iPhone as eBook?

The technology industry needs an eBook. It always has. There have been many attempts, but for whatever reason, it just hasn't happened yet. How difficult would it be to put a web browser and a PDF reader in a wireless tablet-form with a really good display? Well, as it happens, that's been done now. It's called an iPhone.

We might yet finally realize the promise of the eBook from the company that by all rights has always been destined to slay this particular dragon. Apple has always been supportive of education, and with OS X, they have shown considerable support for the various Open Source platforms. The only thing missing up to now has been the hardware: a problem which was gloriously solved when the iPhone was introduced.

Now we just have to solve the other two halves of the problem: the software standards and the books themselves. (For some reason, this problem has three halves. Nobody knows why exactly.) The second problem is the easiest.

Books will be distributed electronically. This is going to happen. We don't need to print books on paper any more. We just don't. Printed books aren't going away any completely time soon, but that doesn't mean we have to keep chugging them out while we argue over whether it's a good idea to distribute information electronically. At this point, I'd say that particular debate is over.

It should happen first with textbooks. Yes, yes, we all know how wonderful it is to load up a credit card with $90 worth of the latest 15 lb. 1200-page monster archaeology text. That text should be available on-line for $10, with automatic updates and RSS feeds to the top 100 archaeology resources on the Internet. The iPhone can do that, and it should.

The software standards are actually the easier of the two problems. PDF is the right format for typeset texts, but properly formatted (and rendered according to proper standards) HTML+CSS is not too shabby either. PDF is native to OS X, so that's no problem. The browser thing might be an issue simply because there are so many choices, but Firefox, Safari and Opera all run on OS X quite well, so there are at least three good options already.

Then there is the issue of how to buy and sell books if they are being distributed electronically. This problem has also been solved by Apple. They've already proven music, television and movies can be distributed electronically with iTunes. There should be hundreds of retail electronic bookstores on-line that can just beam books straight to the iPhone in almost exactly the same way iTunes will send music.

Before we even start with the skeptics and how it will never work, they said the exact same thing about iTunes, and Apple has sold over one BILLION songs so far. Give customers the choice, and let them decide what they want to buy. The iTunes debate was a great example of the valueless nature of this constant skepticism about entrepreneurial business. For all the carping we hear about free markets, it's truly incredible to see how many people line up to ridicule customer choice.

I have always believed Apple should be the company to market an eBook. It makes all the sense that can be made for this product to belong to a company that can seamlessly meld hardware and application as they've done with the Mac, iPod and iPhone.

The good news is, they may have already done it, and that's good for everyone.