John Gruber has had a lot to say lately about the recent iBooks EULA as well as the motives of Apple and their new iBooks software (just follow the link and scroll for all the posts he’s written.) His posts were initially his thoughts about Apple and iBooks, but more recently he’s been defending Apple from all comers, more or less.
I think he could more succinctly answer Apple critics using the following rather simple argument: Apple is solving a publishing industry problem because they see something that’s in it for them (Apple), namely money. Apple is increasing the value of their product line by lowering the barrier for content creation and they’re doing it for their customers’ (and therefore Apple’s) benefit. If the publishing industry wants to keep customers (authors) then they should figure out a way to compete with Apple’s iBooks and stop whining about the deal with the devil they made.
Because that’s exactly what the publishing industry is doing by pinning their hopes on Apple: making a deal with the devil. Apple isn’t going to do something out of some sense of altruism or helping someone out. Apple is in the business of staying in business and they play for keeps. Did publishers really expect they’d get a solution that didn’t benefit Apple in some way?
There are tons of programmers and technical people out there that could be put to work on some kind of solution. These various publishing houses would be much smarter to scrap current business plans and start hiring technical people to figure out how to make electronic media work for them. Create their own electronic book stores with their own publishing formats and deals and the like.
In others words, stop griping that Apple gave them a solution they don’t like and start solving the problem of electronic publishing for themselves. Because if they don’t, Apple won’t be a partner or a savior for publishers. Apple will become the publisher’s replacement.