with the physical edition. Pricing will be dynamic over time.

Amazon is unlikely to be content with a miserly 30%. It is used to wholesale terms. Further, according to author Charlie Stross in a must-read post Amazon likes to sublicence Kindle titles, which means it pays even less; in effect just a royalty to the original publisher, “turning the traditional publishers into vestigial editing/marketing appendages.” Amazon wants to keep prices down on Kindle titles to build both the market and Kindle’s dominance.

The stakes must be high for Amazon to take such drastic action, and for Macmillan to risk its relationship with the world’s biggest bookseller. And they are. Ebooks are an increasingly important market; who knows, they may become most of the market eventually – though paper and ink is resilient.

Why has Macmillan chosen this moment to take on Amazon? Apple. The key is in this conversation between Walt Mossberg and Steve Jobs at the launch of the iPad, recorded by Kara Swisher:

In the video, Mossberg asks Jobs about the iBooks application and the price of e-books, and Jobs insists the price will be the same on Apple as on Amazon (AMZN).

“The prices will be the same,” said Jobs, before getting in a little dig at the maker of the Kindle e-reader. “Publishers are actually withholding their books from Amazon, because they’re not happy with it.”

Translation: Apple has big plans for ebooks. Part of its strategy is to win publisher support by offering better terms than the currently get from Amazon, both in terms of pricing flexibility and the size of their share. With breathtaking confidence, Jobs believes that publishers will be able to dictate better terms to Amazon on the basis of what Apple is offering, even though iPad is not yet released, and that the outcome will be price parity.

Macmillan is obediently putting that theory to the test.

So far Macmillan and Apple are winning the PR war. On the face of it, that’s surprising, since Amazon wants to keep prices down. However, withdrawing stock from sale comes over as petulant and bullying, and the move has upset authors like Stross who by the nature of their trade are highly articulate. The reading public is also sympathetic to publishers and authors, perhaps presuming that since most books make a loss, squeezing prices down will not benefit them long-term.

Bizarrely, it is almost the opposite of what happened in music, when it was Apple trying to force the labels to accept fixed pricing. There is less public sympathy for the music industry, thanks to mishandling of DRM and downloads, and a reputation for not giving artists a sufficient share.

Personally I’m cautious about accepting that any party here has the moral high ground. I am sure Apple is making all the noises publishers want to hear right now; but that is because it is a new entrant in the market. If the publishers are canny they will foster a diversity of ebook suppliers, because that is in their best interests long term.

Update: Amazon has capitulated.