Diary of a Mad Editor

In addition to all the spam for a fat burner, penis extender and Nigerian Bank scammer sitting in my inbox this morning, I received a link for this slide show:

Interesting, don’t you think? On one hand, it does, rather succinctly, spell-out precisely the problems facing the publishing industry in the wake of the digital revolution. On the other, it’s really just a advertisement for Apple. A love letter, really.  I fail to see how Apple’s new device will re-invent the publishing industry in the same way the i-Pod revolutionized the music industry. Let’s face it, even if the i-Phone and i-Pod Touch added the “App” to our vocabulary, I’d hardly call the introduction of either a revolution. Really, all they did was take a technology that already existed and marry it to another technology that already existed and through an endless stream of slick advertising and testimonials from the acolytes of the Church of Apple, convince consumers of the cool factor. So, what I think is,  a tablet viewer from Apple will hardly corner the market on digital publishing. It’ll just add another device (and another option) for consumers in a market that’s starting to become saturated with such devices.  The slideshow’s author points-out that Apple’s real innovation will be to “i-Tune-ize” the distribution of digital content. Hmm? Seems to me Amazon’s already doing this. And . . . come to think of it, so is Apple . . . with the iPhone (thanks in large part to Google). Nice hype, really, and I hate to sound like such a buzzkill and cynic, but wake me when Google jumps off Apple’s bandwagon and decides to open a digital store of its own, then I might say “game over.” Hey . . . wait just a minute [a trained chimp in a suit hands Mad Editor a memo]  Okay, my chimp assistant just reminded me that Google will introduce Google Editions next year (and that several of these e-readers, including The Nook and Alex will run on Android, Google’s operating system for mobile devices).  Is the fat lady singing? Is someone playing Taps? Did the Yankees win the World Series? Apple? Are you kidding me? WTF?