2000 Years of Art but Apple Knows Best - Update

Perhaps sense does prevail in Appleworld after all. We wrote previously about Apple censorship of comic nudity in a new rendition of James Joyce's Ulysses and pointed out that Apple’s obsessive control of content could mean that art as we have known it over the centuries would be banned from the iPad. It was ironic that last night we watch a programme on the Italian Renaissance and the works of the likes of Michelangelo and wondered what those censors would make of these paintings, or for that matter the horrors of other works such as Goya.

Today marks the worldwide celebration of all things Joyce and Ulysses and as if on queue, AppleWorld censors have decided to allow the nude pictures in Throwaway Horse's graphic novel version of the book. The Apple folk had obviously seen the day in the diaries and realised it was a good day to turn a PR nightmare into a quick or quiet win.

The publisher is widely quoted that they have been told by Apple "that they made a mistake in establishing guidelines that were too rigid to allow for artistic growth". "We made a mistake," Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller told the Washington Post, adding that when the comic's art was brought to Apple's attention, it "called the developers and offered them the opportunity to resubmit". "[Ulysses is] now in the store with the original panel drawings," she said.

The Ulysses chapter may now be closed but the questions still remain as to what the censor accepts as acceptable and fit for iPad consumption. The rigid control by geeks reading scripted rules begs the question of how many more times Apple’s rules will be tested before common sense prevails and the effort is redirected to more productive activity.

2000 Years of Art but Apple Knows Best

Steve Jobs is getting a track record for hypocrisy. In 2008, on commenting on the Kindle he said, "It doesn't matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don't read anymore... The whole concept is flawed at the top because people don't read anymore.” Yesterday he claimed that Apple lives at the intersection of Technology and the Liberal Arts.

Everyone knows that James Joyce's Ulysses is a classic novel, one of the most important works of 20th centenary literature. Any rendition of the work will contain explicit language and scenes. These put the book in 1932 in the US dock and it won that famous court case. In 1933 United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, U.S. District Judge John M. Woolsey ruled that the book was not pornographic and therefore could not be obscene. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirming the ruling in 1934. However, outside of any court it has fallen foul of those ‘big brother’ censors who control Appleworld and a comic book adaptation of the classic has been rejected by Apple for containing cartoon nudity!

Would these same ‘McCathy’ or Mary Whithouse censors remove great swathes of art from antiquity to today on the same grounds? Would great cartoonists and illustrators such as Rowlinson, Gillray, Crumb would be banned? Would the majority of the photography of the likes of Breton, Newton, Bressai, Sieff, Weston and of course Mapplethrope ever make the cut? How will these consors deal with the many films have nudity in them.

Apple’s strict guidelines and a rating system is geared to prevent ‘adult’ content, but appear to only see black and white and clothed or unclothed and ban nudity irrespective of age!

So as the illustrators pixel over the bits Apple deems to rude to be seen, one questions whether they have gone too far and in whose interest they are acting? Perhaps Disney has a say perhaps not? The stupidity of Appleworld is that you can see the cleansed version in its purist form on the iPad and go to the website to see the uncensored rendition.

Will we black penned out words in the text of books or will a significant volume of written work be rejected? Will we have to those censor bleeps on music tracks?
Rated 17+ by Apple, Ulysses Seen is currently only available behind the censor’s cuts on the U.S. iTunes Store.

Some would say that the real shame is that Apple makes great products and bad moral judgement. Perhaps Applespeak is double entendre for Orwell's 'Doublespeak'.

Source Macworld

Beware of eStangers

Beware of strangers was and is good advice.

This week we read that Google Editions is aiming become the wholesale digital aggregator to the retail channel and line up with the ABA as they have already announced with the UK BA. It makes sense on two counts in that it starts to make friends with those it was in danger of alienating with its Book Settlement and it also offers booksellers a ray of hope when everyone else is trying to digitally circumvent them. The only caution is that Google control the terms and can effectively change these just like others have effectively designing the affiliates in and then when they have the connections, designing them out.

In another interesting move Apple’s now wants to be a publisher and follow Lulu and Amazon into the self publishing space. Authors are now starting to get serious channel opportunities and could start to disintermediate the old model. If you are an author with a strong back list, or a mid list author with a good following why not self publish on Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble Google and wherever else? If we think about it, these will be the major digital channels in the near future and with relatively little effort authors have exposure, or sales potential, to the majority of the digital channel. As a self published author you don’t ned to carry the corporate baggage and cost structure, your fixed costs are you. The author also has a very powerful too in being able to set their price at a far more appealing level than the traditional market. Google can even offer exposure the author exposure to localised markets and stores.

Retail is about the right product, right price and right time. These new digital omnivores certainly look like they are hovering up not only the books the industry wants them to sell but also the books it has forgotten, lost and ignored. In adopting an agency model the publishers may have gained control of pricing and lost control of the channel and many authors. A further thought is that in this new world mass marketing and spending money on glossy ads in trade magazines isn’t going to cut it.

Finally we wonder how those censors in Appleworld HQ are going to deal with self publishing books? Erotica under the shelf in plain wrapping, some editor cuts or a sensible approach and no censorship?

Is Appleworld Closing Its Borders?

The iPad is certainly living up to the market expectations and irrespective of the hype and the knocks, it will change the media market and computing as we knew it yesterday.

Today we read that Appleworld have taken further steps to tighten its control and further restricted what software tools developers can use to write programs for the iPhone and iPad. The software development kit will now be restricted to just three tools and any application submitted to Apple that does not use the mandated tools will now be rejected. Some will say that section 3.3.1 of the development licence is now aimed more at Apple's rivals than raising the quality of code.

A new Facebook group called "I'm with Adobe" has quickly gathered some 6,000 members. Ironically, Adobe have released a software package, Creative Suite 5, which can turn Flash code into iPhone code, but under the new terms and conditions using Creative Suite 5 would lead to an application being rejected.

Looking Foreword

Technology has a habit of working in cycles of favour. What is the ‘must have today’ is often usurped by another and another and so on. So were will the Apple competition and threat coming from?

The current eInk readers will only appeal to those who already have them. They look jaded and as we have said before, who wants black and white TV when colour is available? Colour eInk is 'still coming' but it requires the consumer to face a buying decision and that will not be restricted to one technology choice in the future.

Smartphones today are polarising around the three major players RIM, Apple and Android and leaders such as Nokia and Sony Ericson and innovators such as LG and Samsung are struggling to compete in what is now a different world. Players such as Palm came and are now going.The key no longer is the device but its ecosystem and compatibility with others and one's lifestyle.

Tablets are iPad today and the US demand for the latest ‘must have' has now delayed its international release by one month. 300,000 iPad units were sold on its first day and 500,000 in its first week.

Now rumours are circulating that Google are to deliver a ‘computing’ tablet and not just another ‘media’one. The tablet is to be built on its Android platform. This is an obvious threat just as Android is a strong contender against the iPhone and the Android and Apple apps stores are also locked in combat. If Google were to take a similar 'open approach' to supporting other devices that they adopted in the smartphone market, an Android tablet could come on many devices and have great appeal. Rumours are also rife that HP is working on an Android tablet.

If Google were to fully embrace Adobe there could be an even greater interesting situation. Flash remains a major challenge to the iPad and has Steve Jobs in constant denial. Adobe still own much in the file formatting, design, image and open DRM space and as we move from hard to soft DRM Adobe is also best placed to innovate and bring standards and conformity to the market. A Google, Adobe loose alliance who be formidable within the media space.

The camera is also a major issue. After all we all remember that it was the VHS video camera that killed Betamax and a media device without the full capabilities to capture all media is no more than an obvious limited prototype.

There are others such as the German offer from Neofonie which was badly branded the WePad. Do marketing people every consider the connotations of the names they choose?

Microsoft is also out there with Windows 7 and busy looking for a hardware partner, but manufacturers may still want to push netbook sales and not expose them to tablet cannibalisation.

Apple’s ‘use my tools or out’ xenophobic approach may still encounter an unexpected backlash.

Is Apple's Tablet Unpalatable?

So we return to the iPad and its Flash denial and current Camera shy offer. It has certainly stirred the market, but will Appleworld, its geek following and its renown agoraphobia be enough to compete?

We now find ourselves with yet another proprietary and restrictive world for books. Apple may support ePub but only their way. We will have yet another locked DRM ironically named ‘Fair Play’, which could mean Appleworld books are restricted to iPhone, iPad and iTouch. Not exactly the interoperable world that many have campaigned for and we all seek and probably even more restricted than Amazon’s much derided position. We effectively will have a common epub format restricted into different worlds, but who cares when Apple has the Midas touch, Google aspires not be evil and Amazon has to be brought down to size. Maybe a bookseller will feature somewhere?

"You know, I'm a big believer in touch and digital reading, but I still think that some mixture of voice, the pen, and a real keyboard—in other words a netbook—will be the mainstream on that," says Bill Gates on the iPad.

It appears the Appleworld is based on the content as well as designer touch. The worlds of iTunes, IBookstore and what maybe iTV.

It is strongly rumoured that a new TV pricing scheme is being formulated by Apple to offer US production houses TV shows to consumers for less than a dollar. Apple currently offers TV shows for $1.99 for standard-definition episodes and $2.99 for high-definition episodes. For an entire season, consumers might pay $49.99 in high-definition for a popular television series. The new price is very likely to be that famed 99c. The price is aimed at driving more consumers to buy the iPad and enjoy music, games, Tv and books all price pointed to attract and where possible locked to Appleworld.

Microsoft has not laid down and has announced Windows 7 based tablets from partners such as the HP Slate, Archos 9 and Acer. Asus has announced their “killer product” which is due in June. The Archos 9 PC Tablet is claimed to be the thinnest tablet on the market. The interesting thing is that when a tablet runs on Windows 7 it means it can run anything that can run on a Windows computer. Another tablet is the JooJoo by Fusion Garage, a Singapore based company. Originally called the CrunchPad it was designed to be a complete web browsing tablet.Then there is the Adam Tablet from Notion Ink, which will come with Google’ Android operating system so offering a different perspective.

Finally, Panasonic is launching a industrial strength tablet built for the tough life of supporting maintenance, law enforcement and field sales workers, which is hardly for the designer ‘media luvvie’ and comes at a 'tough' $3,379 price.

The big question is whether we are really heading towards tablet take-over or to a bigger cloud game in the sky and a different consumption model for media and access. Who will get the consumer time when games, video, TV,music and books sit side by side on the same device in full colour, stereo and animation?