DoJ says Steve Jobs email proves Apple’s guilt in e-book scandal

By Cody Lee on May 16, 2013

Things are really starting to heat up between Apple and the US Department of Justice over this e-book price fixing scandal. The DoJ filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple last year for allegedly conspiring with major book publishers to raise e-book prices.

And with the trial set to kick off in a few weeks, there’s beginning to be a lot of activity between the two. Yesterday, a DoJ filing popped up that called Apple out for facilitating the price fixing. And today, a potentially damning email from Steve Jobs has surfaced… Read More

 

DoJ calls Apple out for allegedly facilitating e-book price fixing

By Christian Zibreg on May 15, 2013

As you know, publishers Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin and Simon & Schuster all settled with the US Justice Department (DoJ) in an antitrust lawsuit the government filed against them and Apple in April 2012. In turn, DoJ is focusing on Apple now and, according to a new report, is calling Apple out for being a facilitator of an alleged price fixing related to electronic books sold on its iBookstore.

Furthermore, DoJ claimed it collected evidence that proves Apple was the “ringmaster” in the price fixing conspiracy… Read More

 

Apple wins iBooks trademark case

By Ed Sutherland on May 9, 2013

A New York judge has thrown out a trademark lawsuit against Apple’s iBooks service. A sci-fi and fantasy publisher had claimed Apple’s use of the ‘iBooks’ mark would confuse consumers. In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote wrote that Black Tower Press “offered no evidence” that consumers would misinterpret Apple’s e-book service as a book publisher. In addition Cote said the publisher’s image of a lightbulb emblazoned with the word ‘iBooks’ was distinctive enough to merit continuing the 2011 case… Read More

 

Official: Apple’s boss Tim Cook to testify for four hours in e-books trial

By Christian Zibreg on Mar 13, 2013

This past Sunday, Bloomberg reported that Apple CEO Tim Cook may be required to testify in an antitrust lawsuit the United States Department of Justice filed against it and major e-book publishers over an alleged price fixing of e-books. Reuters confirms today that U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan granted the Justice Department’s request to compel Cook to sit for a deposition.

The Judge said the death of Jobs was a key reason in ordering the deposition. Cook will be testifying for four hours in the lawsuit, a risky move for the CEO and potentially damaging to Apple. The Cupertino company is now the main target of the suit after all named publishers had settled with regulators… Read More

 

Tim Cook may be asked to testify in e-book pricing fixing suit

By Christian Zibreg on Mar 10, 2013

Apple CEO Tim Cook may be required to testify in an antitrust lawsuit the United States Department of Justice filed against it and major e-book publishers over an alleged price fixing of e-books. Cook’s eventual testimony might be risky and could be potentially damaging to his company, now the main target of the suit after all named publishers had settled with regulators.

On the other hand, the CEO could take the opportunity to make a public case for a so-called agency model that the government claims has had anti-competitive impact. The agency model regulates the relationship between Apple and digital content owners who get to pick their iBook prices freely as long as they agree not to offer lower pricing to competitors than they do to Apple.

Business-wise, publishers prefer Apple’s policy over Amazon’s wholesale model where the online retailer sets prices as it sees fit, often hurting publishers’ bottom line by engaging in selling books at a loss just to draw shoppers to its online store… Read More

 

Apple exploring ways of letting users loan and resell “used” iTunes purchases

By Ed Sutherland on Mar 7, 2013

In a world of digital media, ranging from e-books to movies and music, consumers have often questioned the difficulty of loaning or selling their originally purchased items. In an exciting development, Apple has now developed a way to transfer digital content while also protecting the rights of the publisher.

In three patent applications filed in 2011 and 2012, Apple outlines a method similar to selling a house by transferring ownership of the front door keys, only for iTunes purchases. Driven by digital rights management (DRM), the process gives owners of apps, e-books, music and other digital items rights to loan and resell “used” items to other people… Read More

 

Apple says iBooks has been downloaded over 130 million times

By Cody Lee on Mar 5, 2013

Following this morning’s release of iBooks 3.1, which brought about expanded Japanese book support, Apple has posted a press release to make its move into the country’s e-book game official.

The announcement includes further details about the Japan iBookstore launch, as well as quotes from Apple’s SVP of Internet Software and Services Eddy Cue and various publishing firm executives…

Read More

 

iBooks gains Japanese iBookstore support, including manga and light novels

By Christian Zibreg on Mar 5, 2013

Apple this morning released iBooks 3.1, a minor update containing improvements for reading Asian language books and supporting paid books from the Japanese iBookstore representing many of the large publishers in the country, with content such as fiction, manga, light novels and more.

Previously, the Japan iBookstore only offered public domain content so it couldn’t compete with local content stores from the likes of Kobo, Amazon and Sony.

Bloggers report iBooks 3.1 renders paid Japanese e-books nicely, along with the full character set and iOS Dictionary support, allowing users to highlight a word and pull its definition. Additionally, the books open right-to-left as they should so you can swipe right to advance through the pages.

Apple says the iBookstore in Japan now has “hundreds of thousands of books” available for purchase. This bodes well for Apple as to date, much of the e-book market in Japan has centered on graphical novels, such as manga… Read More

 

Apple now a lone holdout in the e-book price fixing suit

By Christian Zibreg on Feb 8, 2013

Last September, three of the nation’s top five book publishers settled with The United States Justice Department (DOJ) over alleged collusion in the pricing of e-books, despite Apple crying foul and accusing Amazon of assisting the government’s agenda. Following DOJ’s deal with HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette, Penguin followed suite in December 2012 and today DOJ announced that Macmillan has stricken a similar settlement with Uncle Sam, leaving Apple as a lone holdout in the suit… Read More

 

Self-published works get a home on iBookstore ‘Breakout Books’

By Christian Zibreg on Feb 5, 2013

Apple has launched a new U.S. iTunes Store section dedicated to highlighting exclusive, self-published works from emerging talents. Sometimes, one has to expose oneself to books that cannot be found on The New York Times bestseller list. This section is aimed at surfacing cherry-picked content you’d otherwise have a hard time discovering. The move mirrors Amazon’s self-published Kindle books and Apple says new titles will be added “as they begin taking off”… Read More

 

EU ends e-book Apple probe, opening door to cheaper Kindle books

By Ed Sutherland on Dec 13, 2012

It looks like another win by Amazon against so-called “agency” pricing model employed by Apple’s iBookstore and other digital bookstores. Following the lead of a US court, the European Union (EU) Thursday announced that the iPhone maker along with four publishers will relent after all.

Specifically, Apple and publishers reportedly have agreed to lower e-book prices on competing stores, including the Kindle store operated by Seattle-based Amazon. Apple, along with Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Macmillan, signed the agreement because it wanted to avoid fines that could have topped an astounding $15 billion.

As part of the settlement, Apple’s so-called “most-favored nation” clause – that barred publishers from offering lower prices on competing stores – gets suspended for five years… Read More

 

Digital page turn? Patented!

By Christian Zibreg on Nov 17, 2012

If asked to single out a feature of iBooks that provokes most oohs and aahs, I’m sure you’d more or less unanimously opt for the page-turning effect. It didn’t take long before other e-book apps and devices began mimicking Apple’s animated skeuomorphism in iBooks.

The page-turning trick in various implementations has become a standard feature of Amazon’s Kindle apps, Google Play Books software, Sony’s recently released iOS app, plus a host of other social news readers and e-reading programs. And just like that, Apple’s now been granted a patent for the feature, meaning the company basically owns the page turn… Read More

 

Flipboard iOS app now lists curated iBookstore content

By Christian Zibreg on Nov 15, 2012

Flipboard, the popular social news reader platform, has partnered with Apple to launch a new section in iOS apps called Books which, surprisingly, highlights select books the iPhone maker sells on its own iBookstore. The new Books section is now live in Flipboard iOS apps in ten countries. It’s customized with 25 new sections containing the most popular books from Apple’s iBookstore. “It’s like browsing in a bookstore, right from your Flipboard”, the company says. The new section is localized for the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy and Spain… Read More

 

Apple airs two new iPad mini ads highlighting iPhoto and iBooks apps

By Christian Zibreg on Nov 11, 2012

Apple Sunday afternoon posted a pair of television commercials for the iPad mini. Unlike the inaugural ad which focuses on the GarageBand app, these new clips highlight Apple’s own iPhoto and iBooks apps for the tablet, the former provided as a $5 download. Using the effective side-by-side format, the first commercial, named Photos and see above, takes us through the various photo management and editing capabilities of the iPhoto app.

The other is called Books and shows off various iBooks. As you’d expect, both apps behave exactly like on full-sized iPads. The ads are available as QuickTime streams from Apple’s home page and via Apple’s YouTube channel. I’ve included the Books commercial right after the break… Read More

 

DC now offering all its comics in the iBookstore

By Cody Lee on Nov 8, 2012

DC Entertainment, one of the top comic book publishers in the world, announced yesterday that its entire line of DC comics are now available in digital e-book format. Fans of the comics will be able to find them in Amazon’s Kindle Store, the Barnes and Noble Nook Store, and of course the iBookstore… Read More

 

EU to accept Apple’s offer resulting in cheaper e-books for Amazon

By Christian Zibreg on Nov 6, 2012

In an exclusive report out this morning, Reuters reports that EU regulators are going to accept an offer proposed by Apple and four e-book publishers that will allow retailers like Amazon to sell digital books at lower prices compared to iBookstore. Publishers Simon & Schuster, News Corp unit HarperCollins, Lagardere SCA’s Hachette Livre, and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck, the owner of German company Macmillan, all offered concessions back in August and Apple in September abandoned its e-book agency model in EU in order to avoid a potentially harming anti-trust investigation… Read More

 

Jony Ive expected to ditch reality for greater minimalism

By Ed Sutherland on Nov 1, 2012

Do you love that linen-like background when logging into your iOS or Mac device? Well, it could be the most visible fatality as minimalism overtakes realism and design chief Jonathan Ive takes the reigns once held by iOS honcho Scott Forstall. That noise you hear is the splintering of the Jobs era and Cook era at Apple.

Forstall, who headed iOS development, was also the chief cheerleader of the late Steve Jobs. Jobs loved what design geeks term skeuomorphism, a Greek word meaning a tool’s shape. In computer design, placing realistic objects – such as linen on a screen or ebooks stored in a wooden bookshelf – are used to lend a sense of assurance, like seeing a familiar face among a crowd of strangers.

But with Jobs gone, voices within the Cupertino, California firm which simply hated this sort of design gained volume. A particularly vehement enemy of Forstall’s design philosophy: Industrial design guru Jony Ive… Read More

 

Apple updates Find My Friends with new features, resolves unexpected iBooks quits

By Christian Zibreg on Oct 29, 2012

Apple has updated its Find My Friends app for iOS devices and iBooks 3, which launched alongside the iPad mini last week. iBooks version 3.0.1 is a minor update which resolves an issue where iBooks may unexpectedly quit. With last week’s release of iBooks 3, a free download, Apple added a new continuous scrolling theme akin to the Instapaper app, the ability to see iCloud purchases on your bookshelf, social sharing of quotes and more. Find My Friends version 2.0.1, also a free download, now features friends’ notifications regarding your location right under the Me > Followers section. You will also find your temporary friends listed under Followers in the Me tab as well… Read More

 

iBooks 3.0 available for download, adds new Scroll theme and iCloud purchases

By Cody Lee on Oct 23, 2012

Apple announced iBooks 3.0 during its big media event today. And while it wasn’t the focus of the event that we were expecting, the update does add some nice new features, including better iCloud integration and a new scrolling theme. And as promised, it’s now available for download… Read More

 

The iPad mini keynote in less than 4 minutes

By Jeff Benjamin on Oct 23, 2012

If you dont have time to devote an hour and twelve minutes to watch Apple’s iPad mini keynote, then get a load of this. We’ve compiled most of the crucial information in an easily consumable nugget that’s less than 4 minutes.

What’s your favorite part of the keynote?

 
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