david said:
it's just going to be a smaller version of a keyboardless Macbook Air with ebooks available through iTunes.
The main issues I can see here are: 1) People are split whether or not they can tolerate reading on LCD display or whether they require e-Ink type of technology. 2) People are split on whether or not they like touch-screen vs. dislike the reduction in display quality that touch-screens entail. 3) How big vs. how little you want your reading device to be. 4) What file formats and/or DRM and/or other transfer and download restrictions a particular e-book reader entails. 5) real keyboards vs. virtual keyboards. 6) how "general purpose computer " vs. "dedicated reader" a device is. 7) cost. For reference Kindle "owns" about 2/3rds of the dedicated e-book reader market right now. Apple might be able to shake this up. IMHO competition is good in that hopefully it forces vendors to acknowledge and remove the most egregious DRM or other restrictions -- hopefully similar to what we have seen in the music market. We need devices and vendors that better recognize existing traditions of book "fair use" by readers while allowing contemporary authors a fair copyright return on their artistic efforts.