Steve Jobs descended Mount Cupertino to deliver Apple’s iPad to the faithful on Wednesday. And no one was praying harder for a miracle than the publishing industry.
Jobs called it “a magical and revolutionary product,” which is what the media – particularly the beleaguered print kind – certainly hopes it will be.
Judging from Jobs’ flashy presentation (and reaction from Twitterville and around the Web) Apple got a lot right with the iPad, as far as the media industry is concerned. But not everything.
Here's what they got right, and what they got wrong.
RIGHT:
The size: Its 10-inch presentation is perfect for print publishers who have long sought a digital device that can replicate the display size of books and magazines – and those who complained about the experience of reading on handhelds.
“We think that we’ve captured the essence of reading a newspaper,” said Martin Nisenholtz, senior vice president of digital operations for the New York Times, which was given three weeks before iPad's launch to build a unique interface.
“We don't like reading long stories on a work device, like a laptop or desktop or really on the smartphones,” said Ken Doctor, a media analyst for Outsell. “We do like to nibble, a nibbling that's produced relatively little engagement with customers online, and too few ad dollars. The hope here [is that] tablets will be a consumer device, not a work device, and that readers might enjoy reading news, as they have long done in print.”
A plus on the consumer side, too: there’s already familiarity. “Because we’ve shipped so many iPhones and iPod touches,” Jobs said, “there are already over 75 million people who know how to use the iPad.”
The price. Starting at $499, the iPad will debut at roughly half the cost of what some pundits had predicted. (When Jobs announced the price Tuesday, a big applause ripped through the theater.) And expect the price to drop eventually, too, making the premiums publishers will charge at least somewhat palatable.
The display. Especially for its iBooks -- another all-new application launching with the iPad. Which means it’s already going to rival other e-readers, like the Amazon Kindle. “Amazon’s done a great job of pioneering this functionality with the Kindle,” Jobs said Wednesday. “We’re going to stand on their shoulders and go a little further.” And when Apple stands on your shoulders, they eventually kill you.
The hookup with the iTunes Store. By syncing the iPad with iTunes – which most publishers are already familiar with through developing podcasts and iPhone applications – Apple is making it easier for content creators looking to jump into the iPad pool. That’s not to say that formatting your magazine for the iPad will be as easy as uploading a podcast, but at least it’s not completely foreign. And this says nothing of the film and TV studios that are imminently familiar with the iTunes way.
