Friday, February 5, 2010

If You Build It ...

Steve Jobs' effort to pitch Apple as a conduit for content vendors is apparently in high gear, as he's appeared in person to pitch iPad as a delivery platform for historically printed content. The delay between announcement and shipping will allow Apple to capitalize on increased buzz to make content deals that will make the platform more attractive by the time of sale, and to put in place deals that can be pre-announced regarding content and the utility of the platform.

If the iPad has a tool for searching back-issues of newspapers for research, lots of folks in news and academia will be all over it. As argued here before, the rights of users to access and handle the content will have a big impact on the utility – and thus the practical value – of the content.

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