The Unprecedented Audacity of the iBooks Author EULA

dwineman:

Apple just released iBooks Author, a free Mac app for creating digital books for the new version of iBooks. I haven’t played with it much, but so far it looks like a very good tool. However, a curious thing happens when you go to export your work in iBooks format:

…

So, to paraphrase: By using this software, you agree that anything you make with it is in part ours. But if it can say that and have legal force, can’t it say anything? Isn’t this the equivalent of a car dealer trying to bind you to additional terms by sticking a contract in the glove compartment? By driving this car, you agree to get all your oil changes from Honda of Cupertino?

If you’re not reading Dan Wineman’s tumblr, you’re missing out on excellent tech commentary and occasional snark. Start by reading this whole post.

iOS vs. Microsoft: Comparing the bottom lines | asymco: This… chart shows that iOS products combined are more profitable than Microsoft as a whole. Microsoft invented the software business and built it to become the world’s most valuable business by the year 2000. It’s still been growing since and after 35 years it is reaching a profit of $27 billion per year. It did this while maintaining enormous margins and a highly disruptive monopoly business model the likes of which the world had never seen before. It is scarcely believable then that a device business has been created to overtake it in four years.

iOS vs. Microsoft: Comparing the bottom lines | asymco:

This… chart shows that iOS products combined are more profitable than Microsoft as a whole.

Microsoft invented the software business and built it to become the world’s most valuable business by the year 2000. It’s still been growing since and after 35 years it is reaching a profit of $27 billion per year. It did this while maintaining enormous margins and a highly disruptive monopoly business model the likes of which the world had never seen before.

It is scarcely believable then that a device business has been created to overtake it in four years.

WWDC Keynote and iPhone 4

continuations:

I was really surprised that Steve Jobs did not announce more cloud capabilities for Apple during his WWDC keynote.  It had been rumored that MobileMe might become free and Apple has been investing heavily in data centers.  I believe that this is critical for Apple if they want to maintain their currently super impressive position.  The iPhone 4 is cool and has some neat innovations but none of them are either absolutely critical for new users or way ahead of other phones.  For instance, a front facing camera is nice to have if you want to do video chat, but plenty of other phones have it already.  The new display technology looks gorgeous, but then again, so does the display on the HTC EVO.  The only really neat addition is the gyroscope, which will enable some even more amazing game play.  All in all though I am far from blown away.  Will be interesting to see what happens with Android devices over the rest of this year and especially into the holiday season.  It is an exciting race that is a huge boon for all of us!

100% agree. It’s pretty crazy to me that the iPhone is finally getting the front facing camera and 5MP rear camera with flash I had on my Nokia N95 3 years ago. Also, I thought it was strange that the iPad launched with a significantly lower pixel density than the iPhone 3GS but now, just a couple months later, it seems laughable when 78% of the total pixels are on an iPhone 4 as an iPad. The biggest shock, though, is that Lala.com was shut down what could now be pretty far in advance of a cloud-based iTunes. And how about the fact that Cisco owns the iOS name and also owned the iPhone name when the original launched?