This MG Siegler TechCrunch article really clarified Apple’s strategy for me. It makes much more sense here than I was getting from the coverage of Job’s talk. For example, it let me see the connection between the new Lion auto-incremental-save feature (which sounds incredibly useful on its own — I currently use ForeverSave to accomplish much the same) and iCloud: your applications will save invisibly, and will save to an invisible place.

Google’s mental model makes more sense to me: You should understand that you are saving your stuff to somewhere, rather than just have the confidence that they will show up on whatever set of devices you’re using. But my mental models for computing were formed back when computers were computers, not slates of glass that directly respond to the movement of your fingers as if the glass was skin. For those who think of laptops as iPads with non-removable keyboards, Apple’s strategy makes more sense. And the iPad generation is going to win simply by being smart enough to have been born later than me and my laptop buddies.

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I spent too much of yesterday and today trying to placate EPub, the God of Finickiness.

EPub (which the creators would prefer I spelled EPUB, but I figure there’s no need to shout) is the ebook format that iPad and many other readers like. I have a young adult novel that I give away in html, pdf, and Word .doc, but I figured I should modernize it up to the EPub standard.

First, I converted all 26 chapters to XHTML. XHTML is HTML’s obsessive-compulsive younger brother. The sloppiness that made HTML a success — you could sling together code of the ugliest sort and browsers would still display it for you with red blush and lipstick — drives XHTML nuts. So, you’d better close every tag and make sure you don’t start any of your inner ID tags with a number. The W3C has a useful validator that will tell you every thing you’re doing wrong. (Under options, turn on “Show source” and it will show you your original text with the mistakes flagged.)

I downloaded a bunch of automatic EPub creators, many of them listed at JediSabre, but I couldn’t get any of them to do what I wanted. A lot of people really like Calibre, which does much more than just compile EPub files, but I couldn’t figure out how to get it to treat 26 chapters as one book; dumb of me, I know, but I didn’t see that basic point covered in the documentation, and I was too embarrassed to ask it in the user forum where the creator generously responds.

I also tried eCub. I couldn’t remember why I gave up on it, so I just now tried it again, and of course it worked perfectly. Instantly. Easily. Dammit! It must have been something wrong in the XHTML files that I fixed after I’d given up on it.

I also tried Sigil, which is quite full-featured, but it kept crashing before making it through all 26 chapters, very likely because of the same irregularities in those files. So, try the automated systems before you venture down the hand-coding path.

I spent many hours with TextWrangler — a text editor that can do search and replace across multiple files is a requirement if you’re going to end up doing this somewhat by hand. EPub files are actually zip files, and, astoundingly, the files in them have to be in the proper order. Why ebooks are too dumb to be able to randomly access the contents of a zip file is beyond me, but then, so is using an easy-to-use EPub compiler. So, you need to download a sample (I used Sigil to create one), unzip it, put in your content, and zip it back up. WebVivant tells us the three magic command-line commands to get the zip file to rezip itself correctly. I did that dozens of times today. Now it’s time to test the resulting file…

ThreePress has an online EPub validator that shows you what you did wrong this time. Very helpful, although the error messages can be a bit cryptic, mainly because there are so many freaking ways to go wrong.

If you need to handcode how to get your EPub to display your cover, here’s a very helpful step-by-step guide to cover markup, by Keith Fahlgren at ThreePress.

The upshot? Make sure your XHTML is valid, and that your id values do not begin with numerals, and then try the automated systems. The one’s I’ve mentioned are free. (Thank you!) (Bowerbird posted a comment to my earlier post about EPub about a system Bowerbird is developing that outputs lots of book/document formats.) If you find yourself preparing or tweaking it by hand, expect to spend some time at it.

The upshot’s upshot? I spent a day creating a crappy version of my YA adult in EPub format that I’m not even sure works beyond with Wordplayer on my Droid. If you care to try it and let me know if it works on your device or software ebook, let me know? (You can get the pdf and .doc versions here, and here’s Bowerbird’s epub version.)

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Steven Johnson makes one of his typically brilliantly insightful points in his recent NY Times op-ed: The iPhone is a locked-down device, but it has been the site of arguably the greatest burst of software generativity in the computing era, much of it by small developers. This has led Steve to re-evaluate his adherence to the “unifying creed” that “Open platforms promote innovation and diversity more effectively than proprietary ones.” When Dan Gillmor challenged this in a tweet, Steve responded with a terrific blog post, further considering the point.

The argument is over the issue framed by Jonathan Zittrain in The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It. JZ defines “generativity” as “a system’s capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences.” (p. 70) Steve suggests that we instead judge generativity by the type of results we see, not by the nature of the software or hardware environment on which they run; a generative platform is “a platform that is constantly being re-invented in surprising new ways by a diverse group of creators, where individuals, hobbyists, small startups, and amateurs compete on a level playing field with large incumbents.” So, while JZ assumes that a system’s capacity to produce generative results depends on the system’s openness, the burgeoning of software for the iPhone shows that closed systems can produce wildly generative results.

I think a few things are going on here.

First, Steve is right about the fecundity of the iPhone as a platform, and about its openness to amateur and small developers. But, he’s right because the iPhone is not purely locked down. Apple could exert any control it wants, to any degree, any time it wants, but so far it’s been pretty open. So, the iPhone and the iPad are generative because in practice they generally meet JZ’s criteria. They are, in JZ’s taxonomy, hybrid animals.

But, the fact that there are over 150,000 apps for the iPhone is not the only measure of generativity. Apple has announced it will exclude unruly guests from its party (and Apple gets to define “unruly”), so the unruly don’t even bother to ask for admittance. The AppStore is a ruly environment. Now, there are obviously advantages to the user (as well as to Apple, but we’ll leave that aside for now) in having a device that cannot be disrupted. (“Disruptive” figures large in JZ’s book, but not in Steve’s definition.) For one thing, a ruly device is less likely to melt into a puddle of palm-sized uselessness. But, that’s to say that the iPhone’s limits on generativity are desirable. Steve’s argument is different. He’s saying that the iPhone is generative.

In any case, I think Steve is wrong in his causality. The iPhone has generated 150,000 apps because it’s a cool piece of hardware with a preternaturally appealing UI, useful software affordances built in, and an appealing SDK. Not to mention, it’s got a gazillion users. And the App Store is well-designed for marketing small programs. The iPhone is not wildly generative (in Steve’s sense) because it’s a walled garden; the iPhone could allow other marketplaces for apps to exist without losing its generativity (as Steve notes in an aside).

But, the most important issue is not whether the iPhone is generative. The question is whether Steve is right to renounce the “unifying creed” that generativity depends on open platforms. The argument should not be over whether a particular hybrid device is generative — although it’s helpful to have the case raised — but over the future of the Internet. That’s why JZ raises the issue of generativity in the first place.

JZ defines generativity as part of a polarity. Here’s what he says at the beginning of his book:

…the pieces are in place for a wholesale shift away from the original chaotic design that has given rise to the modern information revolution. This counterrevolution would push mainstream users away from a generative Internet that fosters innovation and disruption, to an appliancized network that incorporates some of the most powerful features of today’s Internet while greatly limiting its innovative capacity—and, for better or worse, heightening its regulability. A seductive and more powerful generation of proprietary networks and information appliances is waiting for round two. If the problems associated with the Internet and PC are not addressed, a set of blunt solutions will likely be applied to solve the problems at the expense of much of what we love about today’s information ecosystem. (p. 8)

The danger is that as cellphones become mobile Internet devices, and as iPods become mobile computing platforms, our new generation of computing devices will be appliances open only at the forbearance of their creators. Those creators may be relatively benevolent, but the question isn’t whether this device or that creator is open. It’s what the future of the Internet and of computers will look like. If appliances become the dominant way of interacting with the Net (and thus how we interact with one another), then no matter how loosely the device creators hold the reins, we are accepting the bit in our mouths. If appliances become the default, then the market for challenging, risky, disruptive, subversive app development is in danger of drying up.

From that point of view, the generativity of the iPhone and the iPad is — to use JZ’s word — seductive. Steve Johnson is right that they have unleashed a torrent of creativity. But it is creativity within bounds. The very success of these devices, driven by the generativity that Steve Jobs allows us and to which Steve Johnson astutely points us, can lead us to the future that JZ fears.

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Dan Gillmor has a terrific piece that looks at what’s worrisome about the iPad and its fawning embrace by the very media that hope to be saved by it.

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Yikes. All this talk about the future of books and the future of ebooks. Will it be like the Kindle? Will it be like the iPad?

The book of the future is already here. It’s been here for about 15 years. It’s called The Web.

That’s taking books as the medium by which we develop, preserve, and communicate ideas and knowledge. The Web is already that book — distributed, linked, messy, unstable, self-contradictory, bottom up and top down, never done, unsettled and unsettling, by us and of us. The book of the future has a trillion pages and trillions of links, and is only getting started.

If, however, you mean by “book” a bounded stretch of an authorial monologue, we have plenty of those on the Web, and some have great value. But they now get their value by being linked into the roiling universe of their peers.

The book of the future isn’t on the Web; it is the Web.

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The iPad definitely ups the Kindle’s ante. Unfortunately, it ups the Kindle ante by making an e-book more like a television set.

Will it do well? I dunno. Probably. But is it the future of reading? Nope. It’s the high-def, full-color, animated version of the past of reading.

The future of reading is social. The future of reading blurs reading and writing. The future of reading is the networking of readers, writers, content, comments, and metadata, all in one continuous-on mash.

 

Tim Bray writes:

Compared to my laptop, the iPad lacks a keyboard, software development tools, writers’ tools, photographers’ tools, a Web server, a camera, a useful row of connectors for different sorts of wires, and the ability to run whatever software I choose. Compared to my Android phone, it lacks a phone, a camera, pocketability, and the ability to run whatever software I choose. Compared to the iPad, my phone lacks book-reading capability, performance, and screen real-estate. Compared to the iPad, my computer lacks a touch interface and suffers from excessive weight and bulk.

It’s probably a pretty sweet tool for consuming media, even given the unfortunate 4:3 aspect ratio. And consuming media is obviously a big deal for a whole lot of people.

For creative people, this device is nothing.

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