Another big open question is whether or not Apple will create an iBooks application for 1) the Mac 2) the iPhone or 3) PCs — or otherwise let you read purchased books on your other machines, maybe through iTunes. Heck, iTunes lets you authorize a set number of devices to sync authorized content. The software and the social infrastructure are in place. There are some usability issues to overcome, but those are relatively minor. And the value that I can get from being able to take a book, read it on my iPad, then fire it up on my Mac at home to write a paper about it, as a student, that’s just tremendous.

The ability to CHOOSE between stuffing my laptop or my iPad in my bag — depending on how long a trip it is, what kind of work I want to do, how much I feel I can carry — and still have access to all of the same media (space permitting), that’s tremendous.

While we’re at it, it bothers me that Apple doesn’t let you sync applications you buy to multiple devices. I’ve got an iPhone and an iPod touch. Why can’t I put Instapaper on both?

You get maximum value and versatility from having your media available on multiple devices. Apple’s figured this out for movies. Will they be able to figure it out for books?

I do like the “conquer your pocket” description. Very apt! In my case, my Kindle has conquered my purse! I don’t buy or carry a purse unless my Kindle fits in it.

It’s the convenience factor for many too…
“It’ll be bet­ter than buy­ing a book in an air­port, or at a shop­ping mall. The store will be right there.”

Plus, publishers are no longer constrained by the limitations of distribution, print deadlines, content depth, page count..imagine the opportunities.

“It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers. Unlike many other ebook readers using the ePub file format, consumers will not be able to access ePub content with Apple’s DRM technology on devices made by other manufacturers.”

I’m really more arguing against the very heavily hypermedia visions some people have of e-books, e-magazines, etc., where the books look more like resource-intensive flash apps than what we’d recognize as books. And I’m not even arguing against them from an aesthetic point of view. I think multimedia and web-connected approaches to reading are very cool. I’m saying that, from a practical point of view, something more like a DOC or PDF or EPUB, by virtue of being smaller, sufficiently flexible, and (in the case of DOC and PDF) totally entrenched, have a better short-term future than some of the more exotic visions people are trying to put together.

And I’d say the big things driving this are 1) hard-drive size 2) ubiquity of fast and reliable web access 3) what readers expect docs to look like and 4) what readers already have on their machines. As those four things change, then the kinds of documents they’ll gravitate towards on their reading machines will change.

The overall point remains — it’s not a ton of memory. Not enough for a big music library. Even less for movies. And applications for the iPad are likely to be more robust (i.e. bigger) than those for the iPhone.

You can sync and shuffle out other kinds of media if you want. Or you can say, “hey, most of what I read and watch will be on the web or stored in the cloud anyways.” But the fact remains that this thing is suited to store libraries of apps, photos, and text-based documents, and only a handful of everything else.