Mac News Feeds

Filed under: TUAW Business, Apple

Our talkcast returns to the virtual airwaves this evening as usual, bringing your chance to get in on the discussion with us. This week's topic? Obviously, the iPad will be front and center as we discuss and digest what Apple's new device means for the world (and whether it's underwhelming or overpowered), but we'll also talk about Adobe's Flash and whether it's even worth pursuing for us Mac users, as well as the iPhone revision that wasn't (but hopefully will be later this year).

Please do come and join us -- we'll kick things off at 10pm Eastern (7pm Pacific), and once you sign in on Talkshoe, you'll be able to call in with your own phone and chat live with TUAW bloggers and listeners. See you then!

To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the "TalkShoe Web" button on our profile page at 10 pm Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (take advantage of your free cellphone weekend minutes if you like): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 -- during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8.

If you've got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac, you can connect via the free Gizmo or X-Lite SIP clients; basic instructions are here. Talk with you then!

TUAWJoin us for a TUAW Talkcast tonight at 10pm Eastern originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Other Events

In the course of Apple Events, there comes a time as FCC approvals draw near, and announcements hang in the balance, that the store goes down and a great hush goes through the land. It is a time of great reflection and contemplation as each of us stands with 'bated breath, anticipating the technology shortly to debut.

Who are we kidding?

Can'twaitcan'twait! Puppies! Rainbows! Unicorns! Tablets! Are you as excited as we are? Is the iPad going to be ready for pre-orders? Maybe this is *it*?

Let us know in the comments.

Update: As of about 5:40 PM ET, the store was back up! Thanks for all of the tips from readers.

TUAWThe store is DOWN originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 14:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Amazon stopped selling print and e-books from publisher Macmillan this weekend over a price dispute, just days after Apple introduced the iPad and its own iBookstore for e-books.

Following an AppleInsider report that highlighted two pieces of promotional iPad material showing the display of Adobe Flash content, Apple has removed the offending images from its Web site.

Filed under: Odds and ends, Books

Overlooked in much of the hype about the iPad announcement earlier in the week was a comment by Steve Jobs in the Keynote presentation where he mentioned that the iBooks app for iPad would take advantage of the popular EPUB format for electronic books. Since we're all going to get a lot more familiar with this format in the near future, we felt it would be a good time to provide our readers with more information about EPUB.

EPUB is the same format used by the popular Stanza [free, iTunes link] app for iPhone and iPod touch. It's a free and open standard format created by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), and it's designed for reflowable content that can be optimized to whatever device is being used to read a book file. The IDPF has championed EPUB as a single format that can be used by publishers and conversion houses, as well as for distribution and sale of electronic books.

The format is meant to function as a single format that publishers and conversion houses can use in-house, as well as for distribution and sale. It supports digital rights management, something that's sure to warm the cockles of the hearts of publishers, but there's no DRM scheme that is currently specified as part of the format.

Other ebook readers that currently use the format include the Barnes & Noble Nook, the Sony Reader, iRex Digital Reader, and the iRiver Story.



If you're a budding publisher and want to get your ebook into the iBookstore, you'll need a tool to help you create your document in the EPUB format. Of course, we don't know if just anyone will be able to self-publish for the iBookstore, but Apple does note that they will have books from both "major and independent" publishers available.

For Mac users, the choice of tools is small, but good. First, there's the free Calibre ebook management tool. Calibre converts a number of different file formats to EPUB, so it's a good tool for doing an initial conversion. However, to do a lot of formatting, you'll need a full-powered EPUB editor like Sigil. Sigil is a free open-source editor that runs on a number of platforms including Mac OS X.

Next, there's the inexpensive (US$49.99 for a single license) iStudio Publisher. iStudio Publisher is a full-fledged desktop publishing application that can export text flows in EPUB format -- while that's good to hear, it's unclear if iStudio Publisher EPUB files can include photographs or diagrams.

If you happen to be an Adobe InDesign CS4 (US$699) user, you're in luck. The top-of-the-line tool for design and publishing supports EPUB, and it is possible to create files that will work on Amazon's Kindle as well. Lexcycle, the company that created Stanza, has a complete list of the tools for production and conversion of files here. It wouldn't be surprising to see a future version of Pages develop into a way to create EPUB documents.

While EPUB is a popular format, it's not without criticism. The format is great for text-centric books, but is considered unsuitable for publications that require advanced formatting or detailed layout, such as comic books and technical tomes. That could result in some issues for textbook publishers. The lack of a standard DRM scheme could cause the format to splinter into different factions unless Apple forces the issue by adopting an open scheme.

There are also issues with the lack of detail on links within EPUB books. This makes it impossible or difficult to link ebooks, or even provide links within an EPUB book. It appears from the keynote demonstration that Apple has come up with their own "standard" for linking, as there were very active examples of linking from a table of contents to individual pages within an ebook. The standards for annotating EPUB are also lacking, which means that each company using EPUB is coming up with their own way of handling this.

There's a very good possibility that Apple has created their own in-house standards for DRM, linking, and annotation. If the iPad and iBookstore are the successful products that they can be, Apple could finally force the industry to adopt a more robust EPUB standard.

So, that's it for our roundup of all things EPUB. As TUAW receives more information about how iBook and the iBookstore are going to work, we'll be sure to pass it along.

TUAWAll about EPUB, the ebook standard for Apple's iBookstore originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 31 Jan 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Steve Jobs held a town hall meeting with Apple employees late last week following the iPad launch. Wired reports on what was said at the meeting by Steve Jobs. Two of the biggest topics included Google and Adobe.

On Google, Jobs conf...

Steve Jobs held a town hall meeting at Apple late last week following the iPad launch to field questions from Apple's employees about the launch. Wired reports on what was said at the meeting by Steve Jobs. Two of the big topics included Google and...