Kindle Readers Ignite Protest Over E-Book Prices | Gadget Lab from Wired.com

Kindle Readers Ignite Protest Over E-Book Prices | Gadget Lab from Wired.com. 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.

Apple, open up! How to fix iTunes, the iPhone, and OS X. And fix Apple in the process.

This is something I've been meaning to write for a while. My usual Thursday evening writing time is instead being spent in my office at work while I wrestle with an annoying problem that just won't go away, so I'll take a brain break and get this out of my head. 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.

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To All My Unshackled iPhone Friends:

Don't upgrade to 1.1.1, in case you didn't realize that. Really, don't upgrade to any new firmware until the community has determined it doesn't break anything. Then wait a week after that so you are confident there are no time bombs. If it's not obvious, I'll happily post my results here as updates occur. 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.

iTunes has a real competitor for DRM-free music

Make no mistake, Amazon MP3 is going to be huge. DRM-free, and can work with any MP3 player. 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.)