I like my Kindle.  I’ve found the iPhone Kindle app to be quite useful, too.  I even got over the fact that if I want something on my Kindle that I already bought on paper, I’ll have to buy it again.

But I’m staunchly refusing to pay more than $9.99 for an e-book.  More accurately, I’ll only buy an e-book if I can buy it for less than a paper version.  I bought a Terry Pratchett book for $6.39, which is $1.60 less than the paperback version.  Were it priced at $9.99, I’d not have done so.

The thing that I dislike the most about Kindle books is that I can’t lend them out to people, nor can they lend them to me.  Opposed as I am to DRM, this is not surprising, but you can get around this and keep DRM intact.  It seems to me it would be trivial for me to ‘lend’ my copy of a book to someone, during which time said book is not available on my kindle — just like a paper book.

Who knows how long this will last?  It took awhile for labels and major sellers of music downloads to see the light, maybe the publishers will learn from their mistakes.  But, then again, while Apple may be DRM-free for music, video is still *heavily* encumbered.

iChat, the Enterprise Video Conferencing Solution you can Take Seriously.

So… angry…

Wouldn’t it be grand if we had laws like that?

For those who don’t care to embrace the verbosity, here’s the quick and dirty summary: Apple is messing up big-time, and they have a real opportunity to fix it by doing one simple thing — loosen their grip on their products! There. Read on if you care about my thoughts on this.

It started with the release of iPhone Update 1.1.1. Some people think that Apple isn’t bricking iPhones on purpose. First up, I strongly disagree with the author’s assertion. While I do believe there’s a good chance that the jailbreak and third party apps are hosed because of a complex rewrite process for the iPhone OS (and, please, let’s not call it OS X), I firmly believe the unlocked iPhones are being bricked on purpose.

Unlike every other gadget out there that is also a mobile phone, the iPhone is not subsidized. There’s no “with contract” and “without contract” price. The price is the price — a feat they accomplished by locking the phone down so hard that you can’t even get a legitimate unlock from AT&T, even though this is explicitly allowed by the DMCA.

The glue that holds this unholy union of the Death Star and those who “Think Different” together? Revenue sharing on every AT&T iPhone customer. So when I bought my iPhone and never signed up with AT&T, that’s almost $200 out of Apple’s pocket. Multiply that by the estimated 10% of September iPhone sales from which Apple won’t be getting AT&T kickbacks, and that’s a hefty motive for revenge — or at least a very public deterrent for others. I don’t buy the “Steve says ‘Don’t mess with my perfect device!’” theory, but I do think that Apple’s price drop on the iPhone wouldn’t have happened had they known they were this close to losing a lot of future revenue.

The negative PR from this move on Apple’s part is palpable. As I opined previously, Apple’s ringtone policy is an overt money grab, enabled by the horrid members of the RIAA. This latest mass bricking isn’t going to improve things. Last week when I first read of this I thought to myself that a class-action lawsuit wouldn’t be far behind, and the rumblings have already started. But there’s a way out.

Let people legitimately buy unlocked versions of these phones without a contract. Charge more for it — it’s standard anyway, and we’ll accept that. We unlockers have shown that the phone works just jim-dandy without AT&T. I can do without the Visual Voicemail. But, if you opened the API, carriers like Rogers and T-Mobile could implement it of their own accord. I suspect this is probably contrary to the terms of your deal with AT&T. You made that bed, and you can lie in it, I guess, but you’re missing out on a great revenue stream of users who are currently locked into a contract, or are happy with their existing GSM provider. At least leave us unlockers alone — the FCC and DMCA allows this, and you need to respect that.

That addresses the iPhone mess. Let’s look at the next problem Apple’s got — AmazonMP3.com opened up this week. I immediately bought about $40 of music on the first day. An expansive catalog, no DRM, integration with iTunes, and reasonable prices. Why on earth with I spend $0.99 on a DRM-encumbered song, or $1.29 on a higher bitrate, non-DRM version when I can get the same bitrate, no DRM, and get it for as little as $0.79 a track?

This has got to be making Apple worry. And while they’ll no doubt come up with a number of responses, the one they won’t come up with is the obvious one — ditch the $0.99 DRM tracks, lower the price of the iTunes “plus” tracks, and aggressively pursue unencumbered music across the board. That’s not going to happen. They could go with licensing FairPlay so that the iTunes Music Store wasn’t the only outlet for purchased content. Especially for video. They keep arguing they’re a hardware company — I can’t imagine allowing more things to work seamlessly with the iPod would reduce iPod sales.

But let’s get out of the whole iPod/iTunes/iPhone mess. Let’s go to Apple’s core^* competency — OS X.

Mr. Jobs, let’s talk. Man to man.

It’s October. Where’s my Leopard? Vista came out earlier this year, but here’s the thing — it’s a flop. Steve, my man, do you realize what an opportunity you are facing? Release Leopard to any PC. Give the disaffected Vista users something to which they can trivially switch! There’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to fire up OS X on my Thinkpad, except you won’t let me.

Let’s look at the OS pricing.

• Windows Vista Home Basic: $210.
• OS X Tiger (10.4): $130.

And Tiger’s a way more capable OS than Vista. Leopard clearly will be as well. If you offer Leopard at the same pricing you’ve typically been following, you can make a killing by opening this up. Let people install it on any capable PC. Let me run an OS X Thinkpad — I can run a Vista iMac if I want to, but, ugh, why would I do that?

I’m not a fanboy. Apple makes some boneheaded decisions. I think they make some good products and can get a much larger market share if they just shift focus away from controlling every part of the pipeline. Make a good product, and let it stand on its own — I can’t imagine how this could do anything but increase revenue and share value.

Am I missing something?

* Oh, I amuse myself so much.

I have a long rant about this, but I’ll save that for the weekend when I have more time. Just let me say this. Apple, just because you say it, doesn’t make it legal.

Update: Read this. It sums things up nicely.

Also, I’m making an iPhone category here to keep these things in.

Apple really needs to stop being such a closed shop, or they’re going to get left behind. Once upon a time, they were the only serious contender for downloads, but music downloads that are cheaper and even more portable have got to send some sort of wake-up call that they’re not the only game in town.

(Yes, I know eMusic has been doing this for some time, but there’s no way they would amass the catalog that Amazon can.)